Postcard from . . . Burgos

"My passion has always been traditional Spanish cooking," says Miguel Cobo, a local chef in his early thirties. Talking with the speed of an animated auctioneer, amid flamboyant gesticulations and jocular backslaps, he tells me: "I want to recreate those flavours and sensations of youth, the taste of your grandma's cooking, or the seaside of your holidays."

I am sitting in the dining room of the hotel restaurant El Valles outside the northern Spanish city of Burgos, where Cobo was head chef until November last year. We talk about his love for traditional Spanish food as he serves me some classic dishes from the region. My first course is a pearlescent hunk of egg-battered hake with fresh tomatoes and lemon; it's the restaurant's most popular dish and, after tasting it, I understand why.

Next, I am served a powerful dish called morcilla de Burgos - a crunchy sausage of rice, blood, spices and pork meat. Then, finally, I eat what is perhaps the most curious course of the afternoon: patitas, a mound of lamb's hooves in sticky brown gravy. These knobbly lumps are rich and gelatinous and, although not abundant with meat, very tasty.

It is this type of classic Castilian cookery that Cobo hopes to re-energise in his new restaurant, Cobo Vintage, which will open in Burgos in the next few months. "Spain has some great traditional recipes," he says, "and I want to take these to the vanguard without them losing their essence."

Cobo's aims are very much in line with those of Burgos itself. The city has ambitions to become one of Spain's leading gastronomic destinations and is moving fast to achieve its goal. In 2013, it was named Spain's "Culinary Capital" in an annual competition organised by Spain's hospitality federation and travel journalists. A year-long festival of culinary competitions and exhibitions boosted the city's foodie reputation within Spain, though it remains overlooked by the foreigners flocking to San Sebastian and Bilbao. Keen to spread the word to an international audience, the local government devised a more ambitious project: it submitted a proposal to Unesco pitching Burgos as a "City of Gastronomy".

So far Unesco has recognised eight "Cities of Gastronomy" - from Popayan in Colombia to Jeonju, South Korea - in an initiative that forms part of the larger Unesco "Creative Cities" project, which aims to find places with extraordinary local culture, (such as food, literature, design, film).

In Burgos's proposal, the city wants to underline its rich culinary past and draw attention to its exciting future. As Mario Garcia, one of the project's directors, tells me: "We want to investigate how food in the region has changed from that consumed 350,000 years ago . . . to the elaborate food served in our restaurants today."

The city will find out this year if it has attained the sought-after Unesco title. Even if it fails, it seems likely that word of Burgos's culinary pedigree will eventually get out. The region produces some of Spain's most famous products, such as morcilla, suckling lamb and its uncured sheep's cheese; and the province in which it resides is home to the Ribera del Duero denomination, one of Spain's largest and most productive wine regions.

Over the past three years, the city has enjoyed a gastronomic boom, filling with new bars and restaurants that serve food as good as any in San Sebastian or Barcelona but at a fraction of the price. Whereas in other culinary regions innovation is the key word, in Burgos innovation is only as important as the tradition behind it.

Indeed, a trip down the city's packed calles is testament to this peaceful coexistence. For example, in La Lorencita, on Calle San Lorenzo, it's all cool, contemporary interiors and elaborate pinchos of foie gras wrapped in cecina. At La Favorita, it's a fusion of old and new - there, you can eat a progressive pig sirloin and foie gras roll while surrounded by old men and unctuous legs of jamon iberico. Then at Casa Ojeda, everything is simple and traditional; Spanish tortilla and plates of tigres, battered seafood parcels filled with a bechamel sauce.

Although Burgos may be in a rush to realise its culinary future, it will never forget its culinary past.

For information on visiting Burgos, visit turismoburgos.org/en. For more on the Cities of Gastronomy project, go to unesco.org

Illustration by Matthew Cook

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation