The reconstruction aof Mugaritz in 2010 forced us to close the restaurant and dedicate, for the first time, entire months to thinking exclusively about our creative work. From that moment on, every year we set aside three months ( January and April) to design, test and implement the results of each season.

In this way, the so-called creativity period was institutionalised and the leadership of a Research and Development (R&D) team was established, with the tools to translate ideas into representations of various kinds, on an axis around which binding relationships are forged all the Mugaritz staff (not only the kitchen and the dining room: from those who take care of our vegetable garden to those who deal with our reservations).

What is the creativity period?

It is a period of great intensity in which we dedicate all our efforts to the conception, development and implementation of the innovations that year after year shape the experience that Mugaritz shares with its diners.
To create, we have learned that you need space, time and a team: for three months, all the facilities at Mugaritz are used collectively for R&D; all the people work on the same effort and the whole day is dedicated to design what is to come. It is therefore a privileged equation of resources to transform ideas into reality; a commitment as stimulating as it is risky and, also, a notable investment focused on the team (people and dynamics) as a catalyst for our creativity.

Tastings

What ends up shaping the experience offered by Mugaritz is the result of a constant process of innovation in which proposals are chosen through the so-called tastings. People from outside Mugaritz take part in them, and we invite them to experience the first staging of what we propose each year.

In the midst of exercises in dialogue, and above all over the table, professionals from different disciplines and of great sensitivity exchange opinions and feelings together with Andoni. The idea of these activities is to test innovations and encourage conversations with the team, with the aim of promoting learning, sizing up efforts and putting different innovations into practice.

This year we have been lucky enough to have as "experimental diners" the writer and journalist Juan José Millás, the musician and multidisciplinary artist Niño de Elche, the palaeontologist Juan Luis Arsuaga, the writer and bertsolari Uxue Alberdi, the filmmaker Migueltxo Molina and Eva Rivera, director of the Dock of the Bay documentary film festival.