Still from 'Cooking up a Tribute'
For five weeks it remained closed The cellar of Can Roca last summer and not precisely for vacations. The most celebrated trio of Spanish gastronomy and their team traveled across the American continent to make their itinerant cuisine, visiting six cities in four different countries - Houston, Dallas, Mexico City, Monterrey, Bogotá and Lima- and present their creations to more than 2,700 people. The experience has become the documentary Cooking up a Tribute , presented during the past Berlin Film Festival , and meant the meeting with the best local ingredients, now incorporated into the menu of his acclaimed restaurant in Girona.
Cooking up a Tribute by Luis González and Andrea Gómez, is the story of how the Roca they literally plunged their hands into American soil , transferred their flavors to other countries and, in the process, brought many others. In addition to new recipes -spicy chocolates, moles or Peruvian Pisco fused with Spanish Fino -, in your menu you can now find a different reading of products that we share with those places, but that there they treat in a way that would never have occurred to them the brothers explain.
Once back, at Celler de Can Roca a new human flavor is also perceived. “ The trip has changed us all and has created a new complicity between the team . There are clients who tell us how beautiful the tour must have been. They know this because the waiter, when he explains the origin of the dish he is serving, tells them about it and the customers perceive the passion in his words”, admits chef Joan Roca.
That's why, They are already preparing a second and third tour in the coming Augusts, which will lead them to close the restaurant again for six weeks. . "So this time one of them will be on a real vacation," they comment with a laugh. Almost certainly the tours will also be recorded in documentary form, as sequels to this Cooking up a Tribute. “A film like this has been the perfect way to synthesize a wonderful experience and leave a visual legacy of the time ”, they say. The brothers are very clear about two possible destinations: “We really want to travel to Turkey, to get to know the Mediterranean from another perspective and Argentina to return to Latin America a".
5 weeks, 4 countries, 48,000 kilometers and 50,000 dishes... that end up on the tables of El Celler de Can Roca
His American journey has enriched his culinary wisdom and now they are the ones who continue to train young promises , beyond the stoves of Celler de Can Roca. In the tranquility of a country house very close to his hyperactive restaurant and the place his father and grandfather used for other needs, have created a new project.
Is about a space for research and search for new gastronomic talents , where the selected students have ended up during the tour shown in the film by Luis González and Andrea Gómez. A library is located there, classes are taught and have incorporated the help of an agricultural engineer . “We seek to do alchemy. Unlearn the last 150 years of distillation to return edible essences and elixirs alcoholic and non-alcoholic -reveals the sommelier Josep Roca-. It is also a place to manage the emotions of the team. Together we met with a psychologist to improve that part of the common work . The revolution of the 21st century is the revolution of emotions. We want to take care of ourselves and our team, protect ourselves from success ”.
Poster for the documentary 'Cooking up a Tribute'
They also want to take care of their customers. As if that were not enough, with all the projects and ambitions they have in hand, they are preparing for the immediate future a final surprise related to the brother who completes the brilliant trio, pastry chef Jordi Roca . “We believe that the last part of the menu is where a sense of humor can intervene and we would like to make a gift ”. It is a chocolate egg, similar to the Kinder, which encloses inside a model separated by pieces that recreates in miniature some of its most emblematic dishes. The toy is accompanied by the original recipe . Hereinafter, the twelve or fifteen classics of Celler de Can Roca can be collected.
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Celler de Can Roca: memory, landscape, life, death, nostalgia... everything, on the plate.