Squid kru with butter sauce
the ember It is a rudimentary tool but you have to have a hand to get the best out of it. Kaleja's heart is set on that little candle that Daniel Ram knows how to train and what they go through fruits, legumes, meats and whatever the earth craves , to the sea or to the cook that day. The path of the kitchen in the blood also has curves.
Not in vain, the new restaurant of the chef from Malaga it's an that. A dining room with few six tables occupies the first zigzag. The second hides an open secret: the imposing bar that fortifies the kitchen and whose reservations are already completed for the next two months.
In it, in addition to being a diner, you become a spectator. “Although if what you come for is to eat, your place is there” says Carnero.
With there he refers to the tables that share the space and that breathe between them: "Not because of the virus, but because I wanted it that way."
Kaleja is the expression of Ram's own qualities, tanned in embers like those of Berasategi, Manolo de la Osa or those of his own Cosmopolitan , which was born fierce since it opened with his salad, his oxtail meatball and his breads glass in the heart of Malaga.
This new restaurant is the little brother who is here to be the biggest. His is a fund proposal, of funds. The Cook plunder haute cuisine and he keeps the essentials.
He carries out the exercise of taking things from tradition and from his own idiosyncrasy to find the voice of a personal and honest kitchen . And yes, he is there, on the table, in the form of stews, marinades and 'asparragaos'.
There are no exaggerations. Carnero knows that superlatives, to all of us, what they steal from us is credibility. And that is precisely why their charcoal-roasted peppers or their carbonara white beans shine. **
because the simplicity of an egg yolk and a little sugar you can elevate a side dish to make it a side dish. Or because when some white beans have been simmered over charcoal and they have squeezed the best out of jerky they can take pride of place on any avant-garde menu.
Each of Carnero's dishes has an inner meaning, an intuition that makes it logical. The anchovy becomes adult with the base of asparagus spinach; squid kru in butter sauce impresses for that veil without acids, without fireworks; sauteed green beans in mint sauce stretch with trout roe and cubes of Iberian ham.
Crackles and pops alternate in the mouth with the meat and the salt and the freshness of the herbs. Everything has been measured although the cook likes to disguise it as chaos.
The order is also put by the flash of the eyes of Carlos Heredia in the room or Juan Pérez with that enthusiastic wine cellar that alternates large houses and very interesting small vignerons, as well as a good list of Sherry wines -house brand-.
In one of his many visits to the dining room, the cook leans on the table with the palm of his left hand. He drops the weight of his body on her. His right hand rests on his hip.
Standing in front of me, cross-legged, Dani Carnero has a pose from a classic movie, a barman from the Old West that he knows more than he claims to know: "No sheriff, I've always been a waiter".
He leans on the table , he would say, and ask nonchalantly if everything is alright while he looks around the sober dining room, and he confirms that indeed, everything is fine. He has a rough air , come from afar.
He touches my shoulder as he leaves. A flash of affection in a forceful man. Ram has the ability to move with small gestures . The same could be said of his kitchen.