Roberto Ruiz, Point MX
The announcement of the closure of Punto MX, the Madrid restaurant that many consider the best mexican outside of mexico , caught us all with the changed step. If we had had to make a pool with names that for one reason or another we thought could disappear, the one from this restaurant would have appeared on few ballots.
It would have been so, in all probability, because both the restaurant and the cook are going through an enviable moment as to respect by the public and the profession. But life has these things and this gastronomic world is not exempt from constant evolution. in which some open because others disappear.
On this occasion there do not seem to be practical issues behind, such as those that just a month and a half ago led to the crash 99 K.O. Sushi Bar , with David Arauz and Hector Escalona to the front, to announce the closing. In that case the problems adapting the space to the new normality were the trigger , something that does not seem to be behind the decision of Robert who, on the other hand, will continue to lead the rest of his business.
The succession of unexpected closures, many of them at the best media moment in his career, makes, however, that we have to analyze what is happening in the world of haute cuisine.
And the first thing that appears in a historical constant: permanently new restaurants open and others close , a constant cycle that we are not aware of on a day-to-day basis, but unstoppable. In just over a decade, restaurants like the Sant Pau de Carme Ruscalleda (Sant Pol de Mar), Toñi Vicente (Santiago de Compostela), Vivaldi (Leon), Anthony's Corner (Zamora), Can Fabes (Sant Celoni), gastromium (Seville), The jail (Las Pedroñeras), To Station (Cambre), Danny Garcia (Marbella) or Southeast (Madrid), places that for various reasons and despite being in many cases on the crest of the wave, have been giving way to others.
This phenomenon, subject to health and economic problems, deaths, breakups or retirements, has been there since the origin of the public restoration . There are, however, other issues that make the contemporary gastronomy the rate of closings and openings has accelerated.
The entry of business groups has meant an important change . What they were half a century ago mostly personal or family projects that they aspired to pass from generation to generation has become, in a not insignificant percentage, an investment field in which at the slightest alarm signal the capitalist partner can withdraw, forcing a shutdown that perhaps in other circumstances would not have taken place and that often catches the client off guard.
Another variable to take into account is a certain generational tiredness . There are more and more chefs who, at a certain age, after a couple of decades of exhausting work in the forefront of haute cuisine, they decide they want another rhythm of life.
High restoration is a demanding profession like few others, with very hard working hours physically and psychologically, schedules almost impossible to reconcile with a normal family life without making important sacrifices and a pilgrimage from kitchen to kitchen, which at some point can take its tolls.
Haute cuisine requires training and experience . Those who want to play in that league spend, in many cases, years wandering from restaurant to restaurant, from city to city, from country to country, shaping an enviable resume that, however, prevents them from taking root. They are somehow kitchen nomads, devoted to their training.
And so, the time comes when a relatively high percentage of chefs with a certain prestige or with consolidated projects decide to take a step back, return to their town, bet on calmer formats or more manageable scales and earn what they consider What is it a certain quality of life.
Haute cuisine, on the other hand, it is terribly demanding and not always as profitable as it seems . It is true that once you reach a certain level, cooks can live reasonably well of the name they have earned with their restaurant, but not always thanks to the profit that the restaurant gives . And this is also another of those elements that have appeared in recent decades and that condition everything.
When elBulli closed in 2011 , being the best restaurant in the world, it was the spearhead of a network that moved a lot of money . However, the restaurant was at a loss. Losses that were sustained thanks to the benefits of other branches of the group, to advice, talks, presentations, publications and events which, in turn, were only possible because they were protected under the umbrella of the Bulli that, despite not being profitable, was the essential piece for everything to work then and continue to work a decade later.
Once the cooks reach the position where the restaurant is established and has earned a name, it is easy for them to appear new business options , in parallel, perhaps more lucrative and surely less demanding, based on exploiting that prestige achieved through effort. reach a certain age we can all want to win in quality of life And if we can do it, moreover, without disassociating ourselves from the sector in which we have worked all our lives, it is perfectly understandable that many end up taking the plunge.
And along with all this, perhaps, one last dose of romance. I am reluctant to think that gastronomy is reduced to income statements and years of accumulated fatigue . Perhaps, in many cases, what happens is that a restaurant, like our time in a city or at work, has a cycle. And that cycle, from time to time, comes to an end for reasons unknown to us and beyond our control.
Perhaps in some cases the chef understands that his work in that format, in that place, in that price range, has already reached as far as it could go. It is possible that he wants to try other modalities, do another kitchen, to feel again the vertigo of an opening, of the first months, of fine-tuning a letter.
In the end, If the kitchen has something, it is that spark point, of creative tension that gives meaning to everything. And if that is lost, as sometimes happens in a relationship, it is best to accept it and face it; not let the situation stagnate or, worse still, end up deteriorating. I like to think that, despite everything, these kinds of feelings continue to weigh on many of the decisions that we don't quite understand from the outside.
Ferran Adria He is still linked to the gastronomic world, even though he hasn't been in a restaurant kitchen for a decade. Dani García has closed his three-starred restaurant, but he has more gastronomic projects on his hands now that he has been five years : the recently completed television program, openings in Spain, in the United States, a catering company among the most solid in Spain and projects to direct more than 15 locations around the world in the coming years.
Robert Ruiz assures, in the note with which he announces the closure of Punto MX, that he will not only maintain the premises that he already has in operation in Spain, Portugal and Colombia but also the delivery launched last May and your R&D workshop . And he ends up announcing the opening of a new store in Madrid at the end of the year.
Perhaps simply we should get used to the fact that life goes on , because in the same way that there are people who disappear from our lives and another arrives, restaurants, or at least many of them, end up passing by. Perhaps, as long as there are no personal, health or economic causes, the best we can hope for is see them arrive, succeed and disappear at the right time or to give way to the next restaurant in which we will get excited.
Maybe we should understand, once and for all, that only if the cook enjoys what he does, he continues to be hooked on that vertigo of the first day and finds the optimal conditions, will he be able to make us happy . Maybe we should just wait to see what else Roberto Ruiz will offer us in the future either. And thank you for making us happy so far. Like Dani, like Ferrán, Carme, Sergi, Toñi and to so many others who have made us enjoy each dish and have made us fall in love with this work and those who do it for us.