Paco Roncero will be guest chef at Aurum here in Singapore this weekend as part of the World Gourmet Summit. It's expensive and I can't find much information about him so was wondering if anyone knew any more.

Any experience with Aurum?

Had a wonderful meal by Alain Llorca at Dolce Vita last week. Service was a major let-down, though. They tried hard but they are just not good enough.

http://www.casinodemadrid.es/sp/gastronomia/nuestro_chef/index.htm

http://www.pacoroncero.com/

And apparently he sometimes cooks with liquid nitrogen
http://www.directoalpaladar.com/2005/11/15-paco-roncero-cocina-con-nitrogeno-liquido

Basically, he's been the cook at El Casino de Madrid - which doesn't give the right impression when you say this in English:) and has a michelin star (not too many of those in Spain!).

I've sang at the Casino of Alicante (badly - but in a choir) and been given a personal guided tour of the Casino of Murcia - both are high profile, extremely swanky places for their areas. The one in Murcia I know more about and it sort of fits the role of the kind of members club that you might find in smart parts of London, or perhaps an American Country club (which I only know about from seeing the Simpsons...).

I'd imagine that the one Paco has worked for is aimed at Madrid's elite. The website makes it look exactly as I would expect+ http://www.casinodemadrid.es (the fittinga and furnishings are genuine - not Las Vegas glitz)

There's certainly lots of info about him in Spanish - run the pages through a translation site or find a Spanish speaking friend to help you out - I'm afraid there's way too much information for me to help you with - the fact that most of it IS in Spanish I would regard as being a very encouraging sign, I would be extremely wary of anyone who's found fame for their Spanish gastronomy outside of Spain (some of the supposedly Spanish recipes that TV cooks and books come up with here in the UK are the most awful aberrations... shudder!)

Thanks for these links, LapLap. I speak Spanish so they are very helpful.

I am always a bit wary of 'molecular' cooking as once you've tried it and the surprise effect is gone, there is often not much substance. So far the info looks encouraging, as you say.

And I've learnt something too!

Why certain Casinos in Spain are actually called Casinos. Looking at the history in the web page I linked to, the one in Madrid was the first, established 170 years ago, and they decided to call it a Casino rather than a Club or Society so that it shared none of the political associations of those clubs and societies that were in existence in Spain at the time.

I don't believe for a second that politics stayed completely out of the agenda for this or any of Spain's other Casinos, but it's nice to know that their inaugeral intention was more of a networking institution with culture as its focus - that's certainly the case now... at least, that's what they'll tell you...

So the mystery of "when is a Casino not a Casino?" has been finally laid to rest. Gracias!