Chef Dani García closed his three-Michelin-starred restaurant in 2019 to turn it into a steakhouse. Two years later, after spreading eleven different culinary concepts across twenty-one restaurants in eight cities and three continents, he returned to the big league with the opening of Smoked Room in Madrid, where he was awarded two Michelin stars in one go just six months after opening.
Three weeks after the monumental achievement of receiving three Michelin stars, Daní Garcia announced one of the most controversial decisions ever in the global culinary industry. He would close the restaurant that had just received the very highest accolade an ambitious chef can hope for. This was scheduled for ten months later, in October 2019, just one day before the next edition of the Spanish Michelin Guide was to be released.
This wasn’t an easy step, also with most of the Spanish press accusing García of betraying the Red Guide’s gift, his neighbors in Marbella telling him he was stealing their town’s third star, yes, even his mother giving him a devastating reply when he shared the news: “You’re going to make the biggest fool in the universe out yourself.”
In any case, the youngest chef in Spain to have received a Michelin star when he did, at age 24, eighteen years later went ahead and closed his three Michelin-starred restaurant as promised. Then he spent the next eight months transforming it into a modern steakhouse, named Leña.
A gastronomic Spain was paralyzed… “Por qué?!”
“McDonald’s Changed My Life”
It was not the first apparent contradiction in García’s career. In 2015 McDonald’s reached out to him, attracted by the burger he was serving at Bibo, and its iconic ‘bull sauce’.
“I was very curious about such a collaboration, I always wanted to reach as many people as possible, but how many burgers were we selling in Bibo? About 25,000 a year”, explains chef Dani García. “And then, boom, we were doing over 50,000 a day. McDonald’s changed my life”.
At the time, he was also heavily criticized by Spanish food writers, who did not understand the Malaga chef’s desire to make as many people as possible happy with his cooking. “As a chef, I did not choose to be born into fine dining, it just happened. I’m not just a Michelin chef, but a cook. I come from a humble family, my friends can’t afford Michelin-restaurants, we can’t be blind to people who can only spend 10 euros on dinner on a Friday. I felt like I was living in a gilded cage”, states García.
It was probably when McDonald’s knocked on his door that García started a long self-exploratory trip. During his particular odyssey, García developed no less than eleven different concepts which he has taken to a total of twenty one restaurants in eight cities and three continents so far, ranging from Leña, to El Pollo Verde, a very accessible take-away spot serving roast chicken and salad bowls, to a traditional Andalusian venta, Tragabuches, and a luxury brasserie on the roof of the Four Seasons Hotel in Madrid, Dani Brasserie.
Garcia’s new culinary path culminated in 2021 when he returned to his special Ithaca, the Michelin League. That year, he was awarded two stars directly for Smoked Room Madrid, just six months after it opened.
Haute Cuisine, Unplugged
At his headquarters in Marbella, Dani García occupies a spacious office filled with mementos left by his friends, mostly chefs, who have graffitied the mirrored walls with messages of admiration. On the walls hang chef’s jackets signed by his peers, like the one he wore when he organized a tribute dinner for Joel Robuchon or Nobu Matsuhisa. On the shelves are special tableware and on his table is a huge notebook, its pages are covered with chaotic diagrams, lists and scribbled logotypes. One of them is filled with various names: ‘Ukiyo. Smoked Omakase’, ‘Dead Wood. Smoked Omakase’, ‘K. Smoked Omakase’ and, circled, ‘Smoked Room. Fire Omakase’.
“It seems that Smoked Room was already in my head when I closed ‘Dani García’. I know this because when I gave the first interview to announce my closure, the writer asked me if I would ever return to haute cuisine and I replied that I didn’t know at the time, but that if I did, it would be in a small format, like a Japanese omakase restaurant. I felt then, as I do now, that there was no point in offering this kind of experience in a room with fifty seats,” García explains.
Dani García has thought a lot about what it really means to have a top notch restaurant. The answer has changed a lot over the last twenty-four years. At the beginning of his career he wanted to use all the crazy Bullinian-techniques and some of his own, like nitro-cooking, but as he got older and wiser it became more about offering the best ingredients he could find and cooking them with elegance and subtlety, a journey that many other chefs and diners have made too.
“At Smoked Room we offer a more mature haute cuisine, much more direct. I like to describe it as an unplugged cuisine,” explains García.
When you walk into Smoked Room, you feel that, whether you are in Madrid or Dubai. You will sit at a counter in front of an open kitchen with a burning fire with both flames and chefs becoming hypnotic, but more than that, watching the fire connects you to the origin of cooking.
There is something atavistic about it, an instant comfort. Fire has fascinated mankind for a million years and become an important ritual element in many spiritual traditions. It was through smoke and fire that ancient cultures purified their altars and gods, how matter became essence, and it looks as if Dani García’s kitchen has been transformed through smoke into something quintessential, nothing superfluous, and both the service, directed by Luis Baselga (Madrid) and Ugo Calia (Dubai), and the kitchen, with chefs Massimiliano della Vedove (Madrid) and Jesús Lobato (Dubai), build on the directness of this ‘unplugged’ concept that García has brought to life.
Smoke, A Leitmotif For A Product-Focused Menu
Smoked Room, both in Madrid and Dubai, is an intimate restaurant within a steakhouse, Leña. A private space where fire is worshipped and smoke becomes the leitmotif of a menu based on the best ingredients that García and his team can find around the world.
There are up to sixteen dishes on the menu, including savouries and desserts, and the beverage pairings include both iconic and surprising labels of wine, sake and more. Of course, smoke is present in all the dishes served, but not in an invasive or obvious way. Often it is just a hint of smoke in the least expected ingredient. Take, for example, the quisquillas-shrimps from Motril – a tribute to the Andalusian product – with noisette butter and smoked… black pepper! With this serving you experience how the buttery texture of the small prawns and their delicate sweetness melt with the noisette, and then, as if by magic, a smoked citrus spiciness appears.
Smoke has a more obvious use in the ginger chawanmushi with grilled baby octopus and smoked caviar, a perfectly good dish that evokes a Japanese spirit and pays homage to legendary Asador Etxebarri in Atxondo, the Basque Country. In fact, one of the names discarded for Smoked Room was Atxondo’s postal code.
Once again, Japan is fully present in the Aburi Mackerel with citrus-tomato dashi, a fresh, vibrant bite in which the fire is applied directly to half of the fish, the fat of which blends so well with the acidic notes of the dashi and the tomato ice-water, shaved with a kakigori machine in front of the diner. This is unplugged, direct, straight to the taste.
But even more straightforward is the supreme smooth clam with Tosazu Beurre blanc and fresh wasabi on top. Again, the best of Andalusia meets Japan with a touch of French finesse, and the dish is presented as simply as possible, in a beautiful, gleaming clam shell that remains the mantra: product, product, product. And smoke is present in both the clam cooking and the Tosazu-vinegar which contains smoked katsuobushi.
Mostly based on fish and seafood, there are a few savory meat dishes, the aged quail with almond mole and sweet corn risotto – a very good two step version of the traditional Mexican chicken with mole, and the spectacular bite of the A5 Kagoshima Wagyu with 35-year-old soy sauce and fresh wasabi: three perfect ingredients wrapped in smoke – the most perfect grilled meat ever.
The desserts are breathtaking. Sake lees with vanilla and soy caramel, or the laminated chocolate with miso and smoked whisky are the perfect balance of sweetness and umami, flavors that will linger in your memory for a while.
The menu is the work of Massimiliano Della Vedove in Madrid and Jesús Lobato in Dubai, and only one of Dani García’s signature dishes appears, here with a smoked accent: the nitro tomato stuffed with smoked sturgeon, raifort cream and caviar.
The way Luis Baselga presents wines at the Smoked Room Madrid is particularly outstanding. A former chef turned restaurant manager and sommelier, he uses the molecular pairing method developed by François Chartier to present wines in all their complexity, but in a way that everyone can understand, regardless of their level of wine knowledge. Perhaps that’s why some of Smoked Room in Madrid’s most loyal guests keep coming back, drawn by a wine experience like few others. From Arbois to Sherry, from Japanese Sake to a Rosso Di Montalcino or Riesling Auslese, the wine flight is as comfortable and pleasant as everything else in this modern cave, where you can spend three hours staring at the fire, the kitchen ballet and the fabulous food and drinks served to you by the unplugged culinary band.
The Joy Of Escaping The Gilded Cage
Dani García’s group is planning to open more Smoked Rooms, in Miami, New York and London… And who knows?
“Now I want to have three Michelin stars in every Smoke Room we open,” laughs the Malagan chef, not sure if he is joking or serious. “It’s not for me, my ego is satisfied. But the teams are ready, they deserve it”.
Dani García is happy now. His name is no longer on the door of the restaurant. Guests do not expect to see him cooking, but rather Massi or Jesús. He enjoys writing new visions in his notebook, as big as his dreams, and watching his culinary legacy spread across the world, reaching millions of people with a simple roast chicken, or a silver spoon of smoked caviar.
García broke the rules to return to the arena later, transformed, at a higher level. Now he is free. Smoke cannot be kept in a cage.
Smoked Room
P.º de la Castellana, 57, Chamberí, 28046 Madrid, Spain
St. Regis Gardens, Nakheel Mall – The Palm Jumeirah – Dubai – United Arab Emirates
www.grupodanigarcia.com/smoked-room
