Pedro is a shy cook. It seems that it is difficult for him to approach the customer to explain the dishes, so he does it, at first, in a minimal version: “this is bacon and rose”, although later on, he frequently explains something more, gives the keys that , generally have to do with improbable textural or flavor combinations, but which, once tried, are obvious.
We are not discovering anything if we say that Bagá, his restaurant, is one of the most interesting in current Andalusian cuisine, possibly also in Spanish, and that in just five years he has managed to make it not only a reference visit but also a engine, a transmission belt that has helped Jaén become a city that, in gastronomic terms, has been able to reinvent itself without losing its essence.
The space, just three tables and a bar with another three or four seats in front of the small kitchen, equipped with an induction hob, an oven and the usual tools of a home kitchen, highlights the simplicity of the proposal, as if the cook sought to set limits to force himself: the meager space, basic cuisine, dishes with no more than two or three ingredients. And, from there, an original proposal like few others, capable of surprising at every step, sometimes dazzling, with extreme simplicity.
Pedro is able to play with the local gastronomic imagination, reformulating it, without making it the axis of his speech. He appears here and there, in a natural way, with the orange wafer with bottarga accompanied by an intense carrueco (pumpkin) water slowly sweated with garlic and cayenne.
However, it is also capable of quickly abandoning that line to explore the possibilities of the product. The Motril shrimp, for example, barely tempered and served in a shiitake mushroom water that is pure umami, or the roasted beet in seaweed, which concentrates all its flavor and is based on the difficult balance between sweet, earthy and iodized.
Sometimes, the chef plays with the diner's expectations, reversing the logical order. This is the case of the celeriac and caviar dish. The root, normally served as a cream, is served as a veil that still maintains some of its crunchy texture. The caviar, normally the central element of the dish, which is served naturally, is proposed here as a cream, saline and intense, that envelops each bite. Rose and bacon veil, one of those dishes that is difficult to describe: the aroma of the rose finds in the bacon fat a conductive element that enhances it, the slightly crunchy texture of the petal is enveloped by the melting creaminess of the veil in a bite disconcerting and difficult to forget.
The oxidized pear, with all its concentrated flavor, is served on a pilpil of eel skins, unctuous and slightly smoked, a way of constructing the dish - main element on a cream that provides contrast - that will return on several occasions throughout the year. menu.
The almond and coconut ajoblanco with pineapple and basil granita is a classic of the restaurant, on the menu for years, and serves as a stop in the route, a pause that refreshes the palate. Enoki mushrooms boiled in hake collagen. Once again the textures and contrasts, although subtle, are the guiding axis of the dish: the very slightly resistant bite of the mushroom wrapped in the unctuous fish cream, which somehow makes one think of a gazpachuelo, the dry, gently earthy nuances, contrasting to the light marine flavor…
Fried green pepper, roasted oyster and emulsion of its juice; bitter and saline, firm and creamy, vegetal and marine. Once again the meeting of opposing elements gives shape to an unusual bite.
Seaweed nori a la mèuniere. One of the few nods to a more classic cuisine, although passed through the chef's filter. The seaweed, cooked to the texture of fish skin, is served with a classic mèuniere sauce with capers. The sensation is that of tasting the skin of a sole and the dish is as disconcerting as it is appetizing.
Roasted nettle and whipped cream, more opposite than they are; Zucchini flower cooked in tomato water, vegetal and intense, with the texture of the flower still present in every bite. Cod tripe in sheep butter and flowers, another dish based on the unctuous and the opposite. Low beef loin and vanilla that enhances the dairy nuances of maturation in the only dish on the tour in which meat is the main element.
Lettuce in syrup and double cream ice cream with rice vinegar, a dish that works as a pre-dessert, but could also be understood as a final salad, which cleanses the palate. Coconut and egg. Extreme simplicity until the end.
And the feeling, in every bite, of being involved in something unusual, unpretentious but capable of asking questions with each dish. Pedro Sánchez has created his own universe in his restaurant, intriguing, surprising, but never overwhelming; capable of finding complexity in combinations as seemingly simple as they are unprecedented.
It is difficult to find a parallel for this cuisine, although if you had to look for it, perhaps Mugaritz's work would be the first that comes to mind. Pedro explores similar lines, although from a less radical, kinder point of view, so to speak. His is a cuisine that bewilders, that makes the diner question his certainty in every bite and that is capable, at the same time, of being appetizing and satisfying.
What is done in this house in Jaén is unlike anything else, and that is what makes it worth going there. Looking into a unique kitchen is not something that can be done frequently and doing so to find absolute simplicity is even less common. “In the end, this is a corner of Jaén. A very small corner,” says Pedro when he explains what he does. Nothing could describe it better. Great things happen where you least expect them, also in a corner of Jaén.
