He is the father of
Gastrobotany
(that is, the recovery for the kitchen of forgotten or unknown vegetable varieties).
Alma de
El Invernadero
, your green haute cuisine restaurant.
And, above all, a happy chef, because
Rodrigo de la Calle
(Madrid, 1976), that boy who had a "
trauma with cauliflower" and who now drives him crazy
, feels that he hit the road, even though it sometimes turned tortuous.
A little over seven years ago, when his first project in Madrid failed, someone told him "stop suffering and assume that what you do is what most cooks
will do in 25 years
. You're going to take sticks with you, and This won't be the first time you've failed. " That someone was
Joël Robuchon
, the French chef who had more than thirty Michelin stars and one of the most influential names in modern cuisine.
And what was Rodrigo proposing then?
Well, the same as now in El Invernadero:
dignify vegetables
.
"They are the absolute protagonists of the dishes and animal protein, a seasoning", explains the Madrilenian.
He tells that he has suffered his own for opening roads, not on the sea, as the poet would say, but on the orchard.
"
Twice my business has gone out of business
for wanting to make greens and vegetables and put meat and fish aside."
Rodrigo, left, with part of his team.
Vegetables, fruits and mushrooms as kings of the dishes and meat and fish as accompaniments. The world upside down? It will be a long time before animal protein ceases to be the protagonist, if that ever happens. I started because I was happier cooking vegetables, it had nothing to do with the weather. In the end, the circle closes and you realize that you are an ecological cook and that all the things that are positive for the planet, you have been doing for more than 15 years. The list to open in Spain a haute cuisine restaurant with a vegetarian menu as standard, not because a diner asks for it. The first with a gluten-free menu. The first to offer non-alcoholic pairings. The first haute cuisine restaurant without a maitre d 'or waiters and where chefs serve ...Also a pioneer with wines? We were the first to have a menu with only organic, biodynamic or sulphite-free, natural references. In the last five years I have been determined to suppress wine as the fundamental harmony of food. 80% of my clients order the drinks that we make. People in the world of wine have laughed at me, I have heard that I would never achieve a Michelin star because I do not have a champagne menu ... And now, suddenly, they start to make alternative pairings and, some of those that before They ignored me, they tell me they love them.People in the world of wine have laughed at me, I have heard that I would never achieve a Michelin star because I do not have a champagne menu ... And now, suddenly, they start to make alternative pairings and, some of those that before They ignored me, they tell me they love them.People in the world of wine have laughed at me, I have heard that I would never achieve a Michelin star because I do not have a champagne menu ... And now, suddenly, they start to make alternative pairings and, some of those that before They ignored me, they tell me they love them.
The GreenHouse.
Rodrigo making paths while walking.
"
I have played it so many times
to follow a path that would make me happy ...".
The problem, according to the chef, is in this
eagerness to label
.
"When someone talks about me or comes to El Invernadero they don't know how to classify
us
.
We are not vegetarians
, nor an
omnivorous
restaurant
to use
, nor a la carte, nor a dining room without meat or fish, because there is ... We try to make people happy. everyone, "he points out.
He continues: "I think we are the only dining room that strictly follows the
Mediterranean diet
, eating fruits, vegetables and legumes and as a food supplement -and occasionally during the week- fish and meat. So much talk about the diet and there is still people who think that is what
is eaten on the shores of the Mediterranean
".
Pickled zucchini.
He personally started a green revolution in the kitchen, and today, hand in hand with sustainability and ecology, it seems to be in fashion ... Now I feel less alone. There are more and more colleagues who are going the way that we open. I am glad I did not do it in vain and I also like to claim that, by right, we are the pioneers in this type of cuisine in Spain. I would have preferred to have it a little easier ... Yes. Even today I still suffer from the lack of customers, journalists , of cooks ... who refer to me as the one with the vegetables or say that they are going to be hungry ... Comments that I do not hear from other colleagues. They give me a wax that is not normal. Why? I think I take everyone out of their comfort zone.If there is one thing that I have achieved in El Invernadero, it is that people come to eat vegetables without necessarily being vegetarian, and that is the success. I have never said that you should stop eating meat or fish, or that butcher shops or fishmongers should be closed. It is about betting on what makes each one happy. It is a question of respect, the key word. Mine is one more offer. And what is it? The Vegetalia menu, where animal protein is the dressing; for example, we have it in a rice made with a mussel broth and in a chicken broth for a hot and sour soup of wild asparagus. Then, a kind of Vegetalia menu with the option of ending with a fish dish or a meat dish -represents 10% of the total menus-. And another for vegetarians and vegans. In addition, 80% of our recipes are gluten-free,we make our bread ... We are the restaurant most open to all audiences that I know.
Beetroot tartare.
Something that makes him a happy cook.
Reasons are not lacking.
After more than 26 years in gastronomy, "I have managed, not without problems, to have
my
own style
and I have realized that this was the way to go. There were times when I cooked only thinking about the client, fashion or giving what It is always served in a dining room and I was not happy. Today I am: I have the restaurant I want; I cook what I want; I have
my own rules
and I break the pre-established rules if they bother me and I plan to continue doing so if that makes us happy. my clients and me. For example, why can't you go to a Michelin star in a T-shirt and sneakers or eat with your hands? "
He continues with the argument: "Or why are the waiters dressed in Armani and the tables with linen tablecloths? I respect that, but for me they are superfluous rules that I am eliminating from my house. In fact, when I opened it I prepared two lists, One with what made me happy and the other with what I did not. 95% of what
I disliked had to do with the dining room
. For example, the world of wine. We hoteliers have been the commercials of the wineries all our lives. .. I think the next step in El Invernadero will be to put references without labels or directly say I have white, red or pink. If you trust what I put on your plate, you will have to do it with what I put in your glass ". Rodrigo in its purest form.
You know the way, but getting to it has not been easy, and since childhood it was clear that his was the kitchen.
He wanted to be a footballer and a priest
, he sang rap and danced hip hop, but what
he liked the
most
was eating.
At home, food and rituals came naturally.
His father, a farmer, would arrive with bags full of the products he collected in the fields and they would cook them together.
"Without realizing it, they showed me the vegetables of each season, and
seeing my father growing them has been magical
."
Aubergines with chanterelles, in El Invernadero.
He ate - and eats - everything, even vegetables that "squeaky": green beans, red cabbage, cabbage and especially cauliflower, with which he had a trauma, although today it drives him crazy. "I think it was more because of the
overcooking and how
my mother
seasoned them
, whom I love madly, but who did not have the love of cooking that my father and I had," he recalls today.
Your first course? With the help of his father, a
Chinese Mandarin flan
. And solo? "The evolution of that flan: a chocolate one, I'm already breaking the rules," he smiles. I was 8 years old. The love for the kitchen had already sprouted and began to grow during a visit from the school, at the age of 13 or 14, to a hospitality school. "When I returned home I said that I wanted to be a cook. My father looked me up and down and said no, that after having taken my grandparents' hotel and seeing how sacrificed the hospitality industry was, I had to do
BUP and study a career
".
But he was planted in the BUP, because Rodrigo, who cooked and decided the menu when he went to the country with friends,
secretly enrolled
in the Aranjuez Hospitality School. The dirty clothes and the smell of cooking soon gave him away. "My parents were very angry about the deception, but they were also proud because I was fighting for what I wanted."
He finished his academic training and went through kitchens like Lhardy's.
"People were already beginning to talk about Ferran Adrià, and at school they taught us that in order to
make modern cuisine
, you first had to master the traditional one, so I went to
Casa Lhardy
. I made his famous stew, international cuisine, especially French .. I was so happy that after internship I ended up working there. "
Then more dining rooms came.
"They said it was an ass with a bad seat. What happened is that after a while they didn't bring me anything new, and I wondered if I was doing what I liked," evokes that stage.
They make their own bread.
That crisis led him to Elche
, where the germ of what is now his kitchen was forged. He entered the Huerto de Cura hotel, and there he met his
other green soul
:
Santiago Orts
. "I have always liked the world of vegetables, but the idea of breaking the rules was not yet in my head. Santiago told me about his project to recover endangered vegetables and we began to work, as two friends,
fully on Gastrobotany
".
He was among those when, in 2003, he landed at
Andoni Luis Aduriz's
Mugaritz
, "already infected, because of Santiago, with the green issue," explains De la Calle. "There I understood that I needed to work with
herbs, with flowers, with vegetables
...", relates the chef, who, paradoxes of life, was
head of the meat department
in the Guipuzcoan restaurant. With Aduriz he opened his mind to vegetable cuisine;
Quique Dacosta
showed him the secrets of rice and new aesthetic and avant-garde concepts and
Paco Torreblanca
, the rigor of the technique in confectionery. And
Martin Berasategui
? "From him I learned not only to cook, but also to be a chef and an entrepreneur, to lead teams, to manage. He is the most complete cook in Spain. On a personal and professional level, he is
my teacher
, because he has taught me all the keys to a restaurant ".
And finally, in 2007, after 36 restaurants in 12 years behind him, the road stopped in Aranjuez, where he opened his own store.
"The concept was what would later be called a gastrobar, a quality bar upstairs and a small dining room downstairs. It was a
restaurant to feed a town
. I remember that in the first menu there was gazpacho with scallops, vegetables in tempura, Duck breast with orange, lots of rice ... After filming, I started with the Gastrobotánica menu. The first two years I sold 12 or 13 of those menus, half to my family "... And one to a food critic .
The Barbecho restaurant, in Majadahonda.
The snowball -as he likes to say- began to grow: 2009, Revelation Cook at Madrid Fusión, where he presented the Gastrobotany concept together with Orts. 2011,
Michelin star.
2012, created the concept of "Green Revolution", with its most radical menu: fruits, vegetables and mushrooms and animal protein as a seasoning. 2013, he moved to Madrid. "I thought that if I had achieved a star
selling vegetables
in Aranjuez, in a super-luxury hotel we would achieve the second". The star did not arrive, but his
first professional failure
, 2014. "I usually look at the positive in things, so in that hotel he stayed locked up, never to see him again, 95% of my ego."
What did appear again were his doubts.
"I was tired of being questioned, of being asked why I cooked only with vegetables, of being called a sectarian."
But he silenced his uncertainties a year later by opening
El Invernadero
(Collado Mediano, Madrid).
"I became radicalized, I removed meat and fish, I left only menus with vegetables and I opted for
fermented drinks
."
And again Robuchon, whom Rodrigo advised on green cooking:
"It is too early for what you are doing
. If you succeed, it will be in a few years, and the road will be tortuous," he said.
One of the proposals of its delivery, Verdelivery.
Three years later, in 2018, El Invernadero re-emerged successfully in Madrid (Ponzano, 85). And now, once the worst moments of the
pandemic are over
, it seems to have taken hold. "I thought
we were going down for the third time
, and we opted to start the delivery (Verdelivery) with my two most powerful things, vegetables and rice." Two Barbechos have been added to this, one in Madrid and the other in Majadahonda, a gastrobar with quality tapas and rice dishes. In September Virens could reopen, a little piece of El Invernadero at the Almanac hotel in Barcelona.
And Rodrigo, making his way, has reached
China
.
"We had two venues, one inside a stadium that the government has demolished and that we are now building."
Today, happy chef, you know what to answer those who asked you why you only cook vegetables: "There are people who are happy and go crazy throwing grilled matured cow loins; I
go crazy chopping a snow peas
, steaming some asparagus or a zucchini ice cream. Everyone is happy with what they are and I plan to continue like this. I will not change. "
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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