The memory that Gerard Bellver keeps of when, at the age of 12, the family decided to move to Mexico, is not sad. He says that the day they left was October and the trip had been delayed, so after finishing the sixth year of EGB in June and until he was enrolled in a school in the Mexican capital, the longest and most unique school vacations of his life passed. life. “How could he have a bad memory?” In memory, that feeling of freedom, eight trunks and a cage for Rock, his dog. The parents knew someone in Iberia, so they were lucky enough to board practically with the house on their backs.
The Bellvers were known in Barcelona: the father, Antonio, one of the most prestigious and creative hairdressers in the city, and the mother, Marien, a makeup artist, left behind the Bellver hair salon, on Laforja and Calvet streets - today the space is occupied by Persian rug store - and were preparing to open a hair and makeup school in which several generations of stylists would be trained in Mexico City. The two sons (the eldest is a film photographer) inherited the artistic spirit. While Antonio drew beautiful sketches of hairstyles, Gerard, the youngest of the house, outlined on paper the dishes that he had in mind.
28 years after that trip, this chef with a double gastronomic culture has opened in his hometown in new Jiribilla (Comte Borrell, 85). And there, while he brings to the table dishes marked by that encounter between Mexico and Catalonia, a symbiosis that perfectly exemplifies the use of sofrito as the basis of many of the preparations, including mole, he says that he had the fortune of getting to know the cuisine of the majority, wise women who are in charge of the great stews or the moles in the restaurants, and who spent three years cooking for the Spanish ambassador in Mexico City, before passing through the kitchens of Arzak and El Bulli (in 2007). And before working for years with Mikel Alonso and Bruno Oteiza at the Biko restaurant in the Mexican capital, where the dialogue was not between Catalan and Mexican cuisine but between the latter and the Basque.
Before returning to his homeland, Bellver wanted to get to know Barcelona's gastronomic offer well and especially Mexican cuisine, from which he wanted to distance himself. “He did not aspire to make the haute cuisine of COME by Paco Médez, nor was he looking for that purity of Joan Bagur in the Oaxaca restaurant,” but rather those mixtures in which he feels comfortable. And, above all, I was thinking about affordable dishes based on that approach between a Mexican and Catalan tradition, which undoubtedly contributes to making known the flavors of a country whose cuisine did not always travel as well as it does today, due to lack of knowledge and because for a long time the young Mexican chefs who left school did not look at their own origins. He says that contributions such as those of Ricardo Muñoz Zurita, with his magnificent research work, were crucial to fostering the pride necessary for gastronomy to travel better and far beyond the socorrido Texmex.
Gerard Bellver brings another good Mexican to Barcelona. Dishes as seemingly simple as green beans with egg, a julienne of green beans with yolk, almonds and a tomato reduction are a statement of intent: simple can be delicious. Pickled mussels with pico de gallo, the tongue covered with mole - that mole that has a good stir-fry as a good starting point - and a pil-pil of peppers; the very fresh lemon fish tiradito; the infladita filled with corn foam, the tetela, a homemade tortilla that they make in the house filled with artichokes stand out in a not excessively long menu where Mexican chilis meet that world of dried peppers from here, such as ñora, or chorizo peppers; where salmorretas acquire a Mexican touch. The diner, or the team itself, can configure a menu, at an average price of 60 euros.
