Preparations for Gelinaz! Headquarters event in Brussels nearly ready

20 chefs prepare to cook non-stop for at least 15 hours

The kitchens of Bon Bon Restaurant and the Hotel Amigo in Brussels were the centre of long preparations on 9 November as 20 chefs from across Europe arrived in the Belgian capital between Tuesday 8 November and Wednesday 9 November to prepare for the Gelinaz! Brussels Headquarters event taking place on 10 November.

While most of the chefs were carrying out their preparations for the ambitious consecutive 15 hour service at Christophe Hardiquest’s Bon Bon restaurant in Woluwe Saint Pierre, Italian Fulvio Pierangelini one of the chefs taking part in the event, hosted Clare Smyth, Belgian Gert De Mangeleer and Peter Nilsson. The Italian chef is consultant of the Rocco Forte chain of hotels which includes the Hotel Amigo among its portfolios.

The chefs were welcomed by Fulvio Pierangelini to a dinner at the Ristorante Bocconi on Tuesday evening. Belgian chef Christophe Hardiquest hosted the chefs to a dinner at his restaurant on Wednesday evening.

On 10 November, the 20 chefs (see list below) will be paired together and reinterpret four different dishes that will be cooked at the Gelinaz! shuffle also taking place on the same day. The idea behind the event is for the chefs to follow the different time zones as they serve four sittings that start from noon and finish at 3am. Every seating will have a different 10 course menu and the creations are based on the team’s reinterpretation of a dish that is served by chefs in the restaurant they have shuffled.

The chefs that have come to Brussels include the two Belgian chefs Kobe Desramaults (In De Wulf) and Geert de Mangeleer (Hertog Jan) as well as Davide Scabin (Combal Zero, Italy), Claude Bosi (Hibiscus, London), Peter Nilsson (Spritmuseum, Sweden), Yannick Alleno (Alleno, Pavillon Ledoyen, France), Kristian Baumann (Restaurant 108, Copenhagen), Clare Smyth (Gordon Ramsay, UK), Mauro Colagreco (Le Mirazur, France), Leonardo Pereira (Areias do Seixo, Lisbon), Magnus Ek (Oaxen Krog, Sweden), Fulvio Pierangelini (Hotel de Russie, Italy), Paul Cunningham (Henne Kirkeby Kro, Denmark), Armand Arnal (La Chassagnette, Arles), Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillere, France), Enrico Crippa (Piazza Duomo, Alba), Mathieu Rostaing-Tayard (Cafe Sillon, France), Philip Rachinger (Muhltalhof, Austria) and last but not least Albert Adria (Tickets, Barcelona).

Christophe Hardiquest told Food and Wine Gazette that “This is a once in a lifetime experience for the team and myself. An experience like this, it will be forever etched in your memory. But the event is not only important for the team and the restaurant, it is also extremely important for Brussels particularly in this current period. I am proud to be part of such an event.”

Most of the mise-en-place had been finalised by this evening though there will be some final preparations to be made on 10 November.

For the shuffle, chefs from Japan to Chile, from Brazil to Slovenia, France, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, UK, Italy, Peru, Denmark and all throughout the United States, 40 of the world’s most acclaimed, pioneering and creative culinary talents will take part in an unprecedented international restaurant ‘SWAP’, and will exchange lives, homes, dogs, and of course, kitchens for three days, before the 24 hour-long dinner that will take place across the globe, from Melbourne to San Francisco.

Each ‘guest’ chef, after having found out the results of the Gelinaz! ballot, has travelled to their country of destination to prepare his or her unique and unrepeatable 8-course menu. The chefs will not take ingredients from home but will cook and improvise in order to combine their culinary approach with the what they find on their location. It will be a fusion between 2 remarkable chefs’ personalities.

Guests will not know who will cook for them until the beginning of the dinner on November 10. What is sure is that chefs that might be cooking for them include the likes of Christian Puglisi, René Redzepi or Anand Gaggan, Massimo Bottura, Adeline Grattard, Yoshihiro Narisawa, or even Ana Ros. The whole list of chefs that are swapping restaurants is the following:

Alex Atala, Matt Orlando, Alexandre Silva, Mikael Jonsson, Blaine Wetzel, Christoper Kostow, Riccardo Camanini, Paul Carmichael, Rene Redzepi, Zaiyu Hasegawa, Sean Brock, Virgilio Martinez, Sean Gray, Simone Tondo, Adeline Grattard, Yoshihiro Narisawa, Danny Bowein, Niko Romito, Anand Gaggan, Dominique Crenn, Inaki Aizpitarte, Jose Avillez, Vladimir Mukhin, Dan Hunter, Bo Songivsava, Rodolfo Guzman, David Thompson, Mitsuharu Tsumura, Ana Ros, Christian Puglisi, Sven Elverfeld, Lee Tiernan, Dave Pynt, Massimiliano Alajmo, Massimo Bottura, Jock Zonfrillo, Manu Buffara, Carlo Mirarchi, Daniel Burns and Ben Shewry.

Gelinaz! is a collective of international chefs that is the brainchild of Fulvio Pierangelini. It promises to push boundaries and take risk as a starting point. The aim of the chefs is to discover new cultures and to exchange knowledge. They want to invent collaborations with artists, musicians, scientists, thinkers and producers, never repeating themselves and exploring the unknown, charting new territories to sharpen creativity and zooming on the beauty of nature and its elegant chaos.

In 2013, the chefs met in Ghent and Lima. This was followed in 2014 by 28 chefs taking over the kitchen of Wylie Dufresne in New York to pay a tribute to one of the most distinguished avant-garde chefs.

In July 2014, they met for a Gelinaz spiritual retreat in Tuscany to prepare future Gelinaz! gigs for the next three years.

The first ever Gelinaz! restaurant shuffle was organised last year.