D*na Festival pays tribute to the sea as the origin and future of gastronomy
D*na Festival closes its sixth edition with a new success. More than 25,000 people have participated in this gastronomic event, attracted by the unique opportunity to enjoy the presentations and demonstrations of some of the best chefs in our country, and the creativity and quality of the producers, chefs and restaurateurs of Dénia, capital Mediterranean cuisine.
With the sea as a guiding thread, the Paseo de la Marineta Cassiana in Dénia (Alicante) has turned for two days - Saturday 30 September and Sunday 1 October - into a great food festival, where cooks, producers and restaurateurs they have shared experiences, wisdom and excellence with the audience.
The best of our mothers
In an exceptional setting facing the sea, great chefs with a Michelin star have represented the cuisine of the lands of the Iberian Peninsula bathed by our seas.
In a tribute to the sea, the great global standard-bearer in defense of the marine environment as a pantry could not be missing, Ángel León, who offered a masterful presentation on the exploitation of marine resources, pointing out that "one of the paths of the future is to open the eyes on the sea and feed us with new opportunities". Because, as the well-known chef from Cadiz says, "in the sea there are tubers, fruits, vegetables, cereals..."
The Cantabrian Sea has been represented by Josean Alija, from Neruda restaurant (Bilbao), Sergio Bastard, from La Casona del Judío (Santander). Lucía Freitas from the restaurant A Tafona in Santiago de Compostela and Nacho Manzano, from the Asturian restaurant Casa Marcial. Through their presentations and showcookings, these great masters of the stove have delighted the large audience with their exquisite preparations with products from the mothers of the northern coasts of Spain.
D*na has acquired an international dimension from the hand of José Avillez, who has brought to Dénia the best of the cuisine bathed by the Atlantic in Portugal, with three dishes from his famous Belcanto restaurant in Lisbon: the sea bass with vegetable dashi, the hake with cod tripe, cilantro and grapes, and Atlantic rice. The Lisbon chef also wanted to emphasize in his participation in D*na, "the importance of opening the gastronomic horizons looking towards the sea".
The different coasts of the Mediterranean Sea have told their cuisine through demonstrations and presentations by chefs such as Pablo González, from the Cabaña Buenavista restaurant (El Palmar, Murcia), representing the cuisine of the Lesser Sea.
The variety of the cuisine of the Catalan coast has arrived with the well-known chef Sergio Torres, of the Cocina Hermanos Torres restaurant in Barcelona, who has offered a workshop and showcooking of seafood cuisine, preparing a fish rice from the Mediterranean coast, a sea and mountain of cured squid tartare with poultry consommé and caviar, and a muqueca with Mediterranean fish such as red prawn, sea ox or rock mussels.
Carolina Álvarez, chef at Quique Dacosta's restaurant in Dénia (Alicante) has shown the enormous richness of the pantry offered by the host waters of the D*na, those that bathe the Alicante coast and shape the deep-rooted gastronomic culture of this region Mediterranean
The maritime land of the Valencian Community has also been the protagonist of many of the workshops and culinary demonstrations of outstanding regional chefs, who have brought the public and the great chefs closer to the best of the privileged pantry of this corner of the Mediterranean and also of its inexhaustible tradition and culinary creativity.
The thousands of visitors who have spent this weekend at D*na have been able not only to learn from the great masters, but also to know and try the most representative gastronomic products and preparations of the Valencian Community, available in the numerous stalls and tasting of producers and restaurateurs from this region installed along the Festival route.
The three-star Michelin chef and main promoter of D*na, Quique Dacosta, is absolutely satisfied with the celebration of this edition of the Festival, "which has not only been a success among the public and professionals in the sector, but also served to generate awareness and ask us what is our relationship with the sea, which gives us well-being, health, oxygen and an exceptional pantry".
In the words of Dacosta, "with this edition, D*na Festival not only consolidates itself as a national referent, but also as the strongest tool that the Valencian Community has to tell in a transversal and global way what it is like as a society"
