Among the waves of sad news about the closure of bars, restaurants and neighborhood businesses that we are fond of -as Albert Adriá's group El Barri has just announced-, rays of hope emerge as arigato , an original business that works thanks to the solid experience of a couple highly revered by hotel professionals in the Barcelona , who met working in the middle of the culinary avant-garde Barcelona located in the Paralel.
Caldo tlalpeño: chicken broth infused with morita chili and chipotle, free-range chicken wontons and baby vegetables
The soup had several things. It could be said that the protagonists had to be the chicken dumplings that floated next to a small broccoli tree and perfectly cooked carrot slices. But the broth... the light and balanced chicken broth, blushing with a caress of chili , reminiscent of the west coast of South America, would be, together with the creamy cake Matcha Nemesis , which would come to mind days later in the middle of the night when I felt like going back to number 114 Roger de Lluria street.
Matcha Nemesis
When you first step into a restaurant, you look for signs. Arigato's room does not give you time to sit down before your senses have perceived that everything is in order. From the music volume even the few sounds of the stealthy comings and goings of the staff, including the elegant luminosity of the space, it is verified that the people who have set this up understand very well the virtue of **Japanese hotel service**, where going out to eat is not limited to satisfying the taste. The chef sebastian mazola confirms our assumption.
"During the pakta's creation We got very involved in the room design process, and we learned what was necessary to be able to design our own spaces, taking into account all the details that we believe should be in harmony in a room.” As soon as you enter you notice the ice cream and coffee counter with the pristine organization of a modern ice cream parlor. These creamy ice creams, from pure flavors like matcha tea or slick concoctions like caramel and liquorice, or hot chocolate, they don't look like the ones you take on a sunday on the boardwalks.
“For many years we have wanted to open a ice cream parlor that wasn't so impersonal like the rest of the ice cream parlors in the world, with a refined proposal while remaining accessible, taking care of details such as being able to eat ice cream with a metal spoon in a ceramic bowl.” In the middle of the premises there is a small wooden bar -created by Joan Oller , from the same Oller fusteria that designed all the wooden shelves of the Pakta–which hides two portable induction burners, with a simple mise en place of fresh vegetables around it, ready to be served after receiving some temperature.
Further back, next to the bathrooms, there is another small production office, from which the strong smells of metropolitan cooking do not come out either. On this occasion we could see two cooks affectionately manipulating vegetables through the small window in the door.
Once seated, expectation arises; What kind of food will they serve in this place without stove which was inaugurated under a concept of japanese dessert ? What has happened this time to the brilliant minds of a creative ex-chef of the most notorious restaurants of Albert Adriá and the first sake sommelier from Barcelona?
waffle-kini
Since he landed in Cala Montjoi as a stagier for El Bulli in 2007, sebastian mazola He has been making a name for himself all these years in the panorama of alternative haute cuisine from Barcelona. I still have the printed menu of 41º (that restaurant inside Tickets where they recreated the closest thing to the experience of dining at Bulli before Enjoying opened its doors) that he bears his signature.
His boss at the time, Albert Adria , managed to get out of the shadow of his older brother by establishing a group of restaurants that combined concepts of global cuisine with the avant-garde techniques that he helped develop in the famous cuisine of Roses. As chef director of multiple operations, including several product lines for supermarkets, it was physically impossible for him to be in charge of each pass of those five kitchens that made up the The neighborhood group , in hours of service. For that he was able to count on talented chefs like Mazzolla, who was in charge of the creation and service of many dishes from the menus of the Tickets, 41st and later, Pakta , where they combined Japanese traditions with Latin American flavors... the praised Nikkei concept that we don't hear as much about as it did ten years ago. Fashions pass. But excellence can be a constancy. This is demonstrated by Mazzola at the head of each project in which he is involved.
Working piecework for the El Barri group, she coincided with Sussie Villarico , who was yet to further her apprenticeship in sake sommelier. Love empowered them to say goodbye to Parallel Avenue and ride Cooking In Motion , their first project together. A gastronomic advice specialized in private dinners, events and sake distribution that led them to travel around the world, delighting palates with their mastery of international flavors. Of all the countries through which they have traveled, it has been Japan that has left the deepest mark on the couple. For a while they did an internship at Akashi-Tai, a small sake cellar near Kobe, learning the natural process of making sake.
Matcha Tiramisu
In Barcelona's Poble Nou they established their base of operations, known as Sake Ship , from where they distribute the Japanese drink imported from small wineries that are very difficult to find in the northern hemisphere. In that same place they set up private dinners for small groups pairing Sebas's culinary creations with these rice wines, the same ones that Sussie acknowledges are highly versatile to pair with any type of flavor.
La Nave, currently closed to the public until restrictions are lifted, has been one of the best kept secrets in town , which has assiduous fans like the dj dubfire , half of Deep Dish , a resident of the city for years, who used to take his friend Richie Hawtin , another foodie entrepreneur with his own brand of sake, for dinner before setting thousands of techno enthusiasts stomping the ground repeatedly in his minimal boom boom sessions.
Other fan who did not hesitate to team up with the couple to take care of the entire gastronomic proposal of their new headquarters in Barcelona was the legendary Ian Schrager , founder of the Edition hotels –to which the “boutique” concept is attributed to describe this type of room that lovingly cares for every detail, from the aroma that is perceived before crossing the lobby (wood with natural essential oils) to the type of hand creams that are found in the rooms –, for which the couple created different proposals for the three spaces: a menu of snacks and cocktails inspired by the various Pacific coasts for the rooftop terrace, another Mediterranean market with a sublime wine cellar for the Bar Truthful and a more elaborate one for the funambulesque dinners of the picaresque cabaret.
restaurant room
With the pandemic , there are thousands of businesses that have had to close or spend many hours restructuring letters and offer to save your business. A cook friend of whom I write these lines lamented that there are many professionals like him who have spent a lifetime learning a trade only to have to go back and spend the day packing hamburgers and pizzas for delivery. And there are not a few who had just raised the blind for the first time when the state of alarm was suddenly announced and the ground opened up under their feet. In the case of Arigato, they inaugurated the premises on March 8, 2020, four days before Pedro Sánchez appeared before the entire country to order the quarantine.
The fate of Mazzola and Villarico is that they have so much experience in all kinds of high-level gastronomic services that they have been able to put on their backpacks to cook wherever and whenever they want with the minimum. I suspect that they would be capable of surviving as a business one of those asteroids that annihilates half the planet. The fact that the apparent basis of the business is ice cream parlor with coffee (from the Nomad, watch out!), already assured them a certain solvency in these times in which the authorities (and common sense) asked us to stay home.
Of all the things that one can learn to do by watching YouTube tutorials such as sourdoughs, pancakes or niguiris, making ice cream with that such a creamy texture and such successful flavors At home, it requires machinery that takes up a lot of space on a floor, so it is better to order it to take away from those who know how to do it excellently. In this Sussie already had a lot of experience. Before moving to Barcelona, she had already worked as a manager in one of the popular danish ice cream parlor Paradis in her native Aarhus, where they specialized in roman ice cream parlor , with less fat content and using only natural ingredients. If anything can cure the multiple cravings that plague us during a pandemic, it's a seductive bowl of ice cream. At his side in the room from day one, taking care of the daily preparation of the creaminess, he is Fabiola Barrientos.
Corn cone and popcorn
Already with the butt parked on one of the chairs in the room with the capacity reduced and perfectly distanced, the person with a sweet tooth will feel that they have found Nirvana. Yes Willy Wonka If it were real, Salieri would feel like Mozart just by trying three desserts from this place that is more than a cafeteria, but not exactly a restaurant.
The many friends and fans soon begged them to include such a letter or Pan American Currencies with Japanese Glimpses they are already house brand Mazzola-Villarico , and so – also forced by the pandemic situation – they proceeded, arriving at a concise menu with several comfort food dishes ideal for those who do not want to gorge themselves, but instead sprinkle their taste buds with a range of unusual flavors.
Although the starting point was the type of food that japanese people eat daily , the influences that Mazzola has been absorbing as a nomadic chef did not take long to appear. Behind the mini kitchen pass, the second of him is located, Ricardo Oteiza , who ran the Edition Rooftop service. The menu begins with an XL amuse bouche with which you suppose that San Pedro awaits you when you have to go to the other neighborhood: a Mexican toast, that is to say a corn tortilla made in the house with its due nixtamalization, fried and with resulting puffed bubbles covered with chicken boiled in a chili broth and minced, buried in an avocado brunoise with yuzu mayonnaise.
Not so long ago you could also find the tuna tartar toast with avocado even in a Manolo de Sant Gervasi bar, but no one thought of crowning the totopo with the fundamental stone of all Latin cuisine: chicken boiled in chili broth. In a city where acceptable ramen quality has already been established in any of the downtown neighborhoods, they offer us a version of the Tan Tan-Men with thick Udon noodles made by hand – ingeniously using the stretcher they originally had for puff pastry – and a thickened broth with toasted ground sesame seeds that you stop at every sip. Another nod to Japan that justifies the name of the place, they do it with their version of the famous okonomiyaki , that kind of crepe covered in layers of vegetables, egg, katsuobushi and mayonnaise. If you get caught on one of those silly days when you're not very hungry, and you don't know what to choose, the okonomiyaki will leave you satisfied and with room for Matcha Nemesis , an irresistible remix of London's River Café's famous Nemesis chocolate cake.
You know when there's so much hype around something that makes you suspicious of the people you love the most, but when it's time to check it out for yourself you feel like Han Solo in The Force Awakens verifying to the new heroes that all those fables about the Jedi were true? Well, that's what happened to us with the first fork of Matcha Nemesis. My feeling is that Sussie and Sebas have perfected an ice cream dessert menu in which you barely notice excess sweetness or cloying . That requires a lot of sensitivity with the natural ingredients and the mixture with fats. Another example of their sweetness control are kombucha , also homemade, flavored with lychees and hibiscus flowers . I'm sorry I didn't indulge in the charms of Villarico's cellar sake on my first visit, but it was only because I found their kombuchas truly divine that I couldn't ignore them.
chicken toast
To the fool you make yourself a kind of kaiseki low key trip for the flavors and textures in a business that does not pretend to be a haute cuisine establishment, but in which excellence shines and a handling of all the elements that make up its universe that would deserve high scores from those who elevate certain sites above others for the human effort behind. for when it arrives account you have to pinch yourself because you don't understand how it is possible, in the city where they convinced the residents that it was normal to pay for Russian salads and croquettes at Parisian prices, that it turned out so cheap to travel around the planet in first class.
To Sussie, Sebas, Fabiola, Ricardo and the rest of the team… arigato gogaimasu.
