The Passing of Padre Luis de Lezama, The Tavern Keeper Priest of the Bull Bums in Madrid at Age 88

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Padre Luis de Lezama Barañano, founder of Grupo Lezama Restaurant and Hotel Group has just died. Ironically, I awoke early this morning and was on my phone reviewing Instagram messages, which I had not checked since before Christmas. I came across a message from a photographer friend of mine, Eric Mencher, who spends a lot of time in Spain. He sent me a photograph of my book Sunset in a Glass, which was on the reading shelf at Luis de Lezama's Taberna del Alabardero in Taberna del Alabardero Madrid. I must have seen the message about the time Luis died. In my book there is an entire chapter on Luis. QDEP. 

 

Chapter 3 The Tavern Keeper Priest of the Bull Bums

 

“Don’t give them fish; teach them how to fish.”—Padre Luís de Lezama, explaining to his boss, Cardenal Tarancón, why he intended to open a tavern to employ his flock of young aspiring bullfighters, impoverished youths and assorted wayward souls.

 

 

Padre Luís de Lezama, an unlikely combination of priest, author, educator and tavern keeper, who over a span of 45 years built a successful restaurant, hotel and cooking school empire, could also very well be considered a modern day saint because of his good works for his fellow man over a period of more than fifty years. Indeed, this tabernero, or tavern keeper, has been compared in newspaper columns to Mother Teresa. And on several occasions, because he often leads with his heart, he has been likened to Don Quixote. In Miguel de Cervantes’s immortal novel, when Don Quixote tells his squire Sancho Panza that they are about to get into adventures up to their elbows, he could have been describing Luís de Lezama’s life, in which he found himself in adventures up to his elbows, but as time has proved, not over his head.

 

 Padre Lezama with the gypsy cattle brand that he turned into the logo for his Grupo Lezama Restaurant and Hotel hospitality group.

Lezama was perhaps the most famous priest in Spain. I spent many hours, lunches and dinners with Luis over many years and I am saddened by his passing. He was 88 years old.

 

 Lunch with Padre Lezama and a friend at Café de Oriente in Madrid.

 

Photographs of Padre Lezama by Gerry Dawes©2024.  Contact: gerrydawes@aol.com.

 

Comments are welcome and encouraged.

 

Text and photographs copyright by Gerry Dawes©2021.  Using photographs without crediting Gerry Dawes©2021 on Facebook.  Publication without my written permission is not authorized.

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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. 

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". . .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. 

 

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