There's something beguiling about what an accent and minor grammatical and phrasing slips can do to English. Dani Arana, chef of Taberna del Alabardero, explains why his mother sent him off to culinary school. "I didn't like so much" - there's a pause here while he searches for the word - "study." He grins. "She tell me, you need something to do in this world to make money and live. You are not so bad in the kitchen. You can learn more, make it your profession."

Because she worked in government, Arana had cooked for the family from the age of 10 instead of doing his homework. "In the beginning I finish meal like my mom cook. But I was a little too bored to cook all day the same so I started to cook something different."

Born in Andalucia, Arana came to the US capital from Madrid three years ago as a sous chef at the Washington institution that is Taberna del Alabardero, having worked in Spain for the company that own it.


The restaurant's customers, a mix of District residents and Europeans from Embassies and the World Bank, are a loyal bunch. Some of them, he says, have been regular visitors over the course of 20 years. They're familiar with authentic Spanish dishes. This has an impact on the way Arana cooks - applying technique to traditional food, with contemporary updates where they flatter. "I am from the South. I love real flavors. I try to keep this in the food. Customers feel the food is really like real Spanish food."

This sticking to tradition is not necessarily what you might get in Spain from one of the new generation of cooks. Ferran Adria, Arana says of the inventor of molecular gastronomy with its eye- and tongue-deceiving culinary slights of hand, that he may be the biggest star Spain has in the kitchen. "So people want to be like him. This is a mistake. A lot of people try to do the same. They open restaurants that close in one year. In the [culinary] school, we learned something about this new cuisine." But what you need to study, he says, are traditional techniques and traditional cooking. If you don't succeed in creating flavor, it doesn't matter if you fill a siphon to produce a foam if the foam doesn't taste of anything. "Before you put it inside, you have to cook something very nice. Sometimes the chef lost the real flavor trying to make something different."

He's interested in adapting new techniques to his cooking so long as intensity of taste isn't sacrificed. "We keep the flavor of my grandmother making a pot for two days. People come here who have been in Spain. They want the same flavor as you eat in Spain." His favorite ingredients are garlic and really good olive oil. Although some of what he works with is flown in from Spain, he tries to use produce from local farmers as much as he can. "It's a mistake to bring all the food from Spain. You only have to play with seasons here and you have very nice fish here." What he does miss, though, is the pork from Spain, richer in flavor and far fattier, making it pretty well impossible to promote, as has been done in the US, as The Other White Meat.

These days, his mother is in competition with him. "She's always calls, she says, Dani, I'm sorry, how do you cook this thing? I don't know, she says." He laughs. "Now she likes cooking, she tries to cook the same things as I cook. She tries to prove she's better than me."

She'd probably prefer not to know how her long-distance son occupies himself when he's not in the kitchen. In winter, he snowboards. When the weather's good, he sky-dives. "It's amazing! You can think anything you want - or don't think at all. You feel like new person when you are on the ground. When you go to fall from the plane you can see everything. You can't feel vertigo." He grins. "Maybe it's a little too crazy. But I like it."

Taberna del Alabardero is located at 1776 I St NW, 202 429 2200. Main courses cost from $30 to $38.75.

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