Anyone who was at Lhardy at lunchtime this Saturday might have wondered who the man with gray hair and a dark polo shirt was who was eating with Dabiz Muñoz at the ground floor bar of this historic Madrid establishment. He was none other than the all-powerful Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization, worth $2.7 trillion.
The chef and owner of DiverXO accompanied the American manager for an hour-long lunch during which they ate the classic Lhardy stew (65 euros), served in two portions. This recipe consists of a first batch of angel hair pasta soup. Then pico pardal chickpeas from Astorga, cabbage and carrots from Carabaña, potatoes from Granja de los Monjes, with various meats such as chorizo from León, black pudding from the Arán Valley, truffle sausage from Euskal-Txerri pork and Iberian bacon with Bacon, Galician beef blood sausage, Galician cow marrow, Iberian ham from Huelva, crispy Iberian ear with homemade Brava sauce, Iberian rib from the Sierra de Villuercas and stuffed with Ropa Vieja stew. The crowning finale was a sweet bite, the house’s legendary soufflé.
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“Incredible meal with the incomparable chef David Muñoz in Lhardy, in the heart of Madrid, with the best Madrid stew,” the manager wrote on his X account (formerly Twitter), while praising the chef’s use in his creative process. of the new device from the technology multinational based in Cupertino (California).
In fact, Cook’s visit to Madrid is part of the tour for the launch of the American technology company’s new mobile phone, the iPhone15, which went on sale this Friday. Previously, over lunch, he visited the sports city of Real Madrid, where he was received by the president of the white club, Florentino Pérez, and after lunch with Muñoz he moved, just a few meters from Lhardy – which opened in 1839 on the Carrera de San Jerónimo and has been owned by Pescaderías Coruñesas since 2021 – in the Apple Store in Puerta del Sol.
For Muñoz, this moment was magical. He took the opportunity to show him his favorite meal from his childhood, “the dish that my parents made for me at their own request for my birthday, Madrid stew, at my favorite place for it, Lhardy. Unsurpassed and brilliant.” One of the moments in which the cook was thoroughly rejuvenated in Cook’s presence was the soup, about which he made the following remark: “I know many good soups, but I don’t know any like Lhardy’s stew. ” . He didn’t stop at compliments: “I love it, the texture, the consistency, the shine, the color, it’s pure umami and without a drop of fat. “Incredible”.
The chef explained the day with Steve Jobs’ successor on his Instagram account: “Sharing time, conversations and creative thoughts with a contemporary genius like Tim Cook (the mind most ahead of his time behind Apple) is a unique one Privilege.” Sources close to the chef preferred not to comment on this meeting, which they described as private, nor did they confirm or deny that Cook, during his stay in Madrid, at one of the XO World restaurants – DiverXO, RavioXO and StreetXO – went out to eat. What Muñoz actually said was that “unimaginable and very crazy things are happening for the new DiverXO.”