Friday 5 February 2016

About...

Nature meets science at Michelin-starred Polish chef Wojciech Modest-Amaro’s award winning restaurant Atelier Amaro. Born in 1972 in Sosnowiec, a Silesian city in the south of Poland, Modest-Amaro left Poland in 1993, travelling to London where he worked for chef Nigel Davis at St. Quentin Brasserie in Knightsbridge.

After trips to Chicago, Berlin and Copenhagen (where he worked with Rene Redzepi at Noma) he returned to Poland to take up the position of Chef de Cuisine of the Polish Business Roundtable Club in Warsaw. His prize for winning the prestigious International Academy of Gastronomy’s Chef de L’Avenir award in 2008 was a stage at Ferran Adria’s El Bulli restaurant. He opened Atelier Amaro in 2011.

Atelier Amaro provides an elegant oasis of calm close to Warsaw’s modern, busy centre in the form of a stand-alone red brick building with a sleek, contemporary grey black and white dining space. It’s here that Modest-Amaro creates a portmanteau of modern and honest cuisine, a style the chef has developed over years of travelling through Poland visiting producers and learning to hunt and forage. Modest-Amaro has his own farm outside Warsaw, which supplies the restaurant with plants, herbs and meat.

“Nature is my major inspiration,” says Modest-Amaro. “I go foraging, hunting and fishing, as they allow me to have my mind and senses open to absorb as much as possible. I call it the art of observing nature. My food tells the whole story about what I observe.”

The daily changing tasting menus are created using the latest techniques and scientific methods to make modern, sophisticated dishes such as eel with green apple and sorrel soup and smoked asparagus with snails and wild garlic.

As the only Michelin-starred chef in Poland, Moderst-Amaro has hosted and participated in the prestigious Cook It Raw Poland event that gathered together some of the world’s finest avant garde chefs including Albert Adrià (Tickets, Barcelona) and Ben Shewry (Attica, Melbourne). His first book, Polish Cuisine of the 21 Century was awarded the Grand Prix de la Literature Gastronomique in Paris in 2010 and his second book Nature of Polish Cuisine was recognised at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in 2011. In 2015 Atelier Amaro was awarded four toques from the Gault Millau (the highest score in Poland) and Moderst-Amaro was named their Chef of the Year.

Wojciech Modest Amaro's Obsession 16 Menu:

AMUSE
SMOKED EEL / CAULIFLOWER / CAVIAR
ONION / BLOOD / WALNUT
THYME BUN / BURNT BREAD / SPRUCE BUTTER

SEA TROUT / SEABUCKTHORN / ROWAN BERRY
Classic Rosé, Bekaa Valley, Massaya, Lebanon, 2014

MILK / CABBAGE / BLACK TRUMPET
Savagnin, La Pierre, Les Granges Paquenesses, Côtes du Jura, France, 2011

HALIBUT / GINGERBREAD / SAFFRON
Tokaji Furmint, Dobogó, Tokaj, Hungary, 2013

PIGEON / BEETROOT / JUNIPER
Pinot Noir, Domaine Drouhin, Willamette Valley, Oregon, USA, 2013

PRE-DESSERT
HALVA / CHESTNUT / POPPY SEED

SPRUCE / QUINCE / PEAR
Louis Roederer, Carte Blanche Demi Sec, Champagne, France, NV

Friday 5 February 2016

Wojciech Modest Amaro

Atelier Amaro

Style of Cuisine:

About...

Wojciech Modest Amaro's Obsession 16 Menu:

Images from Wojciech Modest Amaro’s Time at Obsession 16