There is a movement within sociology that argues that sociology is no longer a science within society, but rather a science of associations. And Iñaki Martínez de Albéniz firmly believes in this postulate. With a hoarse voice, one tonic syllable away from disappearing due to severe dysphonia, he clings to the propolis to work the miracle and finalize a millimeter speech before a packed audience during the second day of Diálogos de Cocina. With a table set behind him and all the spotlights in the Basque Culinary Center auditorium trying to follow his hyperactive figure, Martínez de Albéniz underlined the title of the presentation that anticipated the coven: “Passes from the midfield”.
And from assistance to assistance, among photographs of soccer players, giant boobs and discoverers of the covid vaccine, this doctor in sociology at the University of the Basque Country (EHU-UPV), ideological collaborator of the Mugaritz restaurant, co-curator of Diálogos de Cook and member of the Technical Committee of the Basque Culinary World Prize knew how to pull the invisible thread of criticism without upsetting anyone else. How? Blowing up superfluous partitions, expanding the margins of official discourse and highlighting the short ones over the giants in this inbred artifact that, among all of us, we have decided to call “haute cuisine”.
“If sociology has any role in gastronomy, it is to promote links between disciplines and different levels within the hierarchies of any cuisine that are being developed in gastronomy. The kitchen will be higher the more heterogeneous the links it establishes with its environment are, ”he underlines. He has saved the propolis; that resinous mixture obtained from bees, for future stellar occasions. It is not necessary in short distances and he opts for a fifth of beer to get down to business. “We have focused too much on the tip of the haute cuisine iceberg and not enough on the bottom hidden below the water. After all, it is what sustains what we all see and applaud. We have to be more divers ”, she blurts out wisely. I sip looking at the window. There is no ice in sight, but the classic chirimiri from the north that frames the scene.
Beyond the simile between what is exposed and what is hidden, and while it is yet to be determined whether the haute cuisine iceberg is melting or going through a big bump, the big open question has to do with the captains of the ship who still do not want to look beyond their stoves: can the cooks we all have in mind fix the mess of haute cuisine or do they need outside help? “They should get help,” he muses. “I have noticed that many chefs gather at the same table and do not mix with other people in social events. The problem with this is that inbreeding produces redundancy."
And after a moment of calm doubt is when she brings a little light on the road. “Although I think they begin to feel the need to look for those who are going to ask them other questions. There are still very poignant and imaginative chefs who, if they receive the right questions, will know how to give new answers”.
This is how Martínez de Albéniz is all the time: when he speaks, the bread rises. Brazenly, unbuttoning his shirt mid-speech so that ideas flow without a corset, he is capable of drawing an ovation from the media chefs and cooks whom he has just metaphorically poked. In his speech there is no doubt in this sense: he urges the need to take a step back from visible heads to learn to stride forward as a human team. Haute cuisine will have a paradigm shift or it will not: from creative cuisine to holistic cuisine, from signature cuisine to social gastronomy, from avant-garde cuisine to 360-degree gastronomy, from phallic (success) to the enveloping (care), from egosystems to ecosystems, from the extractivist conception to the habitability of the world, from the striker who only thinks of scoring goals to the midfielder who enjoys passing. That is (nothing more and nothing less) transforming the superchef into a network of expert systems. "Because if there are revolutions everywhere, there aren't anywhere," says the author of publications such as 50 miradas: a journey through the contemporary gastronomy movement together with the journalist Sasha Correa.
Interestingly, this sociologist knew nothing of the food system nor did he like cooking when he landed in this, our changing sector. His main lines of work and interest were focused on the studies of science, technology and society; sociology of identity and creative industries until he paid special attention to avant-garde cuisine and could no longer stop obsessing over his strange self-destructive inertia. A few years later, he has filled the repository with transcendental data to pose challenges to those who cut the cod and indirectly has become a good home cook. A complete win-win.
“I entered gastronomy fleeing from politics. And over time I have realized that gastronomy is more political than what we call political, ”she says in a personal capacity. "Eating is the quintessential political act." And in that melody resonates the protest song of the journalist Alicia Kennedy, who defends that it is no longer enough to say that eating is a political act, and that the time has come to define what politics we are talking about. “Cooks must learn to promote certain things that until now did not happen in their restaurants. They must adopt a new role so that the subordinates can rise without a glass ceiling. The power is in those subordinates, who are saying and doing different things. The kitchen that interests me is the kitchen that cannot be seen, but is cooking”.
I don't know if it's possible to imagine a national gastronomic congress without a single name of superstar chefs, without a single speech repeated here and there until exhaustion, without chefs giving way to videos of themselves in a vicious circle. While waiting for that meeting of second-rate chefs and cooks with a speech off the official channel, Martínez de Albéniz extends a helping hand with conditions. “They should all sit at the same table. They talk a lot about commensality, but then they themselves rank the tables. And it doesn't make any sense." Of course, at that shared table there must be a chair reserved for the merit of the stagiers. Those that the doctor in sociology compares to the covid virus. “The spread of the stagiers is a viral spread. It is an expansion based on desire and chance. In the non-centralized organization. They are like those birds that are spreading the seed: the stagiers have to realize the privilege of being in permanent displacement”.
A controversial idea that, like all good ideas, has nuances, edges, sun and shadow recesses. From here also arises the concept of situated cooking, which, like the activist Marina Monsonís, has been adopted from the feminist philosopher Donna Haraway, creator of "situated knowledge" in the work Science, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature (1991). . A concept that, applied to gastronomy, tries to defend those restaurants that make sense if they represent the physical landscape in front of the imposed restoration. Those places that cannot be the same in Barcelona, Madrid, Hanoi or Lima. “Gastronomy is always located and from there it has to project its gaze to the world”, she clarifies.
Actually, Martínez de Albéniz did not want to talk about politics, but as a sociologist trained in political terms, he leaves a pertinent comparison for last. “If I think about it carefully, 15-M was a symbolic phenomenon of a paradigm shift in politics. The motto read: 'They do not represent us.' And these days he told Joxe Mari Aizega, director of the Basque Culinary Center, that gastronomy needs its 15-M ”. He ends the talk, but he does it with a shot. “Let people say… all those chefs that we see in the media giving gastronomy a voice do not represent us. We need to connect and develop a narrative, a new story. And try to filter that message in society. Not with the forcefulness and the lights of the spotlights, but delving into those more subterranean structures that nest inside the kitchens”.
