New kings of cuisine look beyond the stars

Late in the afternoon of November 24, everybody was waiting for the verdict. Hours before the official news was released, Basque-born chef Diego Guerrero - disheveled hair, kind expression and straight-shooting, though jokey, manner of speech - called his Madrileño friend and colleague David Muñoz - shaved head with slight Mohawk, pierced ears and the talkativeness of a catering college lecturer.

"Start uncorking the champagne."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

A few hours later, everybody was talking about the news. Both chefs had received their second Michelin star. Spain and Portugal lost more stars (17) than they gained (16), but Madrid had been the big winner. The region now boasts 18 of the prestigious gastronomy prizes.

The anonymous inspectors of this emblematic French culinary guide (which started life as comments jotted down in the notebooks of drivers for André Michelin's tire company in 1900) were most likely surprised by dishes such as the huevo poché that Guerrero offers in his Madrid restaurant, El Club Allard (C/ Ferraz, 2), a perfect hard-boiled egg with mango yolk, white chocolate egg-white and cocoa shell. Or perhaps they appreciated the surgical preparation (it's done with a needle) of David Muñoz's xiao long bao - a rice pasta dumpling typical of China, filled with wild duck - at DiverXo (C/ Pensamiento, 27). Guerrero, who trained with Martín Berasategui, started working in the beautiful Gallardo building in 2003. Muñoz, of the Chanterella school, opened his place in 2007.

Quality, creativity, service and presentation are a few of the factors needed to obtain the coveted culinary awards, but the interesting thing is what lies behind the gastronomic experience - backstage, as it were, in these restaurants where the kitchens function 16 hours a day, always too small for the production demanded of them and the pressure they must bear. There, they make more than 300 dishes, intricate works of art, every hour and a half. They eat standing up, and work from 10am to 1am, six days a week.

"We're screwed!" yells Guerrero, at 2.35pm, in the middle of the lunch rush and after having gone out to the dining room to take the seventh order.

"I like to see the customer, ask them about their preferences, and adapt the menu accordingly. Neither they nor myself know what they are going to eat until we have this talk," he says.

Guerrero bends over the pick-up counter, lengthened by a countertop laid over the freezer chest (every last millimeter of space is used). This is where the dishes leave the kitchen, but neither does the Basque chef neglect the pot, the frying pan, the grill or the Thermomix. "This is ready! Off! Off!" - he orders the quince taken off the burner while simultaneously improvising and ordering a cream of tripe soup, and gently placing a green sprig on a serving of sea bass and a slice of garlic on a scallop pasty - the same ones his right-hand woman, María Marte, or Meri, had made meticulously and at lightning speed that morning. A 33-year-old Dominican with a killer smile, Meri began washing plates there in 2003, and is now second in charge in this small culinary cosmos; "the queen" as Guerrero calls her.

She is one of the seven-person team that moves around this 40-square meter kitchen with a choreography as perfect as it is undecipherable, sprinkled with urgent voices. Waiters go up and down the eight steps to the dining room with trays in their hands, carting away dishes that miraculously end up at the right table, while shouting out things like, "I want four eggs, two and two, two raviolis, I want the other eight eggs, follow table nine, prepare four bass, I want seven bass, four and three."

And so on. In the majestic dining room of the Gallardo building, meanwhile, the customers seem to be floating along to a Twin Peaks soundtrack, like some sort of zero energy point, vacuum-packed.

In DiverXo's kitchen, David Muñoz raises his voice to ask, "Can somebody tell me who the people at five are?" just before putting the finishing touches on a sauce. Ángela Montero, his partner and the restaurant's maître d', approaches him, artfully dodging the rest of the frenetically absorbed cooks with the help of her skills as a professional dancer. She carefully explains who is who, if they came first and at what time, and the particulars of their tastes. David takes a pen out of his front pocket and writes the order down. Two seconds later, Ángela is calling out the first courses of the adapted tasting menu, and unflappable, 24 year-old Manuel Villalva from Cordoba, second in command of this young kitchen where the average age is 26, begins to delegate the tasks.

In DiverXo's kitchen, which is more or less the same size as Diego's, there are 13 people - all male, and the majority fresh out of catering college and keen to experiment. Except for Vicent Lobede, that is, a 27-year-old Guinean who has been with David since the beginning and, apart from being in charge of the "office's" dishwashing, lends a hand and his support in just about everything.

Two swinging doors separate the kitchen from the rest of the restaurant. DiverXo is like a glass cube - minimalist, in pearly greys and blacks. It has a certain galactic touch. At the controls of this 11-table, 32-seat spacecraft is David. "I am very happy they gave me the star along with Diego, we have similar ideas about this type of life, and we have always done our own thing," he says.

Muñoz still remembers the surprise that Abraham García's (Viridiana) dishes gave him when he went out to eat with his parents as a child. Guerrero is certain he has found his artistic expression in the kitchen. The emotions of both reach beyond the stars.