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Gerry Dawes, Juanito Bayen (owner of Bar Pinotxo) and the late Juli Soler (the front of the house genius behind elBulli) at Pinotxo Bar, Barcelona, Jan. 14, 2014. Photo courtesy of
Gerry Dawes©2014 / gerrydawes
"Gerry
Dawes, the unbridled Spanish food and wine enthusiast cum expert whose
writing, photography, and countless crisscrossings of the peninsula have
done the most to introduce Americans—and especially American food
professionals—to my country's culinary life. At a time when most food
journalists were writing about France and Italy, Gerry went off in his
own direction to become the first to really tell the story of Spain. But, for Gerry, Spain is more than just the Adriàs and (Juan Mari and Elena) Arzaks. He has connected with all manner of people working at every level and in every corner of Spain. I’m always amazed at this reach. You
can step into a restaurant in the smallest town in Spain, and it turns
out they know Gerry somehow.” - - Chef-restaurateur-humanitarian José
Andrés, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and Oscar Presenter; Chef-partner of
Mercado Little Spain at Hudson Yards, New York.
Click on title to see full post.
"Before the golden age of food travel media, and
long before Spain became the world’s most exciting food destination, there was
Gerry Dawes. A walking (and eating) encyclopedia of Spanish food and
culture—from tapas to the culinary innovators, from artisan winemakers and
cheesemakers to the sites only the locals know—Gerry has chronicled them all.
Like few others, he continues to inspire and inform a generation of food
writers, travelers, and chefs like me." – Dan Barber, Chef at Blue Hill New York
and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, author of The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food.
"Prowling through the bodegas, tapas bars, and markets of Spain with Gerry Dawes is an educational experience, sure, but more than that it’s an inside look at one of the world’s great gastronomic cultures, and more than that, it’s just a whole lot of fun. Gerry knows almost anyone you’d want to know in this delicious world, and those he doesn’t know, once he meets them, aren’t strangers for long. If you’ve never been to Spain with Gerry, don’t give up hope. It might happen yet. In the meantime, though, Sunset in a Glass will give you a tantalizing taste of the experience." – Colman Andrews, author of Catalan Cuisine and co-founder of Saveur magazine.
Specialized Tours of Spain & Tour Advice
For custom-designed tours of Spain, organized and lead by Gerry Dawes, and custom-planned Spanish wine, food, cultural and photographic itineraries, send inquiries to gerrydawes@aol.com.
I have planned and led tours for such culinary stars as Chefs Thomas Keller, Mark Miller, Mark Kiffin, Michael Lomonaco, Michael Chiarello, John Sconzo, Rozanne Gold and Michael Whiteman and such personalities as baseball great Keith Hernandez. I have led numerous others on shorter excursions (or have given detailed travel advice)to many other well-known chefs and personalities such as Drew Nieporent, Danny Meyer, Ruth Reichl, Norman Van Aken, Charlie Trotter, Tetsuya Wakuda, Bryan Miller, Georges Mendes, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg, and James Campbell Caruso.
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“The American writer and town crier for all good Spanish things Gerry
Dawes . . . the American connoisseur of all things Spanish . . .” Michael Paterniti, The
Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge and The World’s Greatest
Piece of Cheese
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Walking around the exhibition floor (at Madrid Fusión 2014) between sessions, I ran into — among
others — writer/photographer and wine importer Gerry Dawes (whose knowledge of all things Spanish is encyclopedic). . . - - Colman Andrews, The Daily Meal
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"Gerry Dawes, I can't thank you enough for opening up Spain to
me." -- Michael Chiarello on Twitter.
"Chiarello embarked on a crash course by traveling to Spain for 10 days in 2011 with Food Arts
contributing authority Gerry Dawes, a noted expert on Spanish food and wine. Coqueta's (Chiarello's new restaurant at Pier Five, San Francisco) chef de cuisine, Ryan McIlwraith, later joined Dawes for his own two week excursion, as well. Sampling both old and new, they visited wineries and marketplaces, as well as some of Spain's most revered dining establishments, including the Michelin three-star Arzak, Etxebarri, the temple to live fire-grilling; Tickets, the playful Barcelona tapas bar run by Ferran Adrià and his brother, Albert; and ABaC, where Catalan cooking goes avant-garde." - - Carolyn Jung, Food Arts, May 2013."Chiarello embarked on a crash course by traveling to Spain for 10 days in 2011 with Food Arts
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"In his nearly thirty years of wandering the back roads of Spain," Gerry Dawes has built up a much stronger bank of experiences than I had to rely on when I started writing Iberia...His adventures far exceeded mine in both width and depth..." -- James A. Michener, author of Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections
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About Gerry Dawes
Gerry
Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía
(National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on
Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural
tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's
Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava
Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004,
was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles
& Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the
2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature
in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about
Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.
In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés.
". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran
Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow
narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish
correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food
journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a
self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again
brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane
Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher,
Food Arts, October 2009.
Mr. Dawes is currently working on a reality television series
on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com.
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