Alberto Chicote's key to maintaining his marriage "If you fight with someone you love, you're an asshole"
Alberto Chicote
.
Madrid, 1969. The chef presents
Cocina de Resistencia
, a book that emerged in confinement with the aim of not wasting anything.
He takes television fame naturally, but assumes that something, perhaps everything, has changed.
An avant-garde cook pulling out a survival recipe book. Is it a declaration of principles?
This book is not born from the need to make a book, it arises from "we are going to give a hand to the people who during confinement have to cook for seven days, morning and night, and their repertoire is running out." There is no canonical recipe, it is about seeing what you can do with what you have in the fridge. This is the Russian salad that I have made today, but tomorrow I will make another one because I don't have shrimp and I am not going to stop making a salad because I am missing one of the elements that I usually put on it. I'll do it another way and get out of the way. That is the essence and it is what my wife and I did during confinement.
In other words, you spend 30 years without stopping at home and, when they force you to stay, you start cooking. It is obsession.
It's very simple: I like to cook, I love it. Look, one thing that they ask me a lot, that you have to be old, is why I cook at home, if my wife doesn't cook. Well yes, my wife cooks, but I cook faster. I give myself more shine and it takes less time to chop an onion. There are times when we get together and there are times when, to get ahead, I get on my own.
You could also have watched series like the rest of the world.
I saw some, read a lot, painted a lot and did a lot of exercise, because I have a tape at home and I would go up there to give it. In fact, that time was the one that I dedicated to the series, because to me getting on the tape without anything else seems boring, but I put on a chapter or a movie and I already make my hour and a half.
Your mother's role in this book is very important.
When I start to look back, to think about what many of these recipes remind me of, they take me to my house. There it was my mother who cooked, but my brother and I participated in that, we helped. My father was out all day, working in the chocolate factory, and my mother was in charge of doing all those things that were part of her job as a domestic engineer, which is what she told us it was. And it's true.
In the 80s, cooking was not the phenomenon that it is now or a common hobby among kids, how did you get so involved?
It's just that for me it wasn't a hobby, it wasn't something we did to entertain ourselves: we did it to help our mother. What happens is true that I had fun making donuts or when my mother said that you had to make breadcrumbs because we already had a lot of gun asses that had run dry. But for me it was never that fun thing. Our mother used to tell us: "Kids, let's help out." And we put on.
And how did you jump from chore to career?
It's funny because I never knew why I became a cook. One day I'm going to go psychoanalyze to see if I find out. I do remember that in a professional orientation of those that they did in the institutes, the one who was in charge of that in the school told me that he believed that I should dedicate myself to something related to image and sound in the technical aspect. And I replied that it sounded good to me, that it could be cool, but if I wanted to be a cook, what would I have to do? And the uncle told me that there was a hospitality school in the Casa de Campo in Madrid, which was the only one then, and if I later wanted to study haute cuisine, I would have to go to Lausanne, Switzerland.
You found the most knowledgeable restoration counselor in the world.
You see, man, look at that time. I was blown away because what was that about cooking and haute cuisine? I had not set foot in a restaurant beyond the weddings, baptisms and communions of the family. I am from Carabanchel Alto, I did not go out on Sundays to eat at restaurants. And he said to me: "Man, Alberto, don't you think it's the same to be cooking in a restaurant here in the neighborhood than at the Palace Hotel?" Conclusion, I thought "host, how cool" and, on top of that, I had to go to study outside that sounded super cool, so I decided to try. I just made the request and they caught me still I don't know how.
For? Because when I entered there were 42 of us and everyone wondered who you knew, because being that the only hospitality school in the whole country there were hosts and everyone had turned to someone. I had only taken my grades, which weren't particularly good either, and they took me, but with a surname like mine, everyone thought it was something from Perico Chicote and that was my plug. But nothing at all.
Maybe those at school also thought so and they caught you for that. You know, I didn't ask just in case. Of those 42 that we started, we finished 11 ... and until today.
That separation of kitchen and haute cuisine, is it so real? No, it is not. We tend to tag even the dog. This is avant-garde, tradition, haute cuisine, Spanish cuisine, Central European, Basque ... I try to avoid them because I value cuisine not in terms of haute cuisine or what is supposed to be not high, I don't know what the hell you can call it but in terms of emotion. Why is one dish classified as haute cuisine and another not? Why is the work of one restaurant classified that way and that of another not? It is possible that some chicken cannelloni will make you more excited than a puturrú of foie. In the end, everything is much simpler. It is a matter of having a basic academic knowledge of how things are done, and then a personal and particular development based on what you know and what you want to do. What's more,We cannot forget that anything that is traditional today was avant-garde at some point. The
Chocolate
coulant
was created by Michel Bras 40 years ago and that went around the world, it was the host, what a marvel ... Now you buy it in any supermarket. That guy has managed to get a dish from a huge three-star Michelin restaurant and the mother who gave him birth to go to the supermarket shelf and to anyone's house.
Going to expensive restaurants, and telling about it, has become the national sport. How have you experienced that boom from within? There have been several factors that lead us to this point. Suddenly, and I don't know exactly why, the physical figure of the guy dressed in white with the apron and the hat leaps into public view and everyone likes it. This had already happened in other countries that do not have the gastronomic tradition that we have. Before chefs were raised here, deservedly or not: in France, the United States or even the United Kingdom, which has a fairly short culinary tradition, they were already the host. Here when wealthy people went to a restaurant they never asked for the cook, they asked for the maitre d ', who was the one who sat you at the best table, told you what you had to eat and was well dressed.Nobody asked about the chef, which is a term acquired five years ago. We have been chefs all our lives and now suddenly we are chefs, it sounds a bit strange to me, really.
Does it sound strange to you that they call you a chef? Yes. I always wanted to be head of kitchen and I think I have already achieved it because I have been head of other people's kitchens and now I am head of my own kitchens. I am like the captain of my own ship. Anthony Bourdain used to say that being a head chef was like being the captain of your own pirate ship and I think it's the best comparison in the world.
It's funny what you say about the maîtres. It's pure classism: the cook was a commoner, a guy who was there to serve and shut up. 30 years ago I was working in Zalacaín and the chef was Benjamin Urdiain, who has been one of the great chefs that this country has produced, apart from the first to have three Michelin stars. If he were still active at this time, he would be at the level of Ferran (Adrià), Juan Mari (Arzak), Pedro (Subijana), one of the greatest, but he had to live another era and then the masters and lords in Zalacaín were Mr. Blas, Custodio Zamarra, the people who were attending. In all the time I was working there, I did not see Benjamin come out of the kitchen to say hello.
Does it bother you to be applauded, so to speak?
I find it quite strange, but it is something I have always done because I understand that it is part of my job: to finish the service and greet some clients, but I have felt strange and look that I am not exactly an introverted guy.
I don't care about Michelin stars.
I've never worked thinking about what to do if I want a grade
How worried are you not having a Michelin star?
Nothing, I honestly don't care about anything. When you go looking for a rating, there are certain rules that you have to follow and since I have always wanted to feel free, I have liked to do things regardless of whether the critics and inspectors of certain guides like it or not. Who reads this will say: "You say this because they have never given you anything, you bastard, if not well you would want it." I'm not saying no, but only if someone had valued the work I've done as they wanted. In that case, welcome, of course. Nobody is bitter about a sweet and, if they give it to me, I'm not going to get cool and tell them to keep it.
May the star find you and not look for the star yourself.
This is. But I have never, never, worked thinking about what I have to do if I want a qualification. The best qualification you can find is called a reservation book and it is to have it full every day for years. I swear by the most sacred, and you are looking at my face, that I do not need anything else. What's more: when I opened Yakitoro in 2014, being able to open whatever I wanted because I already had the popularity, the knowledge and the pasta, I decided to set up a 25-turkey tavern with a lot of people, a lot of noise and a lot of atmosphere. I walked through the door and it happened to me that you shit.
Are you worried that the TV star is eating the cook? The TV came to me when I was 42 years old and I have been working since I was 17. It is not because I wasted the money, but I had a life that I liked a lot: my family, my friends, my wife and I worked in what I liked. TV came to me, or so I understood it, more as a challenge than as a vital change. The initial offer was: we are going to do eight
Nightmare in the Kitchen programs
, we are going to give you so much and then we will see, my friend, because it can be a fucking good thing, but the most normal thing is that it goes wrong like 80 percent of it. the projects. Well, it went well. I have been working on this for a few years, I have fun and I combine it well with my side as a cook, although it is true that I am no longer so involved in the kitchen of the restaurant.
You have to do public relations
. Exactly. Most people don't want me to be cooking anymore, because they want me to say hello and take a picture of me. Also, since all my kitchens are made of glass and can be seen from the outside, people approach the glass as if it were a monkey cage. Everyone wants to see how Chicote's kitchen is doing, which then judges others'. From NODO, I have always liked to show the kitchen because, until we did it there, everyone assumed that it was a dirty and untidy space and no, a kitchen has to be like the jets of gold and what happens there seem like a choreography .
In other words, you have managed to make the two facets coexist well. Yes, without any problem. What has cost me the most is preserving the life that I already had, I liked it and I want to continue doing. I want to keep going to the movies or to an AC / DC concert just like I used to.
Fame, come on. Yes, but it is not serious. All I have to do is leave the house an hour before. When I was at that last AC / DC concert at the Calderón, it took two hours from when I left the car until I sat down. You have to count on it so you don't look bad and say, "I'm sorry, man, Angus Young is going to start and I can't take my picture."
Doesn't it weigh you down? In most cases, no. What happens is that there are always those who do not understand that at any given moment you are doing something else or talking to another person and you cannot attend to them. Although it seems curious, there are those who get upset with this. They are complex situations to handle, but, boy, what are we going to do, this is how it is. There is everything as in a pharmacy.
How can such an affable guy get that bad milk on TV? Do you overreact or really explode?
It all depends on the things that move you inside. For example, I don't get along with football, I don't care, but I have a good friend from Atleti who, if he loses, doesn't even call him on the phone until Tuesday or Wednesday. Do you understand that?
Yes, I could come to understand it. You see? However, that brings it fresh to me, but I see a guy who is mistreating a sole and I shit the bitch. I can't help it.
Is a lot of phony sneaking into this kitchen boom? What has happened is that we are a union in which there is a lot of interference. Why? Because we all know a guy in our neighborhood or in our town who lost his job, they gave him 50,000 bucks and he set up a bar-restaurant with his wife, because he cooked very well. I am not saying that this cannot be done, because our business is complex but we do not make airplanes either, ojito, but with a little common sense, professionalism, training and experience you can reach a certain level. The businesses we serve at
Nightmare
They don't want a Michelin star, they want to survive, feed people, pay their employees, and get ahead. Whoever gets 50,000 gets into a bar, who gets 100,000 into a restaurant and if they get 2 million, set up a hotel. But a control is necessary: for many years now, a group has claimed that in order to feed people, certain minimums must be met. If you are walking down the street and a guy you don't know shows up with a croquette in his hand, and would you eat it? No, you would tell him to fuck himself because you don't know who did it or under what conditions or what that will be. But if the same uncle, instead of there, does it here inside the restaurant, you are the one who asks for the croquette. Why? Because you take it for granted that he has training, knowledge and hygiene. Well,Well, that doesn't always happen and you have to control it.
Has Madrid been the 'paradise' for the hospitality industry defended by Isabel Díaz Ayuso or the irresponsibility indicated by the opposition? It is not a question that some areas are more paradise than others. What everyone of the trade needs, since we do not have any other type of aid, is to be able to earn your bread. As simple as that. We find ourselves in a situation in which we have to carry out business under current conditions, but with past charges, from when we did not have this scourge. I will always respect the limitations they put on me, but if my business capacity was 100% before and now it has been reduced to 25%, why do I have to pay 100% of everything else? Because then I don't get ahead. What the people of the trade claim is, one of two, or you help me in some direct way by taking away taxes or, at least,let me work. If it turns out that you don't let me work, but you charge me the same as you charged me before and if my charges in terms of maintenance, services, personnel are the same as before, how the hell do you get ahead? I'm telling you: don't go out, it's impossible.
There are studies that estimate that 20% of restaurants will be closed.
I sign it right now. They seem few to me, very few, because we will only stay alive as long as the lung that each one has is enough and the lungs are exhausted, because this business does not give as much as people think.
That's from a business standpoint, and from a security standpoint?
I can value things in business terms, in terms of health I am unable to do so. If, as we have worked in Madrid, it is crazy in health terms or it can cause a huge number of infections, I don't know and I have to trust someone who knows more than I do, which is anyone. But in business terms I do know. Things started badly since the Government says that the capacity of businesses is reduced to 50%. Why? If I have a business where my tables are already two meters apart, why do I have to remove half? Why do you say so? Wouldn't it be more logical to say that the tables have to be two meters apart? If they say that, in Yakitoro, that the tables were stuck together, I would have had to remove 80% instead of 50%, well, very good, well I screw up because I understand. But Mario Sandoval,since he already has the tables three meters away in Coque, he shouldn't have removed a single one. Damn, it's so incomprehensible that you start to think that those at the helm don't know much about what's going on.
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Nightmare in the kitchen
Alberto Chicote
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