The broad representation of chefs from other countries includes one of the great Japanese kitchen knife maestros and a chef that is all the rage in Africa.

The 21st Madrid Fusión will be one of the most international events in the history of the congress. Chefs from four continents in a schedule taking remote restaurants, urban, ethnic, popular and technological cuisine on stage, chefs seeking truth for their recipes in rivers and lakes, alongside knife maestros. Takayoshi Watanabe (Teru Sushi, Japan) has transformed the small sushi bar his grandparents opened on the country's southwestern island of Kyushu into a cult restaurant where he stars as the great maestro fish-cutter. Fantasy, technical perfection and knife-wielding dexterity. Pure performance. A chef with a unique creative talent in making sushi and imposing a personal brand with his overwhelming personality. During his stint he proffers the freshly made morsels to diners, holding the sushi between two fingers of his left hand and stretching out his arm for them to eat it. Every day Watanabe goes to the local Tanga market and chooses his fish, almost all of which comes from the Kyushu coast or Yamaguchi. He buys directly from local fishermen, thereby ensuring that the fish has undergone the 'ikejime' process and has been properly bled.

African cooking techniques

The unstoppable development of African cooking techniques arrives at Madrid Fusión 2023 with Dieuveil Malonga (Meza Malonga Lab, Kigali, Rwanda). Modernity in updated tribal flavours. Exotic larders at the service of modern techniques as a culinary bridge between African flavours and western cooking. Amid the influence of the Masai, Bantu and Zulu tribes, among others, Dieuveil Malonga's cuisine reveals the splendour, singularity and complementarity of the nations of Africa. A revolution which is just getting started and which Malonga, born in Congo, channels through his social project Chefs in Africa, whereby he has undertaken to promote the continent's new culinary aces, and the scheme already has over 4,000 associate chefs across the entire continent of Africa.

The cooking of Massimiliano Alajmo (Le Calandre***, Italy), another speaker at the event, is innovative and non-conformist and rooted in tradition. He learned the trade alongside Marc Veyrat and Michel Guérard before going back home and becoming the youngest chef in history to earn three Michelin stars aged only 28, in 2002. 20 years on, this precocious record has yet to be broken. Experimentation and change were the watchwords of the style he has imposed, and he is able to look at a recipe or an ingredient with a new pair of eyes every day.  

Chilean Benjamín Nast is at Madrid Fusión for the first time. His arrival in Santiago de Chile in 2018 - after a few years in Barcelona and Berlin, where he headed up the kitchen at Dos Palillos, and the emergence of De Patio, his first restaurant in the city - opened the door to a change of pace in Chilean cuisine with a fresh format, technically advanced and up-to-date, and rapidly made his operation one of the country's most solid. De Calle, an Asian street food outlet, came next, followed more recently by the Demente bar. 

Mexican vegetable cuisine

Another debutant is Mexican Edgar Núñez. His cooking has not looked back since he opened Sud 777 in 2008. Sober and elegant, he has a solid basis of vegetable cuisine that he has expanded over the years, while simplifying techniques and treatments. The starting point is a clear look at the territory surrounding him. And another first-timer is Ecuadorean Alejandro Chamorro, one of the main exponents of a culinary awakening in his country, where cuisine has embarked on a process making a stand for things local, decisively focusing on local produce and traditional culinary usages. At his restaurant Nuema, which he has recently moved to a new space, he provides an advanced, committed perspective of Ecuador's culinary identity.

Another personality on stage will be the revelation chef who emerged from Bogotá Madrid Fusión 2023 only ten days ago, Yeison Mora (Idílico, Medellín). This talented young Colombian chef, a disciple of Roca, Dacosta and Aduriz, works with local producers in the lush region of Antioquia, Colombia. In the Manila district, his menu boasts the flavours of traditional recipes such as corn cob tentacles, "mote" stewed corn patties with braised pork, raw trout or "posta" meat with Putumayo palm hearts, put through the sieve of haute cuisine.

The caviar of Portuguese forests

Portuguese chef Marlene Vieira (Marlene, Lisbon), a lady with roots in northern Portugal, is a master of traditional cuisine, and also has a gift for reinventing Portuguese cooking. At Madrid Fusión she will be recounting her exploits with pine seeds, the white gold or caviar of Portuguese forests. One of the world's most coveted dried fruits, the basis of the creative recipes by this chef who is breaking moulds in Portugal.