The chef’s story Vicky Seville It moves away from many of the traditional accounts of haute cuisine. She had her first contact with the kitchen thanks to a friend, whom she went to visit in Formentera and who found her a job in the kitchen of a beach bar, where she did not get off to a good start as she has recalled on more than one occasion. occasion when he scorched his hand when opening the oven without protection the first time.
That hard beginning with a survival job would open him to what is his vocation, which led him to open with hardly any resources or external investments. rootshis restaurant in Sagunto in 2017, when he was only 25 years old.
What she herself did not imagine was that the following year she would win the Valencian Cuisine Promise Award awarded by the newspaper Levante-EMV and just two years later it would achieve the Bib Gourmand from the Michelin Guide in 2020 and a Sol from the Repsol Guide. But if there was a A milestone in her career was the one she marked in 2022, when she became the youngest woman to achieve a Michelin Star for her restaurant.
15 years later, Seville has returned to Formentera, although far from that first profession of survival, he tells El HuffPost who has been working for two days in the near 400 tasting menus served on the second day of the eighth edition of Son Estrella Galicia Posidonia festival.
A purely Mediterranean gastronomic proposal, paired with Galician beer, composed of homemade sausage and broad bean empanadas, onion and cheese, red tuna tartare, tomato sauce and chamomile wine, and piparra gel, a suckling pig saam at low temperature and a blanket and eel burger with tartar sauce.
In rootsSeville makes it clear that his commitment to seasonal food is total, despite the fact that at first it was “mentally unsustainable” for him. For her, product food is essential to enhance what she says is “the best pantry in the world”, that of Spain. In fact, he assures that we should stick to eating seasonal products, both at home and in restaurants.
“It shouldn’t be normal to eat strawberries when it’s not strawberry season, but if there are no strawberries now, eat another fruit that doesn’t have that extra cost, that excess pollution, etc.,” he points out. But neither should you repeat supposedly exotic and hackneyed preparations on restaurant menus: “In the end, if you don’t have a differentiating factor, which is not that it cooks better or worse than another restaurant, but that it is a cuisine that you will not be able to find in another place, whether you like it more or less”
You started in the kitchen precisely in Formentera, how was your experience with the island and what memories do you have of it?
I started here when I was 17, I came to visit a friend and I liked the island so much that I told her “find me a job of whatever kind.” She was a waitress and she could have gotten me to be a waitress or to clean floors, but she put me in the kitchens. In the end there was everything, you remember with great affection in the sense that it gave me a profession, but well, there were hard moments of crying, but a lot of laughter too.
In your kitchen you bet a lot on product cuisine, more on the traditional, is it something that is styled in haute cuisine? From the outside it is sometimes seen that the preparations are given more priority than bringing the product closer.
I think there are trends like in everything, like in fashion and now the trend there is is more towards the product. Something that can be visualized and that is clearer is that years ago there was Ferrán Adriá, for example, who started with the issue of spherifications, with which we literally crushed the product and put it in a spherification. The trend now in haute cuisine is to offer the best product and even give value to the producers of that product. I think it’s not that it’s a fashion, it’s the current trend.
“Years ago there was Ferrán Adriá, for example, who started with the topic of spherifications, with which we literally crushed the product and put it in a spherification. The trend that exists now in haute cuisine is to offer the best product and even give it value to the producers of that product”
At Arrels you make seasonal cuisine, changing the menu adapting precisely to the product. Is it difficult to manage? Is it sustainable?
It’s a bit unsustainable mentally. Sustainable with our work and more. At first, when I started working, I decided to work temporarily. Actually, I opened the restaurant when I was 25 years old and I didn’t have that many resources. I remember that I really like white asparagus and I said “I’m going to try cooking white asparagus the first time in the restaurant.” I remember that I asked for five kilos at a time and one week I remember that I asked for, that’s it, five kilos from the supplier and he told me “no, we haven’t run out, there aren’t any.” I told him “well, next week you bring me five kilos” and he said “no, no Vicky, it’s over, there’s no more until next year.”
I couldn’t believe it. I spent three nights after working until the wee hours of the morning trying to look for dishes to see what I would do, how about it because not everything goes in the restaurant. We cannot put a Russian salad and that’s it, but the dishes have to be well outlined, well made, we have to try them, we have to make mistakes. I wanted to die.
Now we have many more resources, it is much easier, I also have more mental agility, more resources, more library of flavors and it is much easier for me, with what I have, to create a dish for you. Before, it was difficult for me, it was more unsustainable, especially mentally. Sustainable is a lot, in fact, the most sustainable thing there is is using products, which is what we should all do.
And is it done in society, in homes?
No, it should not be normal to eat strawberries when it is not strawberry season, but if there are no strawberries now, eat another fruit that does not have that extra cost, that excess contamination, etc. Furthermore, the product is not at its best. It’s like forcing the machine. We don’t and we should.
Seville preparing the preparations at the Son Estrella Galicia Posidonia festival.
At a nutritional level, it is said that we should recover that market food from our grandmothers. Should we go back to the roots a little and stop consuming more exotic products?
I have just now done a campaign with the Sagunto market (Valencia) and it talks a little about that, about dusting off the old notebook that all the mothers had. I understand that we live in a society that now moves much faster than it used to, but if we took a little time and invested it in cooking, which doesn’t cost that much, there are many resources to be able to cook quickly and healthily. It’s simply a matter of wanting and dedicating a little time to it, I think we should return.
Is there a product that you say cannot be missing in your kitchen?
The onions. I love onions. If they define a product that defines cooking, for me onion and garlic. It can be a main dish, we make caramelized onion ice cream with crunchy garlic, we use the onion skin to make a powdered sugar on top. I can make you a main dish with an onion, it serves as a sautéed base for anything. I couldn’t live without an onion and a garlic. It is my favorite ingredient.
Is it difficult to eat well?
No, it’s the same thing, putting a little effort into it. In Spain we are very lucky that we eat very well in many places, which does not happen in the rest of the world. It is not difficult to eat well.
“I don’t know what to do with a steak, do it well grilled or grilled and that’s it. Meat is not a product that attracts my attention excessively”
What is the product that gives you the most headaches when it comes to both finding them and preparing them in the kitchen?
I work a lot of fish and vegetables and it is very difficult for me to cook meat. In the sense that well, a piece of meat is a piece of meat, I don’t know how to explain it. The return to meat is difficult for me. I currently have a meat-only dish, only one and it is a beef picaña matured for 150 days that reminds us a little of the texture of jerky, a little softer, but it has a lot of flavor of matured meat. We accompany it with a spicy pickled mussel mousseline and a seaweed pickle with the mussel’s own water and some mizuna sprouts. There I was able to turn it around a bit, apparently I’m telling you about the dish and it seems like it doesn’t stick at all, but all the spicy foods lighten the fat a little, soften it and it makes sense.
But if it doesn’t cost me that, turn it around, it’s a piece of meat. I don’t know what to do with a steak, do it well grilled or grilled and that’s it. Meat is not a product that attracts my attention excessively.
Is fish more versatile in that sense?
The fish in the end is something super delicate, but I think it is much more versatile despite its delicacy.
You were talking before that the menu and the temporality of the product were not sustainable at the beginning on a mental level. Do you have to have psychological preparation to get into cooking and start a business as young as you did?
Yeah, well, I understand it’s a lot of pressure. Not only running the restaurant, working long hours, you have a high stress level. Psychologically you have to be prepared.
This is reflected in the series The Bear (Disney +), have you been able to see it?
Yes, I saw the first season. It has brushstrokes, each kitchen is a world, I don’t think it is something so general, yes there are kitchens like that and there are people like that, but I don’t think it is so exaggerated today.
“There is a dish of mine, that if you eat it you may or may not like it, but you can’t compare it to the menu next to it, because only I have it”
Right now there are many restaurants that repeat preparations on their menus such as cochinita pibil tacos, burrata salad or gyozas, is it a trend, do you think it will pass?
Let’s hope so. It’s everyone, everyone. For our mental health, I hope so (laughs). I find it boring in that sense. Yesterday we went to dinner at one of these places, because everything was quite full and I didn’t know what I wanted to eat. In the end if you don’t have a differentiating factor, which is not that it cooks better or worse than another restaurant, but that it is a cuisine that you will not be able to find anywhere else, whether you like it more or less. There is a dish of mine, that if you eat it you may or may not like it, but you can’t compare it to the menu next to it, because only I have it.
I think that is important, since we talk about cooking again and so on, also that we return to cooking in restaurants and apply that differentiating factor because in the end we have the best pantry in the world, I think. Why are we making gyozas? Even if they are Madrid-style tripe, why? It’s like him muffin and the cupcake.
Do you think we have the best products in Spain?
Yes, I think so and the best gastronomy too. In Spain you can find paella, fideúas, escudella, tripe, gazpacho. Everything you want, there is a lot. And within each autonomous community I can tell you 40 typical dishes, from all of them. In London, what do you find? ¿Fish and chips? The continental breakfast? They have nothing and we have the best gastronomy in the world without being patriotic or anything like that. Patriotic gastronomy, yes.
Now that you are going to cook at a festival like Son Estrella Galicia Posidonia, have you tried what is on offer at these events? Do you usually visit them?
Yes, I have gone to some, not to all the ones I would like because I work in hospitality and it is a little more complicated, but we have also been to three editions at Portamérica, a festival where music and gastronomy are also mixed and they give it a lot of value. to gastronomy and we are a little used to it.
Source: www.huffingtonpost.es
