Koldo Royo, the Michelin star chef who cooks for hungry queues

• LOLA SAMPEDRO

  @LolaSampedro

  Palm

Updated Sunday, 4 October 2020 - 08:27

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"This is hell's kitchen."

sweats while cutting green beans, but the hell he refers to has nothing to do with the heat of these stoves.

The Michelin star chef refers to another, a much worse one, getting bigger and bigger, the one who

every day

in Palma.

If before they fed 300 people, now there are more than 800: "And in two months it will be triple."

.

"Now is when you have to get wet. A lot of Instagram, a lot of photos ... but you have to lean your shoulder," says Royo without stopping cooking, he has finished with the beans and has to shake a giant pot of stew with vigor.

This 62-year-old Basque chef has so many gastronomic awards that there are no fingers on his hands to count them.

Michelin star, Spanish culinary champion, fifth in the Bocuse d'Or World Championship ... In 2009 he closed his restaurant in Palma and changed his life to become a pioneer of

in Spain.

Now he dedicates himself to gastronomic advice, to his website

, to preside over the Association of Cooks Based in the Balearic Islands (ASCAIB) and to "pitch in" for the hungry.

The day these lines are written, any Wednesday of this pandemic crisis that has only just begun, he went into the kitchen of the Tardor Association at 7 in the morning and will not leave until 11.

Before helping in Tardor, Royo cooked in solidarity in the old prison in Palma, in the Es Pinaret juvenile center and after the floods in Sant Llorenç, his "first important action".

The Basque chef shows EL MUNDO the rudimentary stoves of the soup kitchen, which has had to resort to portable stoves due to the large increase in demand, and insists on calling for volunteers:

This is a tiring job and so that people do not get so tired and want to come, we have to be a hundred and rotate with shifts of only one day a week. It is very important Let volunteers come, we don't give enough, this is like a war kitchen. And let it be clear that here we only use fresh food, not like in Madrid, which gave junk food. "

Tiago Lima and Alfonso Robledo, in the kitchen of the Tardor dining room.ALBERTO VERA

Most of those who come there because they are hungry are cooks, waiters, assholes ... restaurant workers who have been left with nothing to eat by the pandemic.

Beside him,

cooks large bowls of lasagna.

This Brazilian has worked with some of the best chefs in the world:

... In January he invested all the money he had in opening his own restaurant in Palma, two months later, the pandemic paralyzed the world and he lost everything.

"From one day to the next, I found myself on the street and without any possibility of finding a job. I used to live well, now I have had to sell everything, even my mobile," says Lima how he had to close it and leave the apartment in the who lived with his partner.

Now she lives with some friends and he lives in a room at the

He enters the kitchen of the soup kitchen every day at five in the morning and leaves at nine at night;

in return, he can have breakfast, lunch and dinner and they give him 50 euros a week.

. Now there is no work, there is nothing at all, I see it every day,

You have to help anyway, although I'm not going to lie, I end the day very tired, this is exhausting. I also come because I need to do something, be busy. If I stop to think about what happens, I will go crazy ", he is sincere while The rest of the volunteers continue peeling potatoes, stirring the pots, receiving boxes of food that the companies bring in solidarity to the dining room.

Lima explains the situation without softening it, with all the bitterness that comes from this crisis:

Beside him,

, president of

, nods while peeling onions: "That's right, I realized when we went to cook in the old prison, a man approached me, told me he was a waiter and asked me for a job It made a big impact on me because right away I saw that many of those who were there for food are colleagues in the restaurant industry and I cannot sit idly by, it touches me very closely ".

The soup kitchen of the Tardor Association.ALBERTO VERA

Tiago Lima has worked with some of the best chefs in the world: Dabiz Muñoz, Dani García, René Redzepi ... In January he invested all the money he had in opening his own restaurant and the pandemic took everything from him.

300 kilos of food per day

Toni Bauzá

is (along with Jonny Darder) founder of the

.

The two friends created it in 2013 so that "people who have nothing could come to eat with dignity, sitting at a table."

With the pandemic, the tables have disappeared, the dining room is full of boxes of food and the food is distributed in tuppers, just in the month of September 2,500 euros were spent on those disposable plastic containers and "in a few months it will be much more" .

"It is not feasible for them to come with their own, many have nowhere to wash them and we have to make sure that what they are going to eat is put into a hygienic container," explains Bauzá.

In this soup kitchen every day 40 kilos of rice, another 40 of pasta, 150 kilos of vegetables and 60 kilos of meat are cooked.

"Right now it is terrible, but in a few months it will be terrifying. There is aid, but it is insufficient, you have to do something else or it will be unsustainable. The Minimum Living Income of 430 euros is insufficient, to be able to eat you have to live on the street" , Explain.

The

addition to this soup kitchen, has a food bank and a 48-seat housing center where they serve people in social exclusion, with low income, what they call 0.0, that is, people without problems of alcohol or drugs and with an income of less than 500 euros per month.

Soon, they will open another with three floors with capacity to house 80 people and the one that they now have open will become only for single-parent families, where they will also help in the care of the children when the mothers have to go out to look for work.

In total, at the moment, the association serves 1,458 families (almost 4,000 people, of which 842 are children and 159 babies).

When Bauzá explains how much it costs to help so many people,

emphasizes that "all this is private initiative, it can be done because there are many foundations, associations and companies that contribute".

Meanwhile, the food boxes keep coming, some volunteers unload them;

others already fill today's tuppers with food.

The cooks continue in the kitchen, there are still several hours of work ahead.

The Michelin star chef keeps stirring the pot and, without looking up from the broth, describes it all: "This is a battlefield."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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