lambback in safrancrust

 Menu 1
 
Salt cod with aloe vera and a warm peas-lemongrass soup
***
Lightly smoked pigeon with foie gras and a cereals vinaigrette
***
Scallops with beetroot powder and a light porcini sauce
***
Sea bass with shellfish caramel, grapefruit jelly, potato-caviar
***
Loin of lamb „pre-sale“ in a saffron crust with chlorophyll of red pepper
and cardamom milk
 ***
„Menestra“ of fresh fruits (cooked and uncooked)
with a natural yogurt sherbet and a chilled lemongrass infusion
 
***
Lasagne of pineapple and ginger with coconut ice cream
 
 
Menu 2
 
Salad of smoked eel, new potatoes, truffles and artichokes
with a broad bean vinaigrette and passion fruit oil
 ***
Chilled young almond soup with ravioli of marinated prawns
and smoked egg plants
***
Wild turbot with mediterranean quinoa, black olive powder
and green tomato essence
 ***
Roasted duck with eucalyptus and pineapple
 ***
„Menestra“ of fresh fruits (cooked and uncooked) with a natural yogurt sherbet
and a chilled lemongrass infusion
 ***
Chocolate - olive truffle with flor de sal and a red pepper-raspberry jelly
 
 
Menu 3
 
Foie gras with green apple and polen
***
Langostinos, wild mushroom oil and rosemary milk sauce
***
John Dory with an anchovy parmentier and light parsley and liquorice sauce
***
„Menestra“ of fresh fruits (cooked and uncooked) with a
natural yogurt sherbet and a chilled lemongrass infusion
***
Vanilla-panna cotta with rhubarb sherbet and an infusion
of fresh strawberries and bergamot tea
 

Roland Trettl and Marc Fosh

"Cooking is like Football"

He wouldn’t have quite made it to the top in football, but as a chef her certainly plays in the upper league. Englishman Marc Fosh fascinates his many fans on Majorca with a cuisine that deliberately does without the falderal and trimmings.

Recorded by Christoph Schulte

The man gives the impression that he’s more likely to kick down the door first and then look for bell. Typical bulldog. Powerful, stout and with a head as round and smooth as a billiard ball. I can vividly imagine him chanting full throat and hoarse “You never walk alone”, in the south stand of his favourite club, Westham. But, in fact, things turn out to be rather different than you might expect: There I was sitting in the car with Marc Fosh, in the middle of a congested Palma in search of a parking space. He drives past the first 20 free ones, because he might be caught partially parking on the pavement. No breaching the laws, no discussions – Marc has a preference for respectable harmonious behaviour.
I have known star cook Marc Fosh personally for about ten years – from the time when I, myself lived and cooked on Majorca. When I recently visited him prior to his guest appearance at the Hangar-7, we greeted like friends who had only just seen each other the day before.
Marc has been head chef at Read’s Restaurant, which belongs to a small and intimate Relais & Chateaux-Hotel for eleven years. The Hotel has 23 rooms each individually decorated and furnished. I find it certainly gives the whole thing incredible style when you know: Each room is different. It’s rather similar in the 60-seat-restaurant. An 18 metre high, almost cathedral- like room with seemingly baroque murals and frescos. It’s a matter of taste whether you appreciate Bacchus delightfully smiling at you down from the ceiling.
In contrast to this overwhelming opulent decor is Marc’s cuisine, which he himself describes as “naked”. For him this means: “fresh, clean, direct and healthy”. The products are even more important to him than they are to top chefs anyway. They are rarely served with sauces and if so they only consist of absolutely reduced fonds and vegetable juices. Never with butter, never with cream. Instead sea salt and Majorcan olive oil, which Marc puts on a par with the finest of fruit juices. It’s obvious then, that his desert “Chocolate-olive oil-truffles with Flor de Sal and Red paprika-raspberry gelatine” was immediately put on our menu at Hangar-7 as a Fosh statement, so to speak.
Marc wanted to become a football player. He was good, but not good enough. The result: He shocked his father– in becoming a cook instead of taking a degree– with a career that started right at the bottom. He had to clear away the dishes first. Then he worked as a dishwasher. But, he was nevertheless, in that kitchen. There Marc soon noticed: Cooking is like playing soccer – you can only be as good as your team.
He trained at London’s first class hotel-restaurants. If one talks to him about this time and asks him about idols and master cooks that left a distinctive mark on him, then one notices that Marc does rather envy me for “my” Witzigmann. That is, to have someone who stands by you, to whom one owes gratitude for many things, and with whom one can talk about everything.


After the stopovers at the Greenhouse, at the Capitol, and at the Savoy it became clear to Marc Fosh: I’ve got to get out of here and see the big wide world. But he put up with the south of France for no more than a month precisely before the Province drove him up the wall. The Spanish San Sebastián was more to his taste– He stayed there for four years and cooked everywhere from Arzak to the Tapas-Bar. Then came Mister Read with his idea and Marc instantly fell in love with Majorca where he has belonged to the to the top garde for eleven years and where he enthrals his guests with Bacalao perfectly braised in milk, for example. This accompanied by aloe vera and a warm pea lemon grass soup. Everything typically Fosh and that is where our styles meet:  in concentrating on a maximum of three main ingredients instead of the sumptuous and wild mix of components. My personal Fosh-hit: A salad made of lightly smoked saffron eel with a little potato and broad beans garnished with diced balsamic gelatine. Fantastic.
Marc is an unusual mixture of workaholic and family man. He got to know his Spanish wife Maika in San Sebastián. Together they have three kids – five, nine and eleven years old. Each so sweet, that I actually began to like kids from now. Hard to believe that we could manage to lure him to Salzburg. But as Mr. Fosh puts it so nicely: The Hangar-7 is worldwide the chefs’, “Hall of Fame”. –“ You’ve just got to be a part of it.” Thanks, Marc.