Restaurants are not going to save the world. Me neither, to make it clear from the start. No one is going to save him, if he needs to be saved, alone.
We tend to turn everything into an action movie, with its epic nature, moments of tension and heroes who, at the last moment and like Jason Statham, make everything fit together. Real life, however, is much more predictable and much more vulgar, which, in the case at hand, means that no one is going to save the world. He will be saved, if anything, that is, we will all save him, as a group, if we manage to convince ourselves that he needs to be saved, which remains to be seen. That we convince ourselves, I mean. And if we are not convinced, then nothing, we'll see.
Within that exhausting epic in which we seem to like to live installed, we have been turning cooks into an example, when they should probably be no more than a bricklayer, a surveyor or an official in the administration of justice. That is, they would not, in general, have to be. We shouldn't demand it. Because except in exceptional moments, history is not moved by isolated figures who, carried away by the outburst and exceptional character, make things change. It is true that we have been educated in that, in a history of names and deeds, but reality usually goes the other way.
History evolves through group social movements. Sometimes there is a figure, an act, a moment that serves as a trigger, but behind them what is usually found is a sufficiently large group of people who have become convinced that a change is needed. Without that behind them, the hero tends to be, in reality, a pretext, if not, simply a spontaneous person with excess motivation.
I think it's great, I hope I'm not misunderstood, the awareness of more or less media characters. I am convinced that figures like José Andrés manage to make us think much more than much of the institutional campaigns. Even so, I think we should not put that weight on the shoulders of these characters, because, in reality, it is a responsibility they already have.
A cook should, in my opinion, have the responsibility of cooking well. And cooking well involves not only technique and taste; It involves cooking in relation to his environment, with what is produced in him, but above all with whoever lives around him. It implies economic, labor and conciliation conditions that allow its workers to lead a dignified life, with healthy and fair working conditions and environment.
Cooking well involves creating a network of quality suppliers and becoming a spokesperson for them towards the customer; it means becoming aware of the responsibility that comes with having a certain media presence, when you have it. It involves collaborating in the maintenance of a living social fabric, which is also built through daily clients, people who return and who are known by name. Enough is being contributed with all of this that we also need great gestures, banners and public examples that, let's be honest, are sometimes helpful, but at least sometimes resort to rhetoric that infantilizes us.
A cook – a hotelier, a waiter – already has, in reality, a series of responsibilities that many of us, who do not work in front of the public, avoid. And if that were not enough, it is a piece of an economically decisive sector in our society, but also immersed in a reconversion process that is stripping it of some of its identity features, increasingly turning it into a mere economic instrument. and cornering cultural values, generators of identity and a sense of belonging to a place that the sector has - that should have.
A winery in Barcelona, a tabanco from Jerez or a seafood tavern on the Costa da Morte are what they are not because they generate more or less money but because they are born from a specific time and place. They couldn't be anywhere else. Here we are like this because here we eat like this, because here we drink like this; because in this place we relate in a concrete way. A dish, a tapa, a wine is that or it becomes a simple economic transaction free of any other interest.
We have often underestimated that reality. We come from a world in which it was repeated that those who are not good at studying go to wait tables and that, perhaps now we realize, generates a perverse conceptual framework that is difficult for us to get out of. It would have been better for us to train, dignify and reward in another way; Treat the sector as a part of our culture and not as a labor fund.
We have also underestimated the ability of a bar, a restaurant or a tavern to be more than a place where food and drinks are served within four walls. They are much more than that. They are, in reality, a great cultural container that represents us; They are, in some way, a state of mind, the place in which that food and that drink meet with a way of being in the world.
It is that, that aggregating nature that has made the hospitality industry something so deeply entrenched in our daily lives. We don't go to the restaurant just to eat, we don't go to the bar because we need to drink coffee. We do it, in reality, for everything we weave around those acts: for enjoyment, for ephemeral escape, for conversations without much importance; to return to places that are familiar to us, to create routines or to meet people who mean something to us. We do it because that space, in some way, represents us.
That should be enough, that all of this is substantiated through dishes that remain engraved in our memory forever, with flavors to which we want to return. It is surely not necessary that we insist that, in addition, those who work in the union have to participate in conferences or appear in the media to explain their involvement with sustainability, the environment or the improvement of working conditions. . If they do, good for them. And if not, it shouldn't be serious: I want to believe that they are issues that, in reality, should be taken for granted even if they are not permanently explained.
I would like to think that we don't need much more, that it is enough that there continue to be good, honest eateries, representative of the culture and gastronomy of a place; places that cook well. But I am aware that I could perfectly well be wrong. And in that case, not much would happen. Nor do those of us who write have to save the world every day.
