Denis Cotter is one of those rare cooks whose musings on his profession are as accomplished as his work in the kitchen at Café Paradiso. His books and his blogs are full of pearls of hard-won, slowly-wrought philosophy.
Cotter thinks slowly, and deeply, which explains why his cooking is unique – he is always trying to transcend the obvious, the clichéd. You can’t make a dish such as almond pastry galette of feta and spinach with coriander crushed potato, harissa and sugar snaps without taking the repertoire of cooking apart and then making it anew, all the while getting it to sing with your own voice. So, whilst we think of cooks such as Ferran Adria and Heston Blumenthal as deconstructionists, the real deconstructionist cook is actually Denis Cotter, and he has been taking the repertoire apart in Café Paradiso since 1993. And it’s not just the food that is made anew here: everything hums to Cotter’s oblique, stubborn view of his art and his craft, making for the most extraordinary food in one of the most singular restaurants on little planet earth.
