From 25 – 30 August, Cook it Raw (CIR) will appear in the northeast of Poland, at Suwalki Region, for its fifth edition in three years. Cook it Raw sees avant-garde chefs and traditional food producers come together to create a unique dining experience that explores social, cultural and environmental issues. Through the experience Cook it Raw hopes to encourage the exchange and development of skills and knowledge that not only leaves its creative mark on the participants but has a lasting effect on the cultural life of the host country.
In Suwalki Region, an ethnic mosaic of many peoples and faiths inhabits a landscape of exceptional purity. The Region provides therefore the perfect setting within which to explore the concept of culture as a constant flow of influence. In this Polish rendition, CIR will pair a dozen of the most influential and innovative chefs native hunters, farmers, cooks and artists. Together, they will share customs and trade ideas. The result will be a lasting cultural bridge, one uniting the past and future of Polish cuisine.
The chefs
ALBERT ADRIA
Adria spent almost twenty years working together with his older brother, Ferran, at the legendery elBulli restaurant. Whilst Ferran ran the savoury kitchen, Albert explored the boundary between sweet and salty, redefining the notion of dessert. Now, at Tickets and 41 Degrees in Barcelona, he is proving how avant-garde and traditional cuisine are able to mutually influence each other and evolve together.
INAKI AIZPITARTE
The Parisian / Basque Inaki Aizpitarte is arguably – and controversially – the most influential French chef currently cooking. He has turned the international scene upside down with his experimental restaurant le Chateaubriand. There, he has earned a global reputation for his radical yet comforting cuisine. Le Chateaubriand currently ranks N°15 at the World's 50 Best Restaurants Awards.
MODEST AMARO
Modest practices science and nature In cooking – a cuisine which is state of the art, driven by experimentations on textures and alternative ways of cooking, but exploring the real, eternal taste of Polish nature In each one of his creations.
PASCAL BARBOT
The youngest and most dynamic 3 Michelin stars ever. Since it opened, more than twelve years ago, his restaurant l'Astrance offers a daily changing surprise menu that showcases this hugely talented chef’s keenness on light and fresh tastes, spring spices and influences from his travels all around the world.
CLAUDE BOSI
Since leaving France, where he worked with both Alain Ducasse and Alain Passard, Claude has gained a reputation as one of the most skilled virtuoso cooks of greens and fishes with a style intensely delicate and feminine. Always faithful to his legendary lightness, he is able to extract and combine the flavors of each ingredient with a freedom and curiosity that has no match in the London international restaurant scene. Hibiscus, his twice starred Michelin restaurant, is ranked one of the World's 100 Best Restaurants.
MAURO COLAGRECO
Mauro Colagreco, a migrant, a ’peon’, a métèque half-Argentinian, half-Italian and now totally (un)French, is a nomad always on the move. Residing at Mirazur, a lighthouse restaurant ovelooking a coast that stretches from France to Italy, he creates a truly unique cuisine – a strinkingky singular synthesis of his experience and many roots. Marine and flowery, allusive and poetic, Mauro Colagreco's cooking is sensual and cerebral, fragile and emotionally powerful. Mirazur has two Michelin stars and has just jumped to N°24 in the World's 50 Best Restaurants List. In April 2012, he was also appointed by French Minister of Culture Monsieur Frédéric Mitterrand a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
KOBE DESRAMAULTS
Kobe is young, smart and free-minded. A nature-oriented son of Flandres, this rebellious youth never compromises, showing in his familial idyllic inn hidden in the middle of the countryside, a deep understanding of his Belgian roots – including the best way to renew them. He makes an innate, sharp and joyful vision of where the future of Belgian cuisine lies. His restaurant, In de Wulf, has now earned official entry within the selected club of the World 50's Best Restaurants.
ALEXANDRE GAUTHIER
Alex moves fast, goes staightforward and against the wall, whilst also seizing desire at every opportunity. His newly redesigned, contemporary restaurant from celebrated architect Patrick Bouchain, is a stage for his radical cooking and highly cultured sensitivities. All the products of land and sea of Northern France become tools for story telling; each dish being a tale and a direct statement on present Time. Michelin has awarded Alex with a star whilst the World's 100 Best Restaurants have singled him out as ’One To Watch’.
MAGNUS NILSSON
In the furthest Northern corner of the Swedish wilderness, Magnus pushes forward a dream of culinary survivalism throught the tools of the land, where Faviken, his estate, has its roots. Back to basics, blessed with a contrarian touch and incredible precision, he offers a tasting of pureness and balance between technique and sharp expression of the produce.
PETTER NILSSON
Half Parisian, half newly reborn father in Stockholm, the elegant Petter Nilsson practices French cuisine with a Nordic touch with a playful indifference to role and gender. Equally moved by the vegetal world and that of the bistro, he accomplishes – in the hipster arrondissement of East Bastille – the iconoclastic miracle of a cuisine for every occasion: informal and easy going, but masterfully thought-through and executed. The great Fulvio Perangelini estimates young Nilsson, ‘the wisest and most accomplished chef of his generation’.
DANIEL PATTERSON
Over the last four years, since opening Coi in San Francisco, Dan has become a leader of New American Cooking. His magnificent skills combine discreet cooking, sophisticated techniques and absolute freshness: a warm, dynamic, methodological and analytical kind of pure cooking. For Daniel Patterson, less is not more, it’s huge. Coi posseses two Michelin stars.
RENE REDZEPI
The young front man of the Nordic Cooking has broken every record. He has propelled Noma in Copenhagen to fantastic heights as a center of reflection on nature and the infinite possibilities of Scandinavian food. Wild Fish and gamey vegetables form the vocabulary of this visionary chef who was the first to believe in an unchecked balance between the rawness of nature and the meanderings of state of the art culture experiences. Redzepi's restaurant Noma has been ranked for the third Time In a row N°1 at thé World's 50 Best Restaurants Awards.
ANA ROS
Working in the family restaurant of Hisa Franko, overlooking the sloping hills of Slovenian countryside, Ana Ros is one of a kind. An accomplished cook, stretching her exploration of the beautiful nature of her land – between mountains and clear spring waters. Earth-inspired, her cuisine is flowery, herbal, feminine whilst as delicate as precise. Ana is the only woman to have joined the Cook it Raw group of chefs.
DAVIDE SCABIN
Scabin, from Italy’s Combal.Zero, his culinary laboratory, an extension of the Museum Of Modern Art in Rivoli, explores the boundaries of contemporary research, moving with an astounding coherence from the esthetics of Food Design to the most rigourous investigations of the Ethics Of the Taste. A true visionary, two Michelin starred Scabin's recent experimentations with Felicetti, a top notch traditional pasta maker, are a provocative culinary statement worth a permanent, surreal exhibition at the MOMA in NY.
BEN SHEWRY
A leading force of New Australian cuisine, Ben Shewry operates at Attica, a brickstone restaurant in urban Melbourne. Gentle and wise, he explores old and new memories, childhood imaginations and a spiritual and emotional style rarely seen before in contemporary avant-garde cuisine. His dishes show perfect harmony between cuisine and art, between ancestral techniques and poetry.