Kiko Moya, Luis Moya and Alberto Redrado.
"Every time I eat rice, I remember Pepe," he says John Echanove to camera on his friend Pepe Sancho, while he puts a fork of the already famous square rice of Kiko Moya, in L'Escaleta, where he shares a table with Tonino Guitian, while both share memories.
of memories goes And in each lentil a god, the documentary that delves into the cupboards of the restaurant L'Escaleta, in its roots and its landscape to extract a real, honest and poetic vision. It is a cinematographic approach different from that of this type of film, an attempt to answer the universal questions of where we come from, where we are and where we are going from the kitchen and the dishes, from memory and legacy.
Redrado and Luis Moya.
"We didn't want to do an advertorial on L'Escaleta", says Kiko Moya, chef of L'Escaleta and protagonist of the film, of course, along with his little brother, Luis, a screenwriter, whose return to the restaurant, to the town, Cocetaina, serves as the narrative axis. “We wanted to talk about emotions, feelings. In the end, gastronomy is almost like an excuse to talk about certain things that are universal, about things that could happen in so many other trades. We work in the kitchen, but also in the field of sensations and there are certain reflections that we make on a day-to-day basis and we wanted to tell here in a very natural way, fleeing from the typical”.
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
Written by Luis Moya and Miguel Ángel Jiménez, who also directs, and presented at the last San Sebastian Film Festival in the Culinary Zinema section, Y en cada lentil a god is a documentary that they had been ruminating on for years and that, finally, they were able to shoot this winter, in a trip that goes from Cocetaina, “the little town in the mountains of Alicante”, where L’Escaleta is and where the Moyas were born and raised; to Xavea, Benidorm, Madrid, Barcelona or Roses.
There are no camera interviews, there are conversations between the members of the two families and the two generations that launched L'Escaleta 38 years ago and those who continue to run it. Ramiro and Franciso, and Kiko and Alberto. Parents, children, uncles, nephews, cousins. "The future does not happen by doing what they did," says Kiko at one point in the film. But she does know the importance of those roots.
memory and legacy. Kiko Moya cooking with his children.
“I think that in this life the most important teachings are the ones you take for granted, the ones you don't question, and Alberto, my cousin, and I We have been lucky to have lived in a family restaurant where work was the engine”, Kiko Moya tells. “Now, luckily or unfortunately, it is just as important to do the job well as it is to advertise that you do it well. But I have had the fortune to start in this where the kitchen and sincere work, treatment of the product and honesty when selling your work was the most important thing. This is for me the legacy that I carry from Ramiro, chef, my uncle, it is the most important thing. On that basis, from there you can build any type of kitchen, any story, being honest with yourself and with your customers”.
Build sustainably, yes. If the documentary makes anything clear, it is the healthy and grounded idea that Kiko Moya has of a job that is increasingly elevated to stardom. “You have to bring down the cook from heaven”, he says at one point in the film, while scenes of him cooking with his children are interspersed, touring with his brother the landscapes in which they pivot and the places where they have been formed, such as ElBulli, where Moya spent some stay.
Francisco, father of Kiko and Luis Moya and of L'escaleta.
“On many occasions you go out and have an image, for me, a little distorted and excessively amplified of what your job is. Who cares who takes you to make you great and yourself too, but when you get home you come back or you have to be that person again, with children, parents, that everyone knows, who knows who you are, they know what you are capable of, They don't treat you like that pseudo-god." Moya expands in the interview. "That perspective should not be lost when you are in a family restaurant like this one, here it is difficult to be raised to the skies."
That makes the ambition for the third Michelin Star – the first was achieved by Ramiro and Francisco; the second, Kiko and Alberto– do not overlook a full personal life. “There are chefs who say they go beyond the stars. I am not in that line”, says Moya. “Of course, it has been very good for us to have the second and hopefully we will reach the third, but there are always paths and shortcuts. We know what formulas should be followed to achieve it and that it entails a greater sacrifice of all; and I believe that there has to be a sustained growth in your environment, I am talking about family, work and clients. Not only grow for your ambition, but also for that of your environment”.
Luis and Kiko Moya in the Nevero.
Although they had been working on the documentary for years, chance meant that their production would intersect with that of a book that will also summarize the history of L'Escaleta. The making of both has been for Kiko Moya like a “move in which you force yourself to take everything out, order it, put it in boxes”. “For me it has been a very useful tool, to see what is really important and what is not. In that sense, I want to get rid of it and move on. It is a point and followed, we finish here and continue ”, bill.
And what is that future like? “This year that we are finishing has been very crazy, I need the time and space to reflect, returning to the kitchen is necessary for me”, she answers. “I am a person who likes to be in the kitchen to think about cooking, and it is very difficult for me to do it outside of it. We have to live between the kitchen and the world of public exhibition of your work and myself; and for me this world of social networks, parties is slippery, it is a world in which I do not move very well. I don't mind being there, but I need to get back to the kitchen now."
Documentary written by Luis Moya.