Egg soufflé from Gresca Bar
Normally kitchen apprentices often fight to get a place in some gastronomic restaurant of a certain level to carry out their internships, but for my last stage I accidentally ended up in a tapas bar in the Eixample . I learned much more in two weeks than I could imagine. I should also clarify that brawl bar It's not just any tapas bar. Is he wine and food bar to share of Rafa Peña, one of those chefs' chefs who has the sector eating from his hand.
my first contact with Rafa Peña's kitchen was one night of San Juan two years ago, when we fled from the firecrackers with our dogs to the Hostal Empuries in La Escala, where he advised the hotel restaurant.
At the front of the service was the young Biel Gavalda - currently in charge of Gresca Catering - which served a memorable special menu that night, of which I highlight a duck in two cookings and a baby courgette that inspired me at the time to declare him the Magnus Nilsson of the Empordá on instagram. A kitchen of produce and orchard with some presentation, but without distractions.
The pleasant sensation of that dinner accompanied me all this time, and I decided to request a meeting with Rafa to see if he would let me interfere with his team, joining me as a stagier for a couple of weeks at Gresca, the gastronomic restaurant that he opened with his wife Mireia Navarro eleven years ago.
I admit that I felt a little hesitant when he informed me that he would be closed during those weeks that I had free, and he offered me a place in the adjoining tapas bar that he had opened barely a year and a half ago.
What could I learn in a Barcelona tapas bar in the middle of August when half the city was on vacation, including the chef himself who was going to Sweden for a few days? I imagined four cats coming to eat bravas with a touch of grace in the sauce, and I had my doubts. Despite these qualms, I accepted and went to work on a Monday.
I joined a team of four cooks called Pau, Charly, David the "Nueces" and Ki. Behind the pike is the portentous Samba and the young Johnny from Bangladesh, whom Pau and Charly suspect is the genius and figure of their gang and who closes the Moog or Apolo every night "like the greats."
During my two weeks at Gresca Bar I will hear Pau end many of his stories and reflections with these three words. "I stayed in the area and had a gin and tonic at five in the afternoon, like the greats." I will soon discover that Pau worked side by side with Jean Louis Neuchel , the legendary Alsatian chef who got the first star for El Bulli in 1976 , whose frequent outbursts of fury scared away many stagiers from his kitchen, but which Pau knew how to endure until the end of his apprenticeship. Like the big ones.
Taking care of the room and cellar together with María and Victor, is Sergi Puig, a charismatic and passionate room professional who, at his age, has already had time to do a cooking stage in El Bulli during the summer of 2005 - equivalent to having studied at the Bauhaus school in 1927 -. The rest of the classmates try to remind him jokingly often, hesitating him with a fact that we all would have liked to be able to experience in one way or another.
As soon as I entered they put me **in the cold game (starters and desserts)** with Ki, a young South Korean stagier who also speaks Spanish with the fluency and diction of someone who has been living in Spain for a long time, despite serving less than a year studying here.
Normally when I have done stages in restaurants, I have spent most of the time in production, and when they have allowed me to be in the service pass, it has been to serve simple appetizers or desserts, but Pau reminds me that “this is a tapas bar” , and immediately he makes me responsible for three dishes.
For a pro cook, three cold starters are not much of a challenge, but for me, who hasn't been in a pass for many months and I suffer from attention deficit, my butt trembles a little with such a delegation. Keep in mind that we are not just talking about putting food on a plate.
You have to mentally record the commands on the fly, even when they get crowded, and each cook has to calculate the times intuitively. Any oversight or error can result in a disastrous service that chains with the other games like a domino effect. Pau notices my nervous face. “Here you learn on the fly, neng. Like the big ones."
Unlike a high-end restaurant, there is no fixed hierarchy at this bar, and each cook throws a cable in all the dishes. If they suddenly see me overwhelmed with five orders of bread, three anchovies and two plates of anchovies, someone starts to plate the salad.
On the second day I appreciate that almost all the dishes are cooked at the moment. By sharing this little find with the kids, the answer is inevitable. “But where do you think you are? Here you cook á la minute, like the greats!”. This display of energy and teamwork visible in the impeccable open kitchen adds to the charm of eating at this bar.
After a few days I have time perfectly calculated How long does it take to get the toast to its perfect point (crunchy but tautly fluffy in the center), and as I set the plate on the pass, proud, high up and in control of my times, I announce loudly and happily - "Pass bread!", - as if one of the waiters at the Golden Glass - to which Sergi comes to pick it up telling me "Rafa just called from Sweden, and she says ok!" A laugh escapes me that can be heard from Santa Coloma, and we continue plating the orders like little Oompa Loompas.
There are several signs we look for the taliban of good restaurants when we go out to explore, and the most reliable have to do with the human factor. The first and most common is when you see that the restaurant is full . The next, that among the clientele there is a mixture of social classes , like when you see masons eating together with French deputies and tourists.
But nothing gives more credibility and prestige to a place that the usual presence of anonymous professionals from the hospitality sector. Those people who know the prices of raw materials well, avoid marketing traps and above all choose wisely where they are going to spend what their salaries allow. I rarely remember so many cooks and salt shakers coming to frequent a bar how it happened to me during my stage in Fracas.
"Gourmet people like expensive products." The owner of a hotel I heard say this phrase at the bar, it did not occur to her that, apart from Cantabrian anchovies or old cow loin, many of the ingredients on the menu were offal - brains, livers, cheeks - parts of the animal that they cost very little in the markets, endowed with textures and flavors that marry perfectly with the natural wine cellar with which Peña joins her two businesses.
The fact that she serves the same wine in both the gastronomic and the bar is a testament to her philosophy of cooking (or eating) to be able to drink fabulously. There are those who do it the other way around, and none of them are wrong.
The owner wanted to reserve the entire bar to bring her kitchen team from Germany and that they see with her eyes how the Gresca cooks work. I easily understood why so many people who operate a restaurant are tempted to emulate that intermediate point between haute cuisine and popular food that Peña has nailed down so effectively, in this bar.
Share more fundamentals with a japanese izakaya (beef liver yakitori with kimchee, seared mackerel with teriyaki) and a neo-bistro from Pigalle (butter-lemon brains, shallot tatin with sour cream) that with a Madrilenian tavern, and that manages to attract repeated visits in the same week from a well-known journalist.
If I were to reduce all my observations of Fracas to a success guarantee formula, it would be that mixture of unpretentious skillful cooking + the energy of professional chefs working in sight + wine cellar that tells you other things that you don't usually see in other taverns. Reducing it even further, we are talking about a business based on palate and execution. Neither music, nor decoration, nor characters nor concepts. Only food and drink.
In these times when the restaurants of haute cuisine rethink how to attract new customers, they are casual chefs and bars like Peña and his Gresca those who are making enthusiasts of good food and drink fall in love, betting on simplicity. In the end, As one of the greats would say, "It's just food."