Javier Sanz and Juan Sahuquillo from Cañitas Maite
"There is no place like home". And they have succeeded. Javier Sanz and Juan Enrique Sahuquillo, chefs at Straws Maite, they have put on the map a small town of Albacete with 4,000 inhabitants: Casas-Ibáñez . The gastronomic revolution that we predicted has already arrived.
Friends from school, they left their village at 16 " wishing to be prepared to return and bet on him ”. A little less than two years ago, after training for six years at the Toledo Hospitality School and in Gasma ("to which we are very grateful") and working in kitchens such as Nacho Manzano's or Andoni Luis Aduriz's, they returned “ to value what is a family business, the environment and our culture”.
And now, Javier and Juan have been chosen Revelation Chefs at the gastronomic congress Madrid Fusión 2021 “for his technical knowledge and his doses of self-confidence and creative talent”, thanks to the votes of 80 gastronomes who have toured all of Spain . But this is an award for the concept of going back to town: to fulfill dreams, to succeed.
In September they will open a new gastronomic space on the first floor of the hotel , which will be a radical return to the origin, to cook what is close to them. “ We want to recover forgotten varieties and we will have 300 wine references s of which there are very few bottles, but also endangered species such as the Castilian rooster or Celtiberian kid . We will base ourselves on the banks of the river, in the Cabriel valley. That is our life.” Javier and Juan tell us that when they were little, they went to the fields to pick flowers or pick pineapples and that their hobby was going fishing . That is why their speech is so natural: it comes out on their own.
“We have lived in Gijón, in Castellón or in Mallorca, but we want to tell young people that the towns are not so bad: going back to town is nice too”.
In second place in this 2021 Revelation Chef Award, Luis Callealta from the Cádiz restaurant Ciclo, who has also been one of the 8 honorees as Chef of the Year and in third position, Julen Baz from Garena restaurant , in Lamindao (Vizcaya).
Roast shrimp with orza butter from Cañitas Maite