The Roca brothers and a friend.
Eat, drink, travel, live. They are all one. When the destination is a good table, the trip serves to whet the appetite even more. It's a little what you get and look for From life to plate a new documentary series (premiere on Amazon Prime on July 24), whose objective is to take us on a trip to some of the best kitchens in Spain. John Echanove he leads and guides us on that path in which the doors of those kitchens open (literally) and also of the emotions of those who are behind it.
Eight restaurants: El Corral de la Morería, Echaurren hotel, Noor restaurant, Etxebarri, Casa Solla, Ricard Camarena Restaurant, El celler de Can Roca Y Lera . Each chapter, a restaurant, a chef, a story.
With the master of hunting cuisine.
“The criterion for choosing restaurants is that they had a family, a story to tell, a generational change”, says Juan Echanove. When he joined the project, the journalist and connoisseur of big tables Alberto Fernández Bombín and the rest of the team had already made the selection. "And I saw that indeed they all fulfilled the plot line of the show wonderfully," says the actor and well-known gourmand. My work is purely technical: I am the visitor who talks to them.”
For Echanove, almost all the restaurants and his chefs are old acquaintances. This closeness with the interlocutor who is also a diner brings the experience and secrets of some of these geniuses even closer. “I went to El celler de Can Roca for the first time in 1992, when the peus de porc carpaccio and Jordi's cigar, I was doing a play in Gerona that they liked a lot and Joan Roca called me and invited me because he wanted to make me a menu around pork”, recalls the interpreter. “And from then on, the four of us became quite good friends. For me, the Roca thing is an event in the world, because the fact that three geniuses coexist and do not get in the way makes it unique. It's a unique family."
With the renovator of Galician cuisine.
Stories like this are what they have been looking for in the series. For example, louis lera and his adventure until he put himself at the controls of Lera, who carries the baggage of the inn of El Labrador of his father. Lera is the only one of the restaurants that Echanove hadn't been to yet, he had it high up on his to-do list. “I have to say that for me Lera is something special because that cuisine that represents the simplicity, humility, horizontality of Castile, that is fundamental cuisine and Luis Lera is a very good cook”, says Echanove. “And all the history behind it in Castroverde de Campos (Zamora) It is not an easy story, especially since it is in a town that is 100% empty of Spain and that to eat there you have to go there. It is a type of business in which hospitality and good treatment and good vibes They invite you to take a car and say I want to go there for dinner and I'll stay the night because I want to enjoy myself. Lera's risk is what makes him great and then what is it the king of the pigeon and when one is the king of a product, forget it, you have to make a pilgrimage to try it. Lera's pigeon is unbeatable”.
The place was his father's old chicken joint.
A Ricard Camarena it was for the first time seven years ago, plaice house in the year 2000 “when his father was still alive”. “The first time I went to Noor It was two and a half years ago practically coinciding with the opening, but I already knew Paco (Morales) from Madrid”, continues the account.
Etxebarri stepped on it for the first time in 2001 and the Echaurren it is a personal relationship with the Paniagua. "We are almost family, we are friends, we travel with some frequency to see Luisa and Francis, we have had many good times and all the bad times together, they have had to do with loss... it has all happened to the Paniegos and me in a way very coincidental and in those moments when you need a friend I have always had the Paniegos and they me”, reveals Echanove.
The Corral of the Moorish he had always known him but thanks to the program he sat in David García's exclusive restaurant.
The first restaurant with Estrella de La Rioja.
A dish tastes better if it has a story behind it. It is the final ingredient, invisible, but very tasty. “It is an emotional kitchen, that origin is sought and that generational change because deep down what they are going to tell you is an emotion. They transfer that emotion to their dishes in a way that makes them unique. And I think that's what the viewer will be interested in."
Green valley and embers: Etxebarri.