This story does not begin with the grandmother's pout making chup-chup on the kitchen fire, nor with a girl raised at the feet of a cook in a bar, nor with a vocation grasped with determination. This is the story of a woman who, while drifting, found her place. It happened one summer in Formentera, where Vicky Sevilla (Cuart de les Valls, 1992) ended up when she was 17 years old.
“I went to visit a friend and I liked the island so much that I told her to find me a job of any kind. And she put me in the kitchen, I had no idea! I was there from May to September. I was a little lost in life and, suddenly, I found something that made me feel fulfilled. I didn't know that you could study to dedicate yourself to cooking, I didn't know any chefs nor had I been to restaurants, my family is very humble,” recalls the youngest chef in our country to get a Michelin star. She was 29 years old.
“I always say that cooking saved my life because it gave me a profession. I believe that work is a fundamental pillar to get up, have a routine and fight for goals. When I returned from Formentera, I worked in an orange warehouse and then in a gastrobar in Castellón. The following year I returned to do the season again and I was already the head of the cold room (previously I had been an assistant),” says the chef, who has recently created an eight-handed menu together with Dani García, Julen Baz and Javier Muñoz for the gastronomic route Momentos Únicos by Brugal 1888, which once again unites, for the third year, haute cocktails and haute cuisine.
Vicky Sevilla decided to train and did so at the Castellón Hospitality School. “There was a chicken for 15! There are things in which they should invest more, but we cannot complain, we are very lucky to have public education,” she values. “That's why it made me angry that there were many places occupied by people who were not going to dedicate themselves to cooking and who were taking away opportunities for young people. Why don't you sign up for Hofmann because you can afford it?, she thought.
Then came internships in restaurants of great Valencian chefs such as Begoña Rodrigo (La Salita), Susi Díaz (La Finca) or Vicente Patiño (Saiti). “For me, Bego is a mirror in which to look at myself, because he has been a fighting person who has earned everything with his tenacity and effort.” Also she, who at only 25 years old decided to open her restaurant: Arrels.
“My contract with Saiti had ended, my partner and I went on a trip and I decided to think calmly about what the next step would be. I would have liked to go to work abroad, but, due to personal circumstances, it was quite complicated and my ex-wife suggested that he set up something. I told her that she needed to continue learning, that she was very young and she responded that she could do it in my restaurant. And she was absolutely right: she could test and make mistakes, instead of just doing what others told me. In Noma there are people who have been counting ants for three months.”
Arrels opened its doors in 2017, in the stables of a 16th century mansion in Sagunto. “I am from a neighboring town and my house is ten minutes away by car.” At first, she gave a lot of zeros. “There was not a deep-rooted gastronomic culture here and the townspeople came to try it, but perhaps it seemed a bit expensive and I started with menus of 15, 27 and 37 euros. We weren't full. The first year I had no salary, but two years after opening a food critic came, they gave me an award and the restaurant began to be known in Valencia.” It didn't take long for the Michelin star to arrive in 2021, which the young chef has now revalidated in the latest edition of the awards. “It has allowed me to cook with more freedom. Before, I tried to please everyone because I wanted to fill the restaurant. Now, people visit us on purpose.”
Arrels means “roots” because its cuisine is nourished by the territory. “We use, above all, vegetables and fish, because our pantry is the Mediterranean. “We are surrounded by orchards, fields and the sea,” she explains. And while she cooks, Vicky Sevilla continues dreaming. “I would love to have a restaurant with a small hotel with a few rooms with a small garden and a small pool. A place where I can do my cooking, but also where I can be calm tomorrow.”
