Chef Ziling Zhou, Founder of Silver Beach, Asia's First Female Truffle Knight Chef × Culinary Visionary, Spanish Three-Michelin-Star Chef David Muñoz: A Culinary Dialogue from Chengdu to Madrid Concludes Successfully

CHENGDU, China and MADRID, May 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- From April 27 to 28, a cross-cultural dialogue of flavors between East and West concluded in Madrid, Spain.

At the center of this collaboration was Chef Ziling Zhou, founder of Silver Beach, a "forager chef" and Asia's First Female Truffle Knight Chef. As the only invited female chef from Asia, she joined Chef David Muñoz for a two-day guest collaboration, using cuisine as a medium to carry out an in-depth exchange of flavors and culture.

As the only three-Michelin-star restaurant in Madrid, DiverXO is globally renowned for its highly creative culinary expression. Chef David Muñoz blends street culture, traditional techniques, and avant-garde concepts, turning each dish into a composition of visual impact and layered flavors.

During this collaboration, such bold and imaginative expression met and intertwined with the refined flavor system rooted in Qingcheng Mountain, China. Throughout the two-day four-hands collaboration, Chef Ziling Zhou drew inspiration from "Sichuan home-style cuisine," reinterpreting ingredients and flavor structures to bring warmth and depth of Sichuan cuisine to the tables of Madrid.

A key highlight was the use of Hanyuan tribute pepper as a central flavor element. Systematized within Yinguo Modern Sichuan Cuisine as part of its "Tribute Pepper Flavor Lab," this distinctive flavor profile presented a dynamic aromatic structure and rhythm, offering a new sensory dimension within a Western culinary context.

Rather than a one-way presentation, this collaboration unfolded as a two-way deconstruction of flavor. One side pushed boundaries with bold creativity and structural innovation, while the other responded with mountain-inspired subtlety and Eastern restraint. Their dialogue at the same table demonstrated how flavor can become a language to be understood, translated, and recreated.

As the only local restaurant group in Chengdu holding a Michelin one-star, Black Pearl one-diamond, and Relais & Châteaux membership, Silver Beach's presence in Madrid marked not only a high-level international collaboration but also a step forward in expanding the global expression of Sichuan cuisine.

This encounter at the end of April was more than the completion of a collaboration — it was an exchange and record of culinary "codes."

At the table, there are no boundaries between mountains and seas. And new flavors are already unfolding.