Flights to Spain this week will be as full of chefs and gourmands as those to Switzerland will be crammed with policymakers and bankers. Madrid Fusión, which begins on Tuesday, is cooking’s answer to Davos – a ritual meeting of the profession’s elite, purposely designed for the cross-pollination of ideas.
For three days, some of the world’s most exciting chefs – Gastón Acurio of Peru, Matthew Bax from Singapore and Ferran Adrià with compatriots Martín Berasategui and Juan Mari Arzak from San Sebastián – will perform culinary theatre on stage, demonstrating their latest techniques, and their most famous dishes.
This gathering has proved so successful that many other cities have followed its example. After Madrid comes Omnivore in Deauville, France, then Tokyo Taste, Identità Golose in Milan and London, Star Chefs in New York; and finally, in November, Gastronomika in San Sebastián. The relative newcomer is Seoul Gourmet, which for the second time pulled starry chefs en masse towards South Korea, just before the G20 summit last year.