At Bernard Benbassat's house
Bernard Benbassat is a chef and French, two adjectives that go together as well as oil and salt, with a passion for Africa and macrobiotics. Of course, he has many other adjectives: teacher, friend, wanderer, sensitive, natural, passionate, loyal, restless, open-minded…
Bernard Benbassat is chef and French, two adjectives that go together as well as oil and salt, with a passion for Africa and the macrobiotics. Of course, he has many other adjectives: teacher, friend, walker, sensitive, natural, passionate, loyal, restless, open…
He arrived in Spain 27 years ago, somewhat against the grain, but the country gradually intoxicated him to the point that today he cannot imagine living anywhere else. In Barcelona he found a breeding ground for the new food trends; back in those Naranjito years, Barcelona was a city undergoing a complete transformation and adaptation to European modernity, and Bernard rolled up his sleeves. Today he thinks it is the best city in the world for walking, and Bernard almost always heads towards the Boquería or the Concepción Market, for obvious reasons.
He has spent 35 years in professional catering very intensely, dividing his time between kitchen management (Restaurante Duran-Duran, La Cúpula, Salón Rosa, Hoffman, Joel Robuchon***, Jamin in Paris…), the restaurant and school consultancy (he was the director of the Hoffman Academy for ten years), participation in culinary tours y international hospitality trade fairs, collaboration with the specialist press and the media, and for some years now, the organisation of macrobiotic cookery classes through a revolutionary pedagogical method in this discipline.
She opens the doors of her home to us and immediately we see how her profession becomes apparent. Not just because of the paintings, the books, the decorative elements... But because she doesn't have one kitchen, like the rest of us mortals, she has two. A «normal» kitchen and a pastry workshop. Oh.
It seems like a contradiction for a French chef to switch to macrobiotics, right? But he vehemently insists that it is not: «We are what we eat,» he states, «macrobiotics is the most intelligent way of eating»And the truth is, if we stop to think about it, most of us haven't a clue what we're eating, how it affects us and, even more so, whether it's good for us. Are you ready to fall for the seduction of macrobiotics?
