Gq - April 2014 Usa

GQ APRIL page 1∕2

T H E C OV E R S Paola Kudacki

PHARRELL WILLIAMS

Departments

Sweater, $395, by Burberry London. Shirt, $395, and tie, $195, by Burberry Prorsum. Tie bar, $15, by The Tie Bar. Jeans, $250, by Burberry Brit. Belt, $115, by Gant by Michael Bastian. Sneakers, $650, by Marc By Marc Jacobs. Watch by Audemars Piguet. Grooming by Kumi Craig for La Mer. Set design by Colin Donahue. Contributing stylist: Michael Nash at The Wall Group. Produced (also for Harington) by Tricia Sherman at Bauerfeind Productions–West.

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Letter from the Editor 44

The Reaction 53

Manual 93

The Style Guy 214

Parting Shot

The drop-crotch Speedo and other Style Bible regrets

KIT HARINGTON

Jacket, $5,200, by Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane. T-shirt, $16, by American Apparel. Jeans, $610, by Dior Homme. Boots, $210, by Jack Erwin. Vintage belt from Melet Mercantile. Bracelet by Maison Martin Margiela. Necklace by David Yurman. Hair by Johnny Hernandez for Fierro Agency. Grooming by Kumi Craig for La Mer. Set design by Colin Donahue. Contributing stylist (also for Neeson): Brian Coats at The Wall Group.

GQ Intelligence 95

The Punch List

From a blockbuster take on Noah’s ark to Scarlett Johansson as a killer alien, the best in this month’s culture 104

Hate the Sinner and d the Sin (But Judge the Damn Movie for Yourself)

LIAM NEESON

Suit, $1,295, and shirt, $275, by Emporio Armani. Tie, $225, and shoes, $795, by Giorgio Armani. Pocket square, $15, by The Tie Bar. Watch by Omega. Grooming by Noriko Watanabe at Shanahan Management. Set design by Stefan Beckman for Exposure NY. Produced by Adam Jackman for Bauerfeind Productions–East.

Artists can be scumbags. Can we still love their work? by a n d r e w c o r s e l l o 108

This Is Not a Barbie Doll. This Is an Actual Human Being.

A woman remade herself to look like Barbie. It only gets crazier from there by m i c h a e l i d o v 116

The $240 Million Man

Robinson Cano (and Jay Z) inked a massive contract with the Mariners. da n i e l r i l e y meets up with the ex–Yankee expat in the DR 124

The 12 Sports Pilgrimages Every Man Should Make

From tailgating in Kansas City to pigskin all over Texas Suit, $4,000, by Dior Homme. Shirt, $225, by John Varvatos. Tie, $225, by Alexander Olch. Shoes, $248, by Cole Haan. Socks by Pantherella. Tie bar and pocket square by The Tie Bar. Watch by Frédérique Constant. Where to buy it Where are the items from this page to page 187 available? Go to GQ.com/go /fashiondirectories to find out. All prices quoted are approximate and subject to change.

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140

I’m Only into JeanGeorges’s Early Stuff

da n i e l r i l e y has an obsession with restaurant culture. It’s time to eighty-six his favorite pastime 144

How Do You Know When You’ve Collected Too Much?

Hoarders are easy targets. But they may reflect a problem in us all by j o n r o n s o n PAOLA KUDACKI

page 2∕2 Features 152

THE GQ 1O Our 36-page guide spells out

everything you need to know about the top people, places, and labels in fashion right now Starring...

158 ↠

Pharrell Williams

The mega-producer blurs the lines of his wardrobe by mixing menswear staples and flashy colors by z ac h ba ro n 168

Kit Harington

The Game of Thrones warrior nails the look of a badass outsider by c h r i s h e at h 178

Liam Neeson

The newly minted action god brings a fresh level of confidence to the power suit by m i c h a e l h a i n e y

188

What the F#%k Is on Your Face, Brah?

d r e w m a g a ry dips his face into the bronzer-stocked world of male makeup

SHOP + VIDEO

192

Killer Queen

In other GoT news: Natalie Dormer is as much a badass off-camera as Kit Harington is on it by s a r a h b a l l

Get the app. Check out the experience. Welcome to GQ’s fourth interactive issue. See page 73 to learn more.

194

The Most Adventurous Restaurant in the World Is on a Small Hilltop in Spain

The cult of cooks at Spanish restaurant Mugaritz is radically challenging what we think while dining—e.g., taste isn’t the top consideration by m i c h a e l pat e r n i t i 200

Naked and Famous

Photographer Ryan McGinley is the premier chronicler of uninhibited youth culture— and arguably the most influential artist crossing over into the commercial world by a l i c e g r e g o ry

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2014

Henley, $195, by Band of Outsiders. Jeans, $198, by Billionaire Boys Club. Boat shoes, $295, by Del Toro. Hat, $180, by Vivienne Westwood. Necklaces by Chanel. Watch by Audemars Piguet.

PAOLA KUDACKI

PROMOTION

Central Chronograph limited//edition

PLEASE CALL 800-513-5866 OR VISIT CLERCWATCHES.COM

↑

Letter from the Editor

W H E N D I D F A M O U S people

become so ungrateful for all we do for them? God, we do so much for them! We create them, nourish them, and coddle them like proud parents. We even show up at all their events! And we watch them get bigger and bigger. But then they get a little too big and they start to want their privacy, and we don’t like that. We try to pull them closer, but that just makes them run away from us faster. the ingrates ! Lately this tragic cycle of love and rejection is playing out in ways that infantilize us all. Famous people are spitting their fame out in our face, saying they don’t like the taste. I feel like my dad when he caught me spitting my beets out at the dinner table. “EAT IT, goddamn it. You will eat it, and you will LIKE IT!!!” Just witness the parade of recent fame rejecters: Alec Baldwin announced he is saying good-bye (and e≠ you) to public life. Shia LaBeouf has taken to wearing a weirdo bag over his head with the words i am not famous anymore. (Many of us wish he’d worn that same bag in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.) Kanye West said he feels like a “zoo 34

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animal,” caged and taunted by insatiable paparazzi. Apparently Justin Bieber broke down in tears to his manager a while back because he couldn’t deal with the lack of privacy that comes with stardom and owning capuchin monkeys. I don’t get it. Lack of privacy? That’s a gift we give you. You don’t have to worry about privacy anymore! We took it permanently o≠ your plate. You’re welcome! Look, celebrities are the last creatures for whom we feel any kind of sympathy, but maybe that’s our own pathology. They have egos; we have obsessions, which include watching their egos explode. Take Baldwin. Last fall, a couple years after he was thrown o≠ an airplane for not turning o≠ his cell phone, he was videotaped calling a photographer a “cocksucking fag.” You kiss your mother with that mouth?! You play Words with Friends with that mouth? He made it worse by the clueless tweet he sent out and later deleted: “Acoustic analysis proves the word is fathead.” That really hurt the feelings of fat-headed people everywhere! Here’s how he explained himself to New York magazine: “Am I a homophobe? Look, I work in show business. I am awash in gay people.” (Awash? Weird word. It conjured Baldwin floating in a gay sauna, assiduously being sponged.) Still, I don’t blame these guys for railing against the perverse side of fame, and I don’t think they bargained for being zoo animals even if they sometimes buy monkeys and don’t know what to do with them. You can say whatever you want about Kanye West (he ain’t humble), but I saw a clip of him trying to escape the paparazzi and hitting his head (hard!) on a tra∞c sign, and I felt nothing but unyielding sympathy for him. And here’s my confession, part of why I feel we’re as guilty as the big egos: I was on the perverse side of it once. Years and years ago, way before Wolf Blitzer was created in a cryogenics lab, I worked for CNN. I was a young field producer, assigned to do “stakeouts” during the Iran-Contra scandal. That meant I had to get up before the crack of dawn, drive to Virginia, and, with an army of camera crews, stand outside the house of the main culprit in the scandal, Lt. Col. Oliver North. (Have

you heard of North? I think Kanye West named his child after him.) I will admit: Standing out there with my TV-news brethren was thrilling at first; there was something media-scrummy about it all, the gang of us up early, blowing on our steaming hot co≠ees and knowing we were doing right by democracy. But soon the waiting became Godot-like. I didn’t respect what Oliver North had done—blatantly subverting the law—but I sure wished he would come out and talk to my microphone like a nice arms dealer. But it was never gonna happen. Ollie didn’t want to be seen. (Hence the camouflage.) If we got to his farmhouse at 4 a.m., he’d have snuck out by 3:30. I believe he had a secret trapdoor underneath his bathtub—just like El Chapo, the elusive drug-cartel capitán. And then one day it happened. He came out of his house! Like a little prairie dog peeping out of his hole. Oh my God, he’s getting in his car! He’s coming our way! It felt like some kind of patriotic mirage. The security gate swung open, he pulled up and poked his head out. His bright Marine smile was an assault on the morning. “What are you good people doing out here so early?” We ran to his car frantically, ecstatically, like dying moths to a windshield. And then, with camera lights popping, we attacked the enemy with mad, incoherent questions: “Colonel North Mr. North sir Oliver Iran-Contra missiles what did Reagan know are you ashamed hey what kind of car do you drive how do you justify hijacking American foreign policy?” I’m telling you, we were on that man, on his car, in his face, up his nostrils. Years later, when I watched Cameron Diaz hump that convertible in The Counselor, I thought: I’ve been there. He gave us a charmed chuckle and a quick, meaningless sound bite, then drove away. (Later he would run for the Senate!) A few of the other reporters acted cocky, called their news desks immediately, and pretended as if we had just landed Deep Throat. I knew better. If I’d had one, I’d have put a bag over my head: i am not a newshound anymore.

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Get the GQ Look L I K E W H AT YOU SEE Oliver Peoples sunglasses. Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane jacket.

I N T H E PA G E S

Page 155

OF GQ? NOW YOU CAN G E T I T— A N D W E A R I T— R I G H T A W AY

>T O L E A R N more—and see what we have chosen for you this month—go to GQ.com/selects

Just a few of our picks from this issue...

Burberry Prorsum shirt. Lanvin suit. p. 161

Oliver Peoples sunglasses (second from top) p. 184

Charvet shirt p. 183

Officine Generale pants. Tod’s loafers. p. 53

C LO C K W I S E F R O M TO P : S COT T T R I N D L E ; S P E N C E R H E Y F R O N ; PAO L A K U DAC K I ; DAV I D R I N E L L A ; PAO L A K U DAC K I

>E A C H M O N T H , the editors of GQ will select a series of items from our pages available through our online retail partner, Mr Porter.com

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The Reaction

7

5 9

The ever expanding GQ universe makes a mark all month long. We’ve got the most impactful moments, distilled.

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GQ on Girls: Fact Versus Fiction

3

4

E

PEELING BACK THE CRUEL CURTAIN

2

” I N S I D E T H E I RO N

by Jeff Sharlet (February), about the persecution—and quiet resistance— of gay men and women in Putin’s Russia, proved powerful to many. Here, one response:

C LO S E T ”

GIRLS’ GQ

REAL GQ

The snack room is stocked with beer, candy, croissants, and lox, all gratis.

The only free items on offer: bad coffee, sugar packets, and dumpling sauce.

J.Crew’s creative director, Jenna Lyons, plays the steely-eyed boss.

We like J.Crew way too much to put their people on our payroll.

One employee tells Hannah, “We’re all here, just selling our souls.”

Most of us disagree! But out of curiosity, how much are you offering?

Our Most ’d Instagram of the Month Roar: @KatyPerry is our February cover star!

Our most RT’d Tweet of the Month Beyoncé just won the Grammys. 44

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H A I R : P E T E R B U T L E R F O R A B T P. C O M . M A K E U P : T R AC Y M U R P H Y U S I N G KO H G E N D O C O S M E T I C S . M A N I C U R E : A N A- M A R I A U S I N G C H A N E L L E V E R N I S . N E C K L AC E : P O M E L L ATO 6 7. B R AC E L E T: S A I N T L AU R E N T B Y H E D I S L I M A N E . S H O R T S : E M I L I O P U C C I . H E E L S : G I U S E P P E Z A N OT T I D E S I G N .

past the stupidly inevitable gay panic associated with using these products. You can practically hear them screaming, “Don’t be afraid! It’s not gay!” But even in 2014, this is an uphill battle, which is why companies promise that you will look “healthier” or add a “bit of color” but never outright say you will look prettier, because many men still silently associate prettiness with weakness. (Probst even goes so far as to call her products “urban camouflage.”) And men pride themselves on not being fussy. I wish I could tell you I am more enlightened than that, but I have yet to purge the caveman from my soul entirely. Maybe more bronzer will do the trick.

MORE ↑ Up close with Natalie and all the women of GQ ↑ GQ.COM

Photog raphs by

e h T

Tuukka Koski

Adventurous RESTAURANT IN THE

IS ON A

SMALL HILLTOP

IN

Spain

Andoni Luis Aduriz

lives and cooks in a quiet corner of Spain, above the postcard beaches of San Sebastián. He has developed, in his renowned restaurant, M U G A R I T Z , a dining experience unlike any other—as much about food as immersion into the simple, thoughtful, self-effacing temperament of his homeland, the Basque Country. In their efforts to build a food commune on a hill, Aduriz and his team just happened to have also built the finest place to eat on earth BY

1 9 4 GENTLEMEN’S QUARTERLY / April 2014

M I C H A E L P AT E R N I T I

Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz at the market in Ordizia. Fresh scorpion fish are purchased directly from the boats in Ondarroa, thirty miles west of San Sebastián.

T

THEY CAME TO the mountain

Three times a week, the chefs head to the coast to visit the fishing boats. Here, red mullet from the harbor with “almonds and bread.”

In 1998, Andoni and the staff moved from the city to the mountain to be nearer the plants. A chef picks herbs from the vast garden that carpets the grounds.

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to find the stone—and indeed it took many years. After discovering it, they tested it, and talked about it, and filled a white bowl with gray moondust, nestling it carefully inside. They thought that perhaps the stone was the summation of everything they stood for in that moment, everything to which they’d aspired. Now a man in a black tunic shirt is carrying that stone, in its white bowl, across the dining room to your table at a restaurant called Mugaritz, on a hilltop in Spain’s Basque Country. Other diners sit nearby, hovering over their food. But you sit alone, in November, with a man bringing you a stone set in moondust. Back in the kitchen is a chef named Andoni, who will later say in that unassuming, almost apologetic way of his, “We know we demand a lot when you come to eat here. We ask you to imagine and remember, to give up your prejudices. Perhaps it begins with the tendon, or the ash, or the bones.” But right now, firstly, it’s the stone, sitting there on the table before you. And it really is a stone, some sort of lunar rock, gray and white, pocked and freckled with black spots, bearing a purplish sheen. “Eat it,” says the tunicked man, then vanishes. Seriously? You pick it up. The stone is heavy in the hand—and warm to the touch. You brush a finger over it (smooth), tap a fingernail on its surface (hard). It comes down to a fleeting mind-puzzle: Is it or isn’t it? So—lift the stone to your lips, the tip of your tongue picking up the faintest trace of salt. The outer skin, at first,

isn’t quick to give. So it really is. But when you work up the nerve to chomp down, when your incisors really guillotine that sucker, the surface cracks, and then everything goes soft and a little steamy. Exactly what you weren’t expecting— tender meat turning to sweet mush. For you instantly realize that’s what it is: a potato. Like this, the perfect tuber, painted with kaolin paste and glazed at low heat, has forced you to cross your first border at Mugaritz. Welcome. Plate by plate, for the next three hours, you will be asked to cross many more borders, to climb the mountain above you and descend to the ocean below. Says the chef: “The taste of the edible stone matters less than those five seconds you spend in suspension, wondering if you’re really about to eat a stone—and what that will taste like. Yes, it’s a sort of dare: Are you willing to come with us? If you aren’t, then our failure is guaranteed.” And if so? “It may sound crazy,” says Andoni (and at first, it does), “but we want to change the world, even if the script is written that we won’t.”

THERE ARE TWO ways to get to Mugaritz, one physical, the other ontological. You start on a broad city avenue from your hotel in San Sebastián to the autopista that skirts the Atlantic Ocean as you drive toward the French border—then veer o≠ on a winding country road to the interior, climbing the rugged Basque mountains. There’s an almost Irish lushness here, the weather as unpredictable as a wild animal: rain, hail, flurries, sometimes in the space of an afternoon. The sky shifts with dark clouds and blue patches. The light goes from full and golden, pouring over the slopes, igniting the flowers, to an obscuring kind of death-knell gray. Mugaritz was founded in 1998 by Andoni—whose full name is Andoni Luis Aduriz— and his original band of a

dozen or so collaborators. The restaurant is perched in the village of Errenteria, four miles inland. The stone driveway leads to a parking lot that opens on a sloped meadow of cows and hay. The restaurant is housed in a renovated farmhouse with a red-tile roof, its walls and wood timbers buried beneath climbing glossy-green ivy. From the parking lot, the kitchen appears through panes of glass: bright and warm, its lights hanging like silver bells, a little smaller than one would imagine, but at the same time airy and modern and abuzz. In the world of haute cuisine these days, the kitchens of such Michelin multiple-starred restaurants as Mugaritz, as well as those of steampunk upstarts looking for their first star, have become the crucible for a certain war between faux and haute, fu≠-and-noise and authenticity, between extreme dictatorships and imperfect oligarchies, between plates served with miniaturized a≠ectations delivered in designy settings and true artistry exercised in such a way that both challenges our sensibilities and redefines food, making it unforgettable. The question one must ask on the threshold of any such restaurant is: What, now, are we in for, disappointment or transcendence? The latter, of course, is our hope, for why else would you put yourself in the hands of complete, sometimes less-

A cook prepares the “Tower of Sins”—seven different chocolate bonbons served in stacked wooden bowls, like the Tower of Babel.

than-stable strangers to serve you a $400 meal? Through the kitchen windows, there’s a minuet in progress. The Mugaritzians tick and tock as one, dressed in their whites. People are smiling in there (not a guarantee in every haute kitchen); people are chatting. Says Andoni, “We serve 1,000 total dishes a night”—roughly two dozen per diner—“so we have to make sure we’re ready. We count out everything, and we taste. Everything is controlled, for no failure. That’s healthy. When we receive people, the kitchen becomes a theater, thirty-five chefs working at the same time as they talk. It’s a contagious moment of happiness.” Perhaps the source of such happiness also resides in the imperative that has guided the Mugaritzians from the start: constant, relentless re-creation. At some profound level, it goes beyond being “great” or even “the greatest,” which is one tacit goal at Mugaritz. It comes down to the health of the commune. For instance, the Mugaritzians began last season with sixtyeight new dishes, contributed by almost everyone in the kitchen. There was smoked-lobster toast and “a salad in soup,” something called “the cow and the grass,” and a pig tail with squash. Each had to justify itself. Each ran a strenuous gauntlet of taste test after taste test. But the standard—and dynamic—by which the dishes are mediated here is di≠erent from those in most kitchens. Firstly, there’s Andoni’s holographic presence. Rather than fuming, raging, or assuming the pose of megalomaniacal celebrity chef who must leave his signature on every molecular morsel, he

disappears into his kitchen. He allows for conversation and consensus. He listens—to Oswaldo, who develops recipes; to Dani, who’s been there from the start; to Javier, who scours markets and fishing ports for product. Good ideas flow from everywhere—the gardener, the mushroom hunter, even the dishwasher—because ideas are valued di≠erently here.

Recently the Mugaritzians studied years of letters and e-mails sent by customers. The restaurant gave these to a group of neurolinguists to run metrics on. (Metrics is something the Mugaritzians are particularly interested in.) If someone wrote, “The setting was fantastic,” they filed it under setting. If someone else wrote, “My heart soared,” they filed it under

The dining room features just seventeen tables, each draped with a stone-colored cloth. Each guest is invited back to the kitchen to speak with the chefs.

Mugaritz closes each winter to re-imagine its menu. In a given year, chefs will create a hundred new dishes, like this one: “ice shreds and scarlet shrimp perfume.”

emotion. By the time they were done cataloging, they concluded that taste ranked thirteenth in importance to people’s experiences at the restaurant. First was the event (the arrival, the greeting, the social aspect of the meal itself ); then came memory and emotion, and so on. This didn’t surprise the Mugaritzians as much as it did

CHILDREN O F Ferran

THE

Andoni Luis Aduriz is among the best-known heirs to the Spanish culinary revolution that began in the laboratory of Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli. Here, some other young stars. —CHRIS COHEN

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1. ELENA ARZAK Arzak (Spain)

Her three-star joint has been in the family for a hundred years. 5. GRANT ACHATZ Alinea, Next (U.S.A.)

Our foremost molecular gastronomist.

2. JOSÉ ANDRÉS Minibar, Jaleo (U.S.A.)

The alpha and omega of the D.C. eating scene. 6. KATIE BUTTON Cúrate (U.S.A.)

Serves traditional Spanish food as the tapas queen of Asheville, N.C.

3. KEN ORINGER Clio, Toro (U.S.A.)

Just expanded his acclaimed Boston empire to New York City. 7. JOAN ROCA El Celler de Can Roca (Spain)

Helms San Pellegrino’s new No. 1 restaurant.

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4. QUIQUE DACOSTA Quique Dacosta (Spain)

A locavore to the extreme. 8. RENÉ REDZEPI Noma (Denmark)

The high priest of new-Nordic foraged edible moss.

the trigger. What happens after belongs to the individual, sitting out in their dining room. As the stage for this internal drama, the dining room itself is an interesting mix of science lab and auberge. A bright light beams on each table, spotlighting dishes like “slices of monkfish cooked with steam of its bones,” or “loin of milk-fed lamb in a ragout of its brains,” or “chippings of pu≠ed lamb,” often delivered by a waiter with a mischievous smile, uttering a simple command for how to eat the food. Between tables— there are seventeen total here— are white cloth dividers, adding a sense of the confessional. The walls are finished in roughhewn wood paneling that lends a warm, open feel. And the dishes—with those names that might seem gimmicky or produce an elaborate letdown at other high-high-end places—are not just subversive but strangely comforting, given that you’re eating brain ragout and pu≠ed lamb, whatever that is. In the garden out the window is the real Mugaritz, the huge oak tree seemingly from a children’s book. “Our haritza (oak in Basque),” reads the restaurant’s website, “is strategically situated beside the line dividing [the towns of ] Errenteria and Astigarraga. Thus, this tree delimitates the muga (frontier) between both towns. Muga eta haritza. Mugaritz.” The tree springs five stories, fully flowering with leaves, then skeletal when fall comes. The outbuilding—a comfy retreat, ten steps from the front door, that they call “the shed”—has its own bar and sitting area, with couches. In nice weather, people might take courses, or dessert, on the patio. “While you’re here,” says Andoni, “this is meant to be your home, too.” And so people have gladly treated it as such. You can mix up the menu, if you want. Request a ham sandwich, if you need. Switch out the oysters if you have a shellfish allergy. (Unlike most high kitchens, this one relishes the challenge.) One couple, unbeknownst to anyone at the restaurant, got married in the shed before coming in to

eat their meal as if nothing had happened. Another, there long after midnight, ended up in the same shed, making love. A waiter walked in, then walked out again. “We just let them have their moment,” says Andoni. “Okay, it was extreme—but if that’s what the food inspired, so be it. We’re committed to compromise, afraid of the ridiculous, and don’t want to fail. And we’re willing to try anything—anything at all—at least once, especially if you are.”

ANDONI HAS PALE, almost translucent hands and thin forearms with neatly rolled shirtsleeves to his elbows. His hair is ginger brown—and he possesses dark, quickroaming eyes and a thin upper lip curtained these days by a mustache with its own sprinkles of gray. He talks about the di≠erence between being 27 and 42, which he is now, and how the body changes, the string bean fills out, the ripped Bad Brains T-shirt no longer fits. A favorite pair of pants he wore for many years and depended upon—they were part of his identity—failed to grow with his body. In all of its duality, energetic oxymoron, and contradictory forward motion, Mugaritz has been celebrated not just by swooning customers but by colleagues and critics. Ferran Adrià, arguably the best chef of the past twenty-five years, has called Andoni one of the planet’s two great chefs, the

B OT TO M L E F T, A D R I À : G R EG O R I O F U LG I N ITI/ D E M OTIX /CO R B I S . 1) PA B LO B L A ZQ U E Z D O M I N G U E Z / W I R EI M AG E /G E T T Y I M AG E S . 2 ) N A N C Y K A S Z E R M A N / Z U M A P R E S S /C O R B I S . 3 ) PAU L M A R OT TA /G E T T Y I M AG E S F O R R H . 4) X AU M E O L L E R O S /G E T T Y I M AG E S . 5 ) J A S O N D E C R OW/A P P H OTO . 6 ) C O U R T E S Y O F J O H N WA R N E R . 7 ) M I Q U E L B E N I T E Z /G E T T Y I M AG E S . 8 ) J AV I E R E T X E Z A R R E TA / E PA /C O R B I S .

the rest of the culinary world. In fact, one of Andoni’s most famous remarks came at a food conference some years back, when he said that taste, the fixation of so many fine chefs, shouldn’t matter so much, after all. “You can’t serve bad food,” he says, “but you can serve surprising food, with unexpected textures and temperatures. You can shift the context.” It confirmed some of what the Mugaritzians had assumed for years, and also reframed what they were working to create: a sensual encounter, freed from taste tyranny, as a portal to something much deeper, if ine≠able—the place where taste meets imagination. In fact, the Mugaritzians seemed to have assumed a long time ago that food is merely

other being Ferran’s brother, Albert. In recent years, he’s won the Chefs’ Choice Award (most prestigious because it’s picked by all the other famous chefs in the field) and the International Eckart Witzigmann Prize (joining names like Ferran and Günter Grass, for bringing new ideas and philosophy to cuisine), while Mugaritz has risen to the top five of the vaunted San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Andoni even had to learn to tie a bow tie for a gala celebrating chef Alain Ducasse at the Louis XV restaurant in Monaco. (“I watched ten YouTube videos,” he says.) But for a man so sensitive, there’s been a cost in becoming such a public figure. “When I’m stressed,” says Andoni, “I throw out my back and hobble around like a hunchback. Maybe it’s more love/hate, pleasure/pain. Before an event, I’m a mess. I mean, we Basques are a little reserved and private. Afterwards I’m completely adrenalized. But I do believe we need to teach other people about our principles at Mugaritz.” Behind rectangular glasses that make him seem a little bookish—which he both is and isn’t—Andoni remembers that he was “a bad boy” at school, unable to learn in a sit-and-drill sort of way. He transferred to culinary school at age 14 but still struggled at first. He listened to punk music and found himself protesting, supporting separatism, like a lot of his generation at the time in Basque Country. When it came to food, he ate in the same manner as all kids, or at least that’s what he thought. Though his family was of humble means, his mother shopped each day and prepared dinner in the kitchen. She was constantly pointing out little

Cheeses at the market in Ordizia. The menu is a product of the Basque Country, an ancient region bordering the Atlantic and France.

things: The squid is done when the aroma of its ink changes. Andoni was receiving his own daily tutorial, it turns out—not anything like other kids, in fact. And with each dish, his mother was imparting not just useful food knowledge but Basque history—and its stories—as something to ingest and gain strength from, as something protean. “I remember going with my mother to shop for tuna, our traditional fish,” says Andoni. “She didn’t have the money to buy the fillet, and she didn’t want it, anyway.” After all, this was a woman who had lived through what’s sometimes called “the hunger years” in Spain—the period of shortages, during and after the civil war, when it’s estimated that up to 200,000 died. “She wanted the fish tail, the part that would otherwise be thrown away, because it contains gelatin, which is the key to stews and sauces. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but in retrospect I realize just how special this knowledge was.” Meanwhile, when he was 16, the first lightning bolt struck. Paging through a magazine on experimental cuisine, he was entranced, realizing the whole cosmos was right there, in the food. He went from working in a pizza parlor to catering and then found himself, like so many culinary aspirants, in Ferran Adrià’s kitchen at El Bulli, from 1993 to 1995, peeling clementines, dicing daikon radish, infusing desserts. “The first idea that my generation faced, that Ferran gave us,” says Andoni, “is cuisine without constraints, no preconceived idea, no untouchable thought. It’s ‘author’s food,’ someone projecting themselves onto the plate. Ferran was the best example, all technique and explosion, surprise and sparkle. A word to describe him would be Mediterranean.” But then, Andoni sees the work at Mugaritz as a departure, too. “In Basque Country we have gray weather, more prejudices, more self-restraint,” he says. (continued on page 208)

Roasted garlic in its near natural state—perhaps the most ordinary-looking food in the kitchen.

Fried pieces of stretched beef tendon are balanced on thorny branches, with a black “ash” dipping sauce made of honey mead and egg yolk.

In the beginning, RYAN M C GI NL EY was an outsider. He us beautiful friends ed his band of to create photogra phs—rarely not na quite sexy—that he ke d but never now calls “evidenc e of fun.” But in th McGinley’s vision e past decade, has evolved and ex panded into a tida influence, affectin l wa ve of g the look of art, advertising, music even Instagram —an vi deos, film, d making him arguab ly the most im port in Am erica. So why an t photographer are so many of us just learning his na me? P.2 00 / G Q / 04–201 By Alice Gregory

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GOLDEN GRASSLAND, 2013

∑ THE PL AN IS to sit in as he shoots nudes. These girls, like the tens of models (male and female) that Ryan McGinley shoots in his studio each week, have been scouted. Phoebe, one of his many assistants, hits the streets in search of faces, hanging around downtown, roaming the campuses of art schools. She knows what he likes. It doesn’t seem to occur to anybody that the models might be made uncomfortable by my presence. McGinley, 36, one of the world’s most successful and omnipresent photographers, projects the authority of a confident, truant teenager. Whereas many people would at least pay lip service to the potential problems a reporter might pose (naked young people, a stranger taking notes), McGinley doesn’t bother. The effect of this assumptive apathy is that he always gets what he wants.

LIZZY, 2002

HAND OUT, 2013

DAKOTA (HAIR), 2004