Lengthy earlier than the pandemic walloped fine-dining eating places the world over, the writing was on the wall in Spain: molecular gastronomy was out. The foamed, centrifuged, and spherified wonders that put Catalonia and the Basque area on the culinary forefront within the aughts had all however misplaced their novelty. The pendulum had swung back towards minimalist, terroir-driven dishes: a fermented child beet dribbled with single-source olive oil, maybe, or claw-on roast squab splashed with blood-giblet jus.
The query many have been asking then—and are nonetheless asking now—is, what’s subsequent for Spanish superb eating? And can the cooks that outlined Spanish alta cocina (haute delicacies) for thus lengthy, like Ferran Adrià, Martín Berasategui, Elena Arzak, and Joan Roca, fade into the previous or evolve to fulfill, and doubtlessly outline, the zeitgeist?
Joan Roca is culinary royalty. His restaurant, El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, has three Michelin stars and bagged the number-one spot of the (controversial) World’s 50 Greatest Eating places awards in 2013 and 2015, dethroning René Redezepi’s Noma in Copenhagen. Diners’ glowing critiques landed El Celler amongst TripAdvisor’s 2019 top 10 restaurants. The perennial buzz retains the waitlist at a cool one-year lengthy, on common.
Right now, the three Roca brothers—Joan (chef), Jordi (pastry chef), and Josep (sommelier)—are making inroads within the U.S. Constructing on the momentum created by the Netflix Chef’s Desk episode that spotlighted Jordi and his sci-fi desserts. The Rocas will quickly open a gelateria in Houston referred to as Rocambolesc as their first American enterprise. Rocambolesc, with its popsicles formed like human noses and gelato encased in sizzling brioche, already has a cult following in Spain.
With the Rocas gaining increasingly more traction, it appeared well timed to take inventory with Joan—to get a refresher on Catalan cooking and to listen to what he believes is in retailer for the way forward for superb eating.
What meals did you eat rising up?
I keep in mind a lot of slow-cooked stews, that are the bedrock of Catalan cooking. Stews like beef and wild mushroom or braised pork ribs with chestnuts. You at all times begin with a sofrito made with fried onion, garlic, and tomato, to which you may add meat or seafood or each, plus greens and inventory. Earlier than serving, you stir in a picada, which is akin to a Mexican mole in that it usually comprises floor nuts in addition to saffron, dried bread, garlic—regardless of the cook dinner has mendacity across the pantry. A picada actually brings a dish collectively.
What dishes and flavors outline Catalan delicacies?
It’s arduous to know the place to begin! Catalonia stretches from the Pyrenees on the French border right down to the Mediterranean on the Costa Brava, and every space cooked with what was accessible. One dish that unites the area is escudella, a boiled one-pot dinner. You throw every thing you’ve gotten readily available right into a pot—possibly a ham bone, some fatback, chickpeas, root greens—and boil all of it collectively for hours. In my home, there was at all times a “pilota” added to the broth, an enormous meatball made with floor pork, moistened bread, and milk.
So, Catalonia’s regional variations in meals are largely resulting from local weather and geography?
Sure, however our delicacies can be various due to cultural waves. Via the centuries we’ve absorbed data from Arabs, Jews, Greeks… Take pa amb tomaquet, as an example. It’s an emblematic Catalan dish, however we didn’t have entry to tomatoes till they have been introduced again from the Americas. That’s fairly current within the grand scheme of issues, which matches to point out that we’ve at all times been open-minded—adept at incorporating new substances and methods into our meals traditions.
Do you incorporate Catalan substances and methods into dishes at El Celler de Can Roca?
I like making use of revolutionary expertise to acquainted dishes. For instance, I’ll taste an oyster with a distillate that we make from soil from a close-by forest. This sounds totally trendy, however in actuality it’s a wink to the very Catalan custom of blending surf and turf—rooster with lobster, rabbit with prawns. On this means, we create one thing novel, one thing that nobody has ever made earlier than, that’s concurrently deep-rooted.
El Bulli closed a decade in the past, and with it, a lot of the hype round molecular gastronomy. The place do you assume superb eating is headed? What’s the following massive factor?
Spanish delicacies went public, in a way, because of these technological advances within the kitchen, however it’s plain that we’re in a brand new section now. We absorbed all the inventive freedom from that period, stored among the methods, and discarded others. The traces are open! Cooks in Spain immediately are more and more centered on respecting substances versus manipulating them. The long run goes to be much less interventionist with fewer components and subtler cooking methods. And it is going to be extra sustainable: we’re transferring away from sous vide in plastic, as an example. Fireplace cooking is on the rise, and so are preserved and fermented meals, each of that are a return to the forgotten methods of our ancestors. Tons occurring with seaweed proper now as nicely. It’s all on the transfer. And it’s extraordinarily attention-grabbing.
With inequality on the rise, an argument may very well be made that eating places like El Celler de Can Roca are exclusionary by design, playgrounds for the super-rich. What would you say to that critique?
I get why it’s obscure the connection between haute delicacies and society as an entire, particularly given the circumstances you simply talked about. My feeling is, most everybody can afford one costly meal each every so often, if that’s what they select to save lots of their cash for. Moreover, eating places like El Celler de Can Roca are internet wealth turbines, offering an excellent residing for folks in the neighborhood. Like every chef, I’d love to resolve world starvation and home all of the homeless—and certainly, cooks are sometimes on the forefront of solidarity efforts to assist the needy. Sustainability must be social in addition to environmental. That is what we must be specializing in.
How have you ever made El Celler de Can Roca extra socially sustainable?
Throughout the pandemic, it meant stopping layoffs by beginning new initiatives. For instance, we transformed our occasion house, Mas Marroch, right into a restaurant serving our most iconic dishes of all time. However extra broadly, we have now been reflecting on a easy query: How can we enhance our workers’ lives? An important factor has been reducing shifts from 14 to eight hours—we needed folks to guide full, steady lives exterior of labor. That meant reorganizing our workers into two full brigades. It additionally meant including a psychologist to our staff to resolve conflicts and preserve pleasure at a most. Pleasure begets excellence, which in flip offers company with the very best expertise.
