Today a bar like the Palentino would be impossible
Yesterday I spoke for a while with Javier Alguacil, owner of ** El Faralló in Dénia ** (absolute temple of Red shrimp , essential to understand what gastronomy is all about without artifice) and I couldn't help but ask him, given the noise of boxes and horns, hey, where are you? "Spending a little while in the fish market, there's an auction." I almost cried with happiness.
That popular aphorism came to mind, “It is well known that little moments are longer than moments”, and I also imagine the lunch afterwards with the rest of the fishermen and cooks; I imagine the noise of the boxes, the humidity and the beautiful smell of the sea, how the saltpeter floods everything and time stops in what is important, sending the apparently urgent to a walk.
Something like this happens in all our fish markets, gastronomic treasures of incalculable value (and much more accessible than we think) along our coasts: the ** Confraria de Pescadors de Roses **, the Vigo fish market or the fishing port of Barbate. My mother always reminds me of that: the tram to Malvarrosa on Saturday mornings and the bags of fresh fish for lunch of the day. Treasures are not always hidden, right?
And yet we are doing just the opposite. Restaurants, gastronomic consultants, architecture studios, media and each of the characters that come together in that mixed bag called 'gastronomy': we are taking away the naturalness that we so much presumed.
The head of the prawn, the clochinas on the ground or the bib in front of a lobster stew at Casa Manolo; **Loli's greasy batons at El Palentino **, Sento Aleixandre's shouts (what are we going to do, they had their charm) at his Ca'Sento del Cabanyal or the “I'm going to get things from you” of so many honest cooks with no other plan than to feed the parish well. I mean, we've become a bit of an asshole.
clone restaurants —which could be in Ponzano but also in Malaga or Milan, photocopied letters, minimalist settings and press releases that are always the same press release: “Madrid has a new trendy venue and we don't want you to miss out on its designer cocktails, its open grill and its cosmopolitan decoration” . Tartars, carpaccios, ceviches, tatakis, baths and tiraditos. How lazy everything.
Places with soul; that which is not bought with a marketing plan or with a cool interior designer, much less with the visit of the influencer on duty. people and gestures . That perhaps has more to do with that smell of the bags after the market on Saturday morning and my mother opening the door of the house, with the colors of the fish market and each of those little moments in front of the sea. Like so many treasures that no one can ever take away from us.