Tim Cook, the most powerful manager in the world, discovers Lhardy's stew with Dabiz Muñoz

Whoever was this Saturday at lunchtime in Lhardy may wonder who was the gray-haired man with dark polo who ate with Dabiz Muñoz at the bar on the ground floor of this historic Madrid venue. It was none other than the all-powerful Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, the world's most valuable company by market capitalization, valued at $2.7 trillion.

The chef and owner of DiverXO accompanied the American manager in a lunch that lasted for an hour, the time in which they took the classic Lhardy stew (65 euros), served in two turns. This recipe consists of a first pass of soup with angel hair noodles. Followed by brown-billed chickpeas from Astorga, cabbage and carrot from Carabaña, potato from Granja de los Monjes, with different meats, such as chorizo from León, black pudding from the Aran Valley, truffled sausage of pigs from Euskal Txerri, Iberian bacon, Galician beef sausage, Galician cow marrow, Iberian ham from Huelva, crunchy Iberian ear with house brava sauce, Iberian rib from Sierra de Villuercas and stuffed with ropa vieja stew. They finished the task with a sweet bite, the mythical soufflé of the house.

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Where to eat in Madrid, according to the best chef in the world, Dabiz Muñoz

"Incredible meal with the incomparable chef David Muñoz in Lhardy, in the heart of Madrid, with the best Madrid stew," wrote the manager in his X account (formerly Twitter), while praising the use made by the chef, in his creative process, of the new device of the technological multinational, based in Cupertino (California).

Precisely, Cook's visit to Madrid is part of the tour of the launch of the new mobile phone of the American technology firm, the iPhone15, which went on sale this Friday. Previously, at 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, a few meters from Lhardy – opened in 1839 in the Carrera de San Jerónimo and owned since 2021 by Pescaderías Coruñesas – to the Apple store in Puerta del Sol.

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For Muñoz, the moment was magical. He took the opportunity to teach him the favorite food of his childhood, "the dish that my parents cooked for me for my birthday by their own request, the cocido madrileño, in my fetish place for it, Lhardy. Unsurpassed and brilliant." One of the moments in which the cook was thoroughly recreated, in the presence of Cook, was that of the soup, of which he made the following observation: "I know many good soups, but I do not know any like that of Lhardy's stew". He did not stop at flattery: "It blows my mind, the texture, the consistency, the shine, the color, it is pure umami and without a drop of fat. Unbelievable."

The chef explained the day with the successor of Steve Jobs on his Instagram account: "Sharing time, conversation and creative thoughts with a contemporary genius like Tim Cook (the mind most ahead of his time behind Apple), is a unique privilege. " Sources close to the chef preferred not to comment on this meeting that they described as private, nor did they confirm or deny that Cook, during his stay in Madrid, went to eat at any of the restaurants in the XO world – DiverXO, RavioXO and StreetXO. What Muñoz did advance was that "unthinkable and very crazy things are cooked for the new DiverXO".