Luke Dale Roberts, from the South African restaurant, The Test Kitchen, paints Reale Seguros Madrid Fusión with talent and taste.
You only need to spend half an hour with Luke Dale Roberts to realise that he is culinary genius. He is one of those minds able to create dishes out of nothing and paint them on the table as if they were canvases by a contemporary artist. «My cooking is urban, cosmopolitan, fusion», he makes quite clear when he presents his ‘modus operandi’ in the kitchen. He reveals the multiculturalism that you can feel in Cape Town, where he has The Test Kitchen, which in 2018 won the Best Restaurant in Africa award. «My time in Europe taught me how to cook while my passage through Asia broadened my horizons», Roberts says to explain that in his cooking he feels able to «create anything that crosses my mind».
«My cooking is cutting-edge with hints of Asia, with a presentation that emulates plastic artists», he explains before drawing various gasps of admiration among the audience in amazement at his creations at Real Seguros Madrid Fusión. In fact, some of his desserts are made using moulds based on watercolours of trees, flowers and seeds that he commissioned from a painter. «I like to convey the idea that my dishes are alive, with colours and shapes», he points out to highlight this idea. There is a reason why South Africa is the country of rainbow cooking, of aromas that draw on the cultures of its colonisers and on the produce that is inextricably linked to the land itself.
Only 40 lucky guests can enjoy his gastronomic creativity every day in his restaurant, where the concept focuses on two spaces. «First they enjoy some snacks in the Dark Room that are eaten with any utensil apart from a knife and fork and then they go on to the Light Room where the gastronomic adventure ends», he explains.
However, the highpoint came when the South African chef began to cook before an auditorium that watched in silence as they didn’t want to miss a single detail of what was happening on stage. He started out with a veal tartar «as a tribute to my British heritage and a reminder of those Sunday roasts of my childhood». A dish in which the meat is smoked on charcoal embers and in which a special pudding is absolutely essential: «We create a grid-shaped pudding tulip to cover the onion pickle with red vinegar that we have placed on the meat», he pointed out, just before finishing off the dish with grated fresh spicy radish and a pesto without cheese but with celery, oil and garlic, chilled with nitrogen to put the final touch to a perfect dish.
But the grand finale was still to come with a tuna loin featuring red cabbage «in various textures». The tuna is grilled on the charcoal embers coated with thyme to conceal it under a bed of red cabbage that «simulates two trees in the wind». And from this moment on we have an entire palette of colours and flavours with sesame, honey, mustard seed, pickled dried red cabbage powder, liquorice powder and a sour cream and mustard powder that simulates winter snow. A standing ovation from the audience in the auditorium.
If there is one thing that was made quite clear in hardly 30 minutes, it’s that the finest, most creative and innovative cooking in Africa is synonymous with Luke Dale Roberts: pure talent.