Spain's pastry paradise
Espai Sucre, in Catalan "Sugar Space", stands in a row of shops in Barcelona's old city. By day it's a school where professional chefs learn how to compose and execute desserts. At night, from 9pm onwards, it becomes a restaurant. It serves neither fish, nor flesh nor fowl: only postres, desserts. But this is no after-hours teashop. Customers come here for dinner, a three- or five-course meal.
He has an enviable pedigree. His CV lists spells with leading French chefs Christophe Felder at the Hotel Crillon in Paris, Michel Bras and Pierre Gagnaire. His last stop before setting out on his own was with Jean Luc Figueras in his home town of Barcelona. With Oriol Balaguer and Alberto AdriÁ he forms a trio of Spanish musketeers who are redefining desserts and their role on the menu.
He has chosen the ideal spot for his experiment. Catalonia's capital (4.5 million inhabitants) has a buoyant wining-and-dining culture, with more than 3,500 registered eateries. Tapas culture encourages innovation - specifically, attention to the subtleties of flavouring and seasoning. El Bulli, 50km away at Rosas, is close enough to influence a string of Michelin-starred restaurants in the city.
Espai Sucre's design reflects its dual purpose. The street entrance opens on to a modern 30-seat dining room. Behind it is a compact kitchen with a large blackboard backing one wall. The classroom, for groups of up to a dozen, is beyond that. During the day Butron runs two three-hour teaching courses.
Mise en place starts during school hours and carries on through the day. Including himself and his partner, Xano Sagler, Butron operates a seven-strong brigade. It's a heavy labour cost for a restaurant serving a maximum 150 covers per week with an average food spend of about €40.
It compares quite well to Butron's experience with Gagnaire: "He served 18 petits fours per person: six dry, six chocolate and six fruit. There were two chefs working full-time on them." That was in St Etienne and the three-Michelin-starred chef went broke before rebuilding his career in Paris.
He admires the French chef's imagination and his willingness to take risks. They didn't, he recalls, always pay off, though: "A lot of the time we were improvising. A dish could turn out brilliant or it might not work. I like being creative, but I also like analysing and developing a recipe first."
His idea for Espai Sucre took shape while he was working for Figueras. His boss let him introduce structured dessert menus with accompanying wines. Despite their success, Butron felt that customers never experienced his cooking as they should.
The defining moment came when a regular customer told him, "Jordi, I love your desserts, but sometimes I can't taste what you've put in them, because I've eaten so much before that my taste-buds are worn out."
Chefs, he believes, should compose postres in the same way they create savoury dishes. The starting point is always the produce. In his school he holds weekly sessions where students test, for example, 12 varieties of apple: "You have to recognise not only the obvious taste, but also the nuances."
Techniques never exist in isolation. They're the raw material's helpers. They can harm them, too. Working with cold ingredients, he explains, is aggressive. In the extreme, it kills taste and burns food. If a chef works with a subtle ingredient such as lemon grass, freezing will mask its taste. "Match the method to the ingredient," he insists.
The third requirement for creating a successful recipe is the marriage of tastes. At one level, every good cook knows the basics instinctively: sweet and sour, fatty and juicy, spicy and bland. These are all contrasts, but similar or related tastes work too - chocolate and coffee, for instance.
Butron takes the principle of complementary flavours a step further: "Star anise and fennel have similar profiles, but you can use the spice to reinforce and lengthen the vegetable's characteristic note."
A creative talent can invent a fabulous dish and it may still fail in the restaurant. It's a question, he argues, of context. Chefs test their recipes under artificial conditions, not as their customers eat them. The sweetness, acidity, portion size and presentation have to work at the table, not just back of house.
"I don't like chefs who use unusual ingredients just for effect. It's hard enough being creative with an orange. The public respects a new use of a flavour it already recognizes. The unusual or exotic has a place, but it needs to be supported by the familiar."
Espai Sucre is possible because the line between sweet and savoury is blurring. For example, pepper is identified with salt as the basic seasoning of savoury food. Except with strawberries, few pÆ'tissiers have bothered with it. However, it's a key flavouring of Butron's "peppered milk, citrus fruit and rocket". So is the peppery rocket, used to add colour and to accentuate the piquant taste.
The boundaries, though, still exist - for the moment. Carrots and celery can and do cross it. Chicken, fish and meat don't.
As part of the same evolution, Butron's desserts rely on less sugar. Instead, like Bras, he's selective about which sugars go into which recipe. Soft brown sugars and molasses are important, even in basic pastry doughs. According to Butron, a dessert must still be noticeably sweet: "Sugar is a flavour enhancer. You can't omit it."
To build his set menus, Butron works from light to heavy: "If my first course was chocolate and I followed it with fruit salad, the fruit's taste would be killed." He sees it as the logical adaptation of the basic rule whereby a soup precedes fish, which comes before the meat. In practice this produces a clear structure. Fresh, fruity notes open the meal. Strong tastes and heavier textures end it. On a three-course menu, he introduces a balancing dish. On his five-course menu, the shift is more gradual.
At Espai Sucre this works. Conventional restaurants offering just a few desserts would find it hard to copy. After a beef stew "lychee soup with celery, apple and eucalyptus" could lack body, whereas "spiced hot chocolate" might have too much.
His style of menu may not yet suit most restaurants. It has a quality many of the glitziest, cutting-edge ones lack. Each item stands as a separate course in its own right. At the same time, it fuses with the others. "Le grand dessert" in a Michelin-starred restaurant is often little more than a sample of Á la carte items arranged on a large plate.
More relevant still is the recipe balance and make-up. Garnishes and accompaniments have no place in a Butron dessert. Instead, he layers similar tastes of varying intensity and contrasting textures so they form a whole. Manchego cheese tart with pineapple and thyme has a full-bodied cheese base, three pineapple variations (macerated in pastis, sorbet and saut‚d) and two thyme elements (parfait and syrup). "I teach my students to intensify flavour," he insists.
There's no muddying of raw materials. When you put the food in the mouth you recognise what you're eating. It's a long way from tiramis-, tarte aux pommes and sticky toffee pudding, but it's accessible. It's a pleasure to eat without diners having to ask themselves whether they ought to be enjoying it.
In an industry where "deskilling the kitchen" has meant firing the pÁ¢tissier, Espai Sucre makes a number of points. Desserts aren't bolt-on extras that matter less than the rest of the meal. They're evolving too. They require new skills, a wider understanding of ingredients and as much commitment as the rest of the menu.
In Barcelona, many of Butron's customers sit down to dinner after touring the tapas bars, in effect whetting their appetites. A dessert-based restaurant would do well in New York (Butron has already turned down an offer to open one). The British dining-out scene, however adventurous, might hesitate before accepting it. Claire Clark spent a year trying to find a suitable London site for a dessert restaurant and failed.
The lesson for British chefs is in the detail. Our Catalan counterparts, the best of them, have stepped outside the repertoire and the conventions. They've broken the rules - or changed them. According to Butron: "Behind every great dessert there's an original idea." He's training a generation of pÁ¢tissiers who will take the craft to a new level.
What's on the menu
El petit menu de postres
Lychee soup with celery, apple and eucalyptus
Raspberry cake with vinegar, kaffir sorbet and apricot
Spiced hot chocolate
El gran menu de postres
Iced tea soup with fruit and spices
Peppered milk, citrus fruit and rocket
Manchego cheese tart with pineapple and thyme
Almond cake with coffee and "leche merengada"
Chocolate parfait and Lapsang Souchong cream with sesame and yogurt
