Blank plate, the documentary that aired on Nights without fiction On Tuesday night on TV3, the show showcased the work and obsession that goes into haute cuisine through the Disfrutar restaurant. This isn't new on television. Starting with the media star Ferran Adrià and continuing with all the chefs. crashed that has taken place in Catalonia, we viewers are quite experienced in the dynamics of this ultra-demanding nature of the most prestigious and elaborate cuisine. Ferran Adrià, as the forger of a certain DNA, served as a narrative endorsement to accredit the legacy left behind by his three disciples and protagonists. Mateu Casañas, Oriol Castro, and Eduard Xatruch generously expose themselves in front of the cameras, to the point of including a domestic fatality in the restaurant. We viewers witness a sewage system breakdown that causes a backup in one of the toilets, forcing the staff to reorganize to fix it. This debacle, uncomfortable and unsightly in a luxury restaurant, breaks with this epic narrative about gastronomic perfection.
Blank plate It is of indisputable visual quality. It is contagious with the exquisiteness and aesthetics of Enjoyment. The plans of some of the gastronomic proposals acquire a symbolic value: textures that disintegrate if the protagonists speak of low hours, golden tones to illustrate splendor and sophistication, steam to represent pressure or the fierce expression of a brilliant monkfish to explain the brilliant monkfish. The road to Las Vegas to compete to become the best restaurant in the world is the perfect plot to evaluate all the other aspects that entail Enjoyment and the tyranny of excellence.
But Blank plate It also explains other aspects in a much more subtle way. On the one hand, it reveals that, beyond the DNA of contemporary haute cuisine, there is also an undeniable Y chromosome. Not only through the voices that appear in the documentary, where the female gastronomic experts interviewed counterbalance a narrative that is almost masculine. And it is demonstrated above all in the archive photographs: the images of the birthplace of El Bulli, where all the snapshots had exclusively male members. Where the group supporting the protagonists at Jaleo in Las Vegas are men. When they take the photograph together, the documentary shows the reverse shot. They are the ones taking the photo, the men are the ones appearing. In the portrait before the 50 Best competition, only the expert Cristina Jolonch breaks the male uniformity of the group.
Haute cuisine, predominantly male-dominated, has for decades successfully constructed this discourse of epic, extreme effort, maximum pressure, and unlimited severity as a guarantee of success that legitimizes the secondary role of family and caregiving, relegated to roles of manure. Creation is understood as a sacred value above all else, relying on the friendly resignation of the rest of the group. Blank plate, like any magical proposal that you are served at Disfrutar, is not just about cooking.
