Out with the pasta and & in with the paella

[Photo by Yang Feiyue/China Daily]

Maiker Valdivia was the man for the moment at the Beijing restaurant Aria when he arrived there three months ago.

It was in the process of making a subtle shift in its award-winning dining room. Long a celebration of fine European cuisine, backed with an acclaimed wine list, the backbone of the menu is now Spanish rather than Italian.

With an eye on maintaining the restaurant's reputation for quality, a move was made to a less-fussy look and a more "business casual" style to broaden the restaurant's appeal.

"We have a lot of customers here for business who are not necessarily looking for a fine-dining atmosphere, though they want that quality," one manager says.

The new menu with trendy but very approachable Spanish cuisine signals a more accessible environment without giving up the commitment to the best of European fare and wines.

The Chilean-born chef, who enjoyed cooking with his grandmother at the age of 12, grew up cooking for friends and family but says he never imagined becoming a professional chef until he traveled to Spain when he was 20, "to see the world". There one of his teammates on a local soccer team in San Sebastian offered him a job at a restaurant.

For an eager young foodie, the coastal city in Spain's Basque region was fertile soil, with more Michelin stars per capita than any city in the world except Kyoto, Japan. He went on to work in many established restaurants in Spain, including the Mirador de Ulia, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Donostia, San Sebastian.

Valdivia set up shop in Hefei, Anhui province, in 2011, when locals were not used to Spanish cuisine, where, for example, rice is cooked dry and people wondered if the ham was raw or cooked, he says.

"Sometimes when we served a plate of ham, people asked us to heat it, which is a crime to us."

After two and a half years the business moved to Beijing, where, Valdivia says, people are much more open to new things, including his cuisine.