Roca Moo: haute cuisine dressed as normal
"I don't understand why people are scared of new ideas, I'm scared of old ones", John Cage.
We live in an exciting time. Despite the lowered shutters and the decline of the classics, twenty-one percent and dessert for two; despite the fact that champagne is always for someone else and that the usual bars are no longer open, despite everything never, we have never eaten better . Never has Spanish gastronomy known a moment like this, so electric and so urgent.
A moment (I insist, our moment) where there is room for the avant-garde and for potato omelette, **where David Muñoz's crest and Ramón Freixa's bow tie fit**, where you can have noodles for lunch, tapas at the Laredo bar and have dinner touching the sky, all three steps away. Where the bars (let's be fair, more and more) serve decent wines by the glass and a thousand gins paint the (not so long ago) grimy windows of the sanctuary blue and turquoise.
I did not live the Movida. It was supposed to be an important moment. That many sleeping things (music, cinema, literature, art, counterculture and freedom) woke up and came together in a torrent of creativity, enthusiasm and rupture: "Everything is now". What I do sense is that in a few years we will remember this time when **gastronomy flooded everything (but everything) **, where “the food is the new rock” and chefs monopolized covers in fashion magazines.
This wonderful gastro-time of changes, forks and triple somersaults. Where we see, listen, read, travel and experience gastronomy. From that cover that changed everything to the new puppies without fear of the new. And the new thing is no longer the gastropubs (reinvention of classic tapas in a gourmet key, such as Roncero's bravas or Tondeluna's croquettes) nor neo-taverns (reinvented traditional eating houses, such as Lakasa by César Martín) but a new type of local more urban, more exotic, more multicultural.
WHAT TRAITS DEFINE MULTICULTUBARES?
- StreetXo by David Muñoz, Canalla Bistró by Ricard Camarena or Roca Bar by the Roca brothers (this one to a lesser extent) are the perfect example of this new gastro-trend: casual format, fuss, fun, rock'n'roll, urban soul, (more) human service, fusion and adventure.
- The world is small. The cuisine of the multicultural bars is wide open to cuisines from all over the world; zero nationalism, zero fear . The menus are a succession of cuisines, flags and risks: Vietnamese nem, curry "thai" of Iberian pork, kebab, cooked “Hong Kong-Madrid” , "Chili Crab" with paprika and chipotles, smoked eel rockettes with teriyaki (real examples of dishes from the three examples above)
- Kitchen payable. Multiculturalists do not look out of the corner of their eyes at 'haute cuisine'. They are not second brands (or low cost) or affordable versions of their older brothers. It is not miniature kitchen but a proposal of its own, absolutely independent (you won't find rocadillos in El Celler de Can Roca) yes, affordable and focused on a more casual audience, more reader of Fotogramas than of Cinco Días.
-Sexy vegetables. The pain of the Mediterranean salad and the bowl with four leaves of lettuce are over. the multicultural They have vegetables as their backbone and fearlessly embrace winter vegetables , such as leeks, pumpkins or artichokes. Who was going to tell us, ten years ago...
- Adventure, please. Eat with your hands (or 'finger food', if you're a bit cheesy), eat standing up, eat with music blaring, eat accompanied by strangers, eat in a place without a sign on the door, eat while drinking cocktails, eat snacks ( from start to finish), eat very spicy (chipotle or gochujang), eat mid-afternoon. Let's have fun.
- More examples. The Ginger Loft in Valencia, Tickets de los Adrià in Barcelona, Bascook by Aitor Elizegui in Bilbao, La Bicicleta in Malasaña, Spai Kru in Lleida or La Panamericana in Chueca.
*** You may also be interested in...**
- 13 gastronomic trends for 2013 - All the information on gastronomy - All the articles of Mantel & Knife - The blog Things that do, by Jesús Terrés
Multicultural: more urban, more exotic, more international