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WHEN CHEF ENRIQUE OLVERA OPENED his restaurant, Pujol, 13 years ago, his only goal was to serve 'solid, tasty food' and be 'the best restaurant in the neighborhood,' he says. But that neighborhood was Mexico City's Polanco, the dining epicenter for a city of 8.5 million, and Olvera's budget was so small that his wife had to paint the walls. Since then, Pujol has far surpassed its initial aims: It's now widely thought of as Mexico's finest restaurant-and the 36th best in the world, according to the much-scrutinized S. Pellegrino rankings; and Olvera, who trained at New York's Culinary Institute of America before returning home, is the country's most well-known chef. He reached his position by making his cuisine 'fancier and fancier, and more complex' over time. Pujol now serves a tasting menu of innovative, sophisticated food that wouldn't look out of place at England's Fat Duck or New York's Momofuku Ko. Olvera is also one of the leading exponents of Mexico's new gastronomy, which combines elaborate, cutting-edge technique with a strong emphasis on local ingredients to create a cosmopolitan cuisine that's at once international yet unmistakably Mexican-paralleling the direction of Mexico City itself.
墨西哥名厨恩里克・奥尔韦拉(Enrique Olvera)于13年前开办了自己的餐厅――Pujol，他说他当时唯一的目标就是做出“货真价实、美味可口的食物”，打造“全社区最棒的餐厅”。不过，这个社区可是墨西哥城的波兰科(Polanco)，它是这个拥有850万人口的城市的餐饮中心，而奥尔韦拉的预算又非常少，他的妻子都不得不亲自上阵刷 。自那以后，奥尔韦拉取得的成绩已远超他最初的目标，如今Pujol已被普遍认为是墨西哥最好的餐厅，而且还在备受关注的 培露(S. Pellegrino)评级中位列全球最佳餐厅的第三十六位。在回国之前，奥尔韦拉曾在纽约的美国烹饪学院(Culinary Institute of America)接受培训，现在他是墨西哥最负盛名的大厨。他通过逐步使他的菜式“越来越新奇、越来越复杂”坐上了今日的位置。现在Pujol推出了一系列有创新性、精细复杂的菜品，把它们放在英格兰的Fat Duck餐厅或纽约的MomofukuKo餐厅也不会显得上不了台面。奥尔韦拉还是墨西哥新烹饪法的主要代表人物之一，该烹饪法将精妙前沿的技术与对本地食材的注重结合在一起，以此创造出既国际化同时又无疑具有墨西哥特色的世界性的菜肴，这一点与墨西哥城自身的发展方向不谋而合。
A visit to the 48-seat Pujol reveals a space-age kitchen containing 27 cooks, including a number of stagiaires who have flown thousands of miles to work for free-one spends hours picking cilantro flowers with tweezers; another is making his fifth attempt to perfect an apparently simple dish. As Pujol has become a place that attracts free labor ('if you want to stage here now, you have to wait until 2014,' says Olvera), the chef has begun to think more about bringing Mexican cooks home from the U.S. He'd like them to move past the glass ceiling that exists in America (despite the number of Mexicans working in U.S. restaurants, 'you rarely see a Mexican head chef in a New York kitchen,' Olvera points out) and advance their careers on their home turf. As Olvera guides his cooks through lunchtime service-'Hey, make that blob of sauce more the size of a walnut'; 'You: pull your hat down'-he talks about coming home, tradition and innovation, and how a Disney movie changed one of the world's best restaurants.
Pujol餐厅共有48个座位，它的超现代的厨房中现在有27名厨师，包括一群从数千英里之外飞来免费干活的实习厨师。其中一名实习厨师要花数个小时用镊子挑选香菜花，另一人则在第五次尝试使一道表面上简单的菜品变得完美。由于Pujol已成为一个能吸引免费劳力的地方（奥尔韦拉称：“如果你想在这儿实习，那得等到2014年了。”），奥尔韦拉已经开始考虑要将墨西哥厨师从美国吸引回国。他希望他们能绕过存在于美国的“玻璃天花板”（尽管有大量墨西哥厨师在美国的餐厅工作，但奥尔韦拉指出“你在纽约的餐厅很少能看到一位墨西哥主厨”），回到自己的国家发展他们的事业。他一边指导厨师们准备午餐――“喂，把那团酱弄成一个核桃的大小”；“你，把帽子拉低些”――一边谈论著有关回国、传统与创新的问题，以及一部迪斯尼(Disney)的影片如何改变了这家位列全球最佳的餐厅。
ENRIQUE OLVERA: 'Mexico City is changing quickly, and restaurants are in a really good spot. There's more attention from the rest of the world on Mexican food. Fifteen years ago, I wouldn't have thought it would be considered a high-level cuisine and valued the same as Italian or Spanish food-especially in Mexico. Foreigners have always liked our food, but they thought of it as very causal, almost like street food. Now they're realizing there's sophistication to it, and there's potential to make not just tasty food but also food of a very high quality.
墨西哥城在迅速改变，餐饮处于一个非常有利的位置，世界其他地方更关注墨西哥美食了。放在15年前，我不会想到它会被人视为高端菜系，会和意大利菜和西班牙菜受到同样的重视――尤其是在墨西哥。外国人一直都喜欢我们的食物，但以前他们认为它是非常简便随意的，几乎就像街边小吃一样。现在他们意识到它也有精妙复杂之处，它不仅能够提供美味的食物，也能够提供品质非常高的食物。
This is a cosmopolitan city with influences from Europe, the local culture and the U.S. It's a very nice mix of the three components, and Mexicans are starting to fall in love with that mix. If you look at Pujol, with the decoration and the food, it's Mexican-you feel like you are in Polanco; you don't feel like you're in New York-but it's not all pink with mariachis and crap like that, because that's not Mexico City.
这是一个国际化都市，受到欧洲、本土文化及美国的影响。它是这三个要素的绝佳融合体，如今墨西哥人开始喜欢上了这种融合。看看Pujol，它的这些装饰和食物，你会发现它是墨西哥风格的，你会感觉自己身在波兰科，不会觉得自己在纽约。但是，它一点也不低俗，没有像墨西哥流浪乐队那样的低俗表演，因为这不是墨西哥城的风格。
At the restaurant we used to do a lot of reinterpretations of traditional Mexican dishes, but then we got tired of it and started trying to create new dishes with a very strong Mexican base. Until two or three years ago, all the ingredients had to be Mexican and they also had to be authentic, so, for example, we wouldn't use parsnip. But you know that movie Ratatouille? In the beginning, the head chef, Gusteau, is on TV and he says, 'You cannot limit your creativity because of the place that you were born,' and I remembered that later and figured it was true. So we started incorporating ingredients that are originally from other parts of the world. We said, 'If it grows in Mexico, fine, we use it.' For example, now a lot of Mexicans eat broccoli. It's the second-largest crop in the center of the country, so why shouldn't we do broccoli? We brought in a little more of our own vision. That was the first year we got on the list of 'The World's 50 Best Restaurants.'
以前我们的餐厅常常做很多重新诠释传统墨西哥菜肴的菜品，后来我们感到厌烦，开始尝试创造拥有非常厚重的墨西哥传统根基的新菜品。直到两三年前，所有的食材还都必须是墨西哥的，而且必须是正宗的，比如说我们就不会采用欧洲萝卜。你知道《美食总动员》(Ratatouille)这部电影吗？影片一开始，厨师长古斯多(Gusteau)就在电视上讲道，‘你不能让你出生的地方限制了你的创造力’，后来我想起了这句话，明白了事实确实如此。因此，我们开始混入源自世界其他地区的食材。我们说：“如果它生长在墨西哥，那好，我们就用它。’比如说，现在很多墨西哥人都吃西兰花了。它是我们国家中部地区的第二大作物，所以我们为什么不用西兰花做菜呢？我们加入了更多一些我们自己的想象。那是我们登上“全球50大最佳餐厅”榜单的第一年。
Most people think they have to choose between tradition and doing modern food. We do both-they can coexist nicely in a dish and definitely on a menu. You always cherish where you come from, but I also have the need for new sensations, and to improve on those old traditions. It's not just about innovation for its own sake-it's to get to a better dish. For example, when you nixtamalize corn to make tortillas, the traditional recipe is to boil the corn with limestone, let it sit overnight outside, then grind it at the mill. But perhaps you can get to a better masa if you sous-vide the corn at 65 degrees, without the huge temperature shock. You might, so why not do it? You try it, and if it's better, you change it; if it's not, you keep doing the traditional style. If you were an architect, it would be really stupid to be building houses like you were 50 years ago. The kitchen's the same thing. If you want tradition to be alive, you have to keep doing things with it. Time will tell who's doing good stuff.
大多数人都认为他们必须在传统菜与现代菜之间做出选择。我们两样都做，它们能很好地共存于一道菜中，当然也能在同一份菜单上共存。人总是珍视自己的传统，但我也需要新感觉，也需要改进那些旧传统。这不只是为了创新而创新，而是为了做出一盘更美味的菜。例如，如果你想用 性溶液处理玉米去做玉米粉圆饼，传统方法是煮玉米时加入石灰石，接下来把玉米放在外面凉一晚，然后再去磨坊将它磨成粉。然而，假如你在华氏65度的温度下用真空低温烹饪法对它进行处理，没有了剧烈的温度变化，磨出来的粉或许会更好。你能这么做，那么为什么不去做呢？你可以去试试，如果效果更好，你就改变方法；如果效果并没有更好，那你就继续按传统方式做。假如你是位建筑师，如果你还像50年前一样建房子是非常愚蠢的行为。厨房之事也是一样，如果你想让传统延续下去，你就得不断地对它进行改进，时间会告诉大家谁做的是好事。
The Mexican cooks in the U.S. didn't go there to cook; it's just poor people that have no opportunities, that don't see a future in Mexico, so they go to the U.S. Once they arrive, they have very few options for work. My dream-and I think it's the dream of a lot of people here-is that they don't need to go there and feel unwanted. If they go, it's fine, but they should be hired. People should call you and say, 'I want you to come and work at my restaurant,' like they do with other nationalities. It's the nature of how it works and I understand that. But if we can change that a little it'd be nice.
在美国的墨西哥厨师当初去那儿并不是为了做厨师的，他们只是没有机会、在墨西哥又看不到未来的穷人，所以他们去了美国。到了那儿之后，他们可选择的工作非常少。我的梦想是――而且我认为这也是很多人的梦想――有一天他们不需要跑去那儿感觉自己是多余的。如果他们去了，没问题，但是他们应该有就业机会。应当有人打电话给他们说，‘我希望你来我的餐厅工作’，就像他们对待其他族裔的人一样。当然，事情的发展原本就是这样的，我也理解这一点，但是如果我们能对它做一点点改变，那也是不错的。
I don't think cooks abroad realize Mexico has changed cuisinewise. And when they come back they see there's this huge potential. I think we should spread the word that there are good restaurants here in Mexico. If you compare the amount of money you make and the quality of life, it's almost the same. Yes, in New York you might earn $60,000 as a pastry chef, and here you might earn $3,000, but the rent is much cheaper, you don't have to be sending money home and you're with your own people. Most of the cooks here have worked in Europe or the States, and when they come back they appreciate the ingredients more and they see the possibilities of working with Mexican products. I also like the idea of Mexicans leaving Mexico and coming back because I did it myself. You realize what you like about your own country when you're outside it.'
我觉得在国外的厨师没有意识到墨西哥在烹饪方面发生了变化。他们回来时就会发现这儿原来有这么巨大的潜力，我认为我们应当向世界传播墨西哥也有好餐厅的消息。如果你对收入的数量与生活的质量进行比较，在墨西哥和在国外几乎都是一样的。是的，在纽约做糕点厨师你或许能挣60,000美元，在这儿也许你只能挣3,000美元，但是这儿的房租要便宜得多，你不必把钱寄回家，而且你能和自己的家人呆在一起。我们这儿的大多数厨师都曾在欧洲或美国工作过，他们回来后对于食材有了更多的理解和认识，能看到利用墨西哥食材进行烹饪的种种可能。我也喜欢墨西哥人离开自己国家然后再回来，因为我自己就是这么做的。当你身处异国时，你会明白你喜欢自己国家的哪些方面。
