The Great John Curtas, Author of Eating Las Vegas and the "Being John Curtas" Blog on My Opinions About The Michelin Guide and Spain and Three-star Chef Quique Dacosta

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Bibendum, the Michelin Tire Man, with his foot on Spain's neck.

 John Curtas with one of my rosados from The Spanish Artisan Wine & Spirits Group at Ibiza Tapas Danbury (CT) in Curtas's hometown.   The jacket is just another example of Curtas's dedication to sartorial splendor and went exceptionally well with the red pants he was wearing!

"Gerry Dawes — Spanish food expert, guide, raconteur, writer, etc., (and a fellow so curmudgeonly he makes me look like Dora the Explorer*) — had these insights that are worth considering the next time you hear someone brag about their Michelin stars:

'Why do you think restaurants in Japan were suddenly given a surfeit of rosettes? Because Doughboy (aka Bibendum) wants to sell tires to Japanese car manufacturers! In Spain, France’s next door neighbor, who competes with them for gastro-tourism Euros, Michelin gives a miserable number of rosettes, about a fifth of what France has. I have proposed a boycott of Michelin tires in Spain unless the Guide gives out a significant number of rosettes to really reflect the quality of restaurants in Spain. Spain should make Michelin decide what they really want, to sell paper (the Guide) or rubber.'" - - John Curtas, Being John Curtas blog: Michelin Guides are Bullshit, March 27, 2019 (published the day I left for a month in Spain; see blog post for the link to the article). 

Photo is of Curtas with one of my rosados from The Spanish Artisan Wine & Spirits Group at Ibiza Tapas Danbury (CT) in Curtas's hometown. The jacket is just another example of Curtas's dedication to sartorial splendor and the jacket went exceptionally well with the red pants he was wearing!

*It should be noted that no one can make Curtas look like Dora the Explorer. Look up curmudgeon, with a baked-on crust, curmudgeon crème brûlée, in any visual dictionary and Curtas countenance will appear.
 

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What I actually wrote in December 2009 (when the Michelin Awards for 2010 were announced), about Michelin, its Red Guide and its coverage of Spain:

Quique Dacosta is probably the brightest culinary star of his generation and this year, he and his stunning restaurant and state-of-the-art cocina de vangaurdia food were yet again royally screwed by the Michelin Guide (2010), who failed to give Quique (and others) a deserved third star.  (Dacosta got his Third Star in 2012). 

[Quique Dacosta, whom I have known for more than 20 years, has long been a friend of mine.  I took Santa Fe Chef Mark Miller there for lunch on September 11, 2001.  While we were having lunch, I got a call from Chef Teresa Barrenchea, then a New York restaurateur, who was also in Spain.  She told me that an airplane had hit the World Trade Center.  I thought it might have been a small private plane gone astray.  Quique called us into the Bar at El Poblet, what his restaurant was then called, and we watched on a television set in the bar as the second plane hit live.]

 At lunch with Quique Dacosta at Casa Elias in Xinorlet (Alicante).

Gerry Dawes and Quique Dacosta at Quique Dacosta in Denia (Alicante).

Let's get it straight, at one point restaurants in France had received around 1,700 Michelin rosettes while Spain, in the same year, had less than 200.  The ratio is roughly the same this year.  Let's be gracious and call it eight to one in favor of France over Spain.

Taking into consideration that Spanish restaurants and Spanish cuisine--vanguardia, modernized traditional and traditional--have been recognized by far more credible judges than the Michelin Guide as among the best restaurants in the world and that France is in mortal competition with Spain for gastro-tourism Euros, why is anyone giving any credence to Michelin's shameful French-centric judgement any more?

In addition to the long-vaunted modern cuisine restaurants like Ferran Adrià's El Bulli, Arzak, Can Fabes, Martín Berasategui, San Pau, Can Roca and many others, Spain has a slew of traditional cuisine restaurants that merit one and two rosettes (usually called "stars") from Michelin, some of them three.  If Elkano and Kaia in Getaria in the Basque Country alone (Not to mention a slew of other Basque restaurants) don't merit two stars for stellar food, stellar service, ambience, wine cellar, etc., who does?  I go on on listing restaurants all over Spain worthy of Michelin's lofty ratings, but it is futile, since even the vociferous protests of Madrid's culinary press corps who have voiced their displeasure to the faces of Michelin representatives who invited them to press luncheons in Madrid to present each year's new Red Guide, apparently have had little effect. 

If I were the Spaniards--and I often feel like I am--I would get Michelin's attention quick. 

"Señores (Monsieurs y Madames), is it not true that the Michelin Guides originated as a way to help your company sell more tires?" 

"In that case, would you prefer to sell rubber or paper?  Because we intend to organize a boycott against your pneumaticos if you don't manage to award Spain at least, at the very least, 1,000 more rosettes by the next time your guidebook to Spain and Portugal is published."  

Yes, we know there are Michelin tire factories in Spain.  Do you know how many people restaurants in Spain employ, how many farmers supply food to Spanish restaurants, how many wineries and winery employees provide them with wine?

  

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  Shall deeds of Caesar or Napoleon ring
More true than Don Quixote's vapouring?
Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod
Than Rocinante stumbling up to God?

Poem by Archer M. Huntington inscribed under the Don Quixote on his horse Rocinante bas-relief sculpture by his wife, Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington,

in the courtyard of the Hispanic Society of America’s incredible museum at 613 W. 155th Street, New York City.

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About Gerry Dawes

My good friend 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." -- Chef-restaurateur-humanitarian José Andrés, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and Oscar Presenter 2019

Gerry Dawes is the Producer and Program Host of Gerry Dawes & Friends, a weekly radio progam on Pawling Public Radio in Pawling, New York (streaming live and archived at www.pawlingpublicradio.org and at www.beatofthevalley.com.)

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. 

 

Pilot for a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
 

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain  

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com