It's time for nostalgia.
It is convenient to celebrate the new, something we do with tedious repetition. But what enlightens us as human beings is to be grateful for what we experienced, that will not return, and that constitutes us.
Some restaurants, for example.
It often makes me think about it, as in so many other things, Sacha Hormaechea, conscience and center of gravity of Spanish cuisine. For some time now, Sacha has been rescuing and sharing “things I forgot to remember” to fight against the dangerous daze of the latest.
2023 has been the first year without Zuberoa. It is an inextinguishable absence, an abyssal hollowness. Only now that he is gone, I am aware of the priceless fortune of having tasted so much truth, so much perfection, and also that foie gras with chickpea broth, collard greens and fried bread. We pretend that we are very busy, and that these things are not important, to avoid crying.
Paulo Airaudo, who I don't know if he is the boldest man, or the most insane and foolish in the West, reopens Ibai. But we will never return to Ibai. He knows, and so do we, that it is a metaphysically unfeasible proposal, although I am already waiting for Guille Viglione to write to me to tell me that we have a table in the temple on Getaria Street. It would never occur to me to return to Ibai without Guille, to whom I owe, among many other things, for not having lived in ignorance of the very exact science of Juantxo, Isabel and Alicio.
I already wrote here, I'm sorry to repeat myself, about the gastronomic epiphany that Agut d'Avinyó represented for me. I am talking specifically about some gutters with foie whose texture and flavor I have sacralized in that forgetting machine that is memory. Beyond the gutters I remember the hug with which Ramón Cabau received my father, making him feel like the most important customer, perhaps the only one, of the restaurant. I confess that today I pursue that hug wherever I go. The essential and transcendent hospitality that restores us and returns us new and bold to the battle.
My father died in the spring of 1978 when I was 15 (“April is the cruelest month”). As I write I realize that many of the memories I have of him have to do with food. For example, some very small croquettes with an irresistible and different flavor that were served in the cafeteria of the Trade buildings, that marvel of unparalleled modernity by José Antonio Coderch, which my father took over as soon as they opened. He was also the creator of gastronomic concepts, while working for the hotel then called Princesa Sofía. One of his restaurants, Snack 2002, was something like an illustrated diner with the aim of attracting the street public. The proximity to the Camp Nou gave my father the idea of creating a combined plate (when will we return, for God's sake, to the combined plate...) inspired by the team that visited the culé stadium every two weeks. There I discovered some regional products that have marked my days: chistorra, sobrasada, empanada, rice blood sausage, marinated dogfish...
On the other hand, I don't remember anything of what they served us, but my astonishment remains fresh at an extraordinary meal in Villanueva de Gállego, near Zaragoza, after a visit to the Sarrió paper mill factory, when I worked in my parents' printing company. The feeling of being in a very normal place where everything was delicious and refined. The restaurant was called, still is called, I believe, La Casa del Ventero. I didn't know it then, but they came to have a Michelin star. It was noticeable.
From Barcelona I intensely miss the routine intimacy of Can Massana, in Plaza Camp. It was a beautiful and intricate place, governed by veterans of all wars who directed our lives with a natural and undoubted hierarchy. From there I have not been able to forget a strange dish that I shared with Sacha and that Sacha has sworn to imitate one day: Turkish eggs. As far as I know, only the invincible genius of Abraham García has come close to that madness of oven, tomato, eggs and kidneys in sherry.
La Puñalada closed in 1998, drowning in debt, and the premises were occupied by a bank office, thereby constructing a deeply poetic performance that Brossa would have envied.
Without La Puñalada and without Vinçon in the Paseo de Gràcia, what is left of us?
My first trips to Madrid were with my parents. We crossed half of Spain on the Wagons-Lits night train and woke up in the dry, hairy cold of Chamartín. We used to eat at a place that my parents called Valentín Viejo, a place of impeccable classicism, decorated with photos of celebrities, where I discovered frog legs and scrambled eggs, one of the mysterious forms of divinity.
Years later, my dearest friend Fernando Rodrigo introduced me to Handicap 2, on General Oráa Street, a tiny, warm restaurant, owned by the dancer Juan Contreras, who recited an extensive and stimulating menu from memory with an almost lyrical grace. From there I remember the avocado Kung Fu with bonito, vinaigrette and mayonnaise, or the Astronaut potatoes, a clean and tasty version of broken eggs. But above all the revelation of the blood sausage, accompanied by some fried potatoes cut into cubes that crunched between the sweetness of the meat. For years traveling to Madrid was an excuse for me to have dinner there.
It was also Fernando, Nano, who introduced us to the unfathomable fantasy erudition of Arturo Pardos, Duke of Gastronia, and the wisdom of Stéphane Guerín, in La Gastroteca de la Plaza de Chueca. There I discovered, obviously, the virginity of the stingray.
Later, during the long annual trip to the Cannes Film Festival, Merche and I began to discover the immense France. I am not sure if it was at La Chèvre d'Or, in Èze, or at Le Cagnard, in Cagnes-sur-Mer that we were introduced to the decisive importance of the point, by eating some al dente green beans, full of a crunchy Completely unknown to us. A part of our world, made up of pasty, tasteless textures and faded colors, disappeared in that moment.
I'm talking about France and by chance, if chance exists, I stumble upon Proust, the one with the madeleine. There is no one better to title and to close this article, so inexhaustible, so tedious, so elusive, than memory.
“But when nothing remains of an ancient past, when people have died and scattered things have deteriorated, alone, more fragile, more alive, more immaterial, more persistent and more faithful than ever, the smell and the taste last a long time.” more, like souls, and they remember, and they wait and hope, on the ruins of everything, and they endure without bowing, in the tiny and impalpable drop of their essence, the enormous structure of memory.”
