Alberto Chicote: "The Michelin Guide is a list with numbers and I don't like numbers"

Last Sunday, like almost everyone lately, Alberto Chicote (Madrid, 1969) prepared one of his rice dishes "with things" at home.

"I open the fridge and depending on what I have I make one or the other: I made this one with some chanterelles, some peas...".

It is his day of rest;

the one reserved for family and friends.

"

".

He has been immersed for a month and a half in the recording of the new season of 'Nightmare in the kitchen' (La Sexta), the eighth, and from Monday to Friday he travels around the national geography trying to refloat hospitality businesses that are failing .

"

". On Monday a car picks him up at 6 in the morning and lands back on Friday at 10 pm. "It is hard and exhausting work, but also very rewarding.

There are much more pleasant formats where you don't have to tell people to their faces what they don't want to hear," he comments sarcastically. After two years without recording due to the pandemic, he says he is more eager than ever. "Coming back is always exciting ". Thrust is always left over.

What does 'Nightmare in the kitchen' say about the hospitality industry in our country? The first thing it says is that

, that there are people who work in restaurants because they thought it was a refuge at one point in their lives.

And this is not that grain of gold that is going to become a bargain without having to work.

And he also says that there are many people with a very big heart but with little experience in feeding others.

When he's recording, he practically says "goodbye to the world".

This interview, he clarifies, is "an exception": "I have to be very fresh; it is a job that demands a lot and there is usually no second chance to record things."

We caught him in Camarzana de Tera (Zamora) before going to eat at a restaurant in the area that he already has signed up for.

In what do you consider to have been a pioneer? Culinary, when Nodo opened in 1999, there was no restaurant in Madrid with that concept of fusion.

Then there was no internet as we understand it now.

I would take a plane and go to London, buy books and go into Chinese stores to look for products that had labels only in Chinese.

I didn't even know what I was buying.

I would bring them here and start testing them.

In the world of television,

.

Until then, the cooking programs were seen in the morning.

I am proud because there I opened a huge path to other programs. What is the best and worst thing about working on TV?

The best thing has been discovering a trade for which I had not prepared myself and with which I really enjoy.

I am about to celebrate the tenth anniversary since I started working on TV, something that did not fit into my scenario of things to do.

I had done some didactic cooking program, where you tell how you do things, but facing a program like 'Nightmare' was another story.

.

We have learned to celebrate and get together more at home.

He still doesn't know why when the counselor at his school in Carabanchel asked him where he wanted to direct his professional career, he told him that he wanted to be a cook.

"It's something I still wonder about. I was under the impression that it could be cool to go a step further than cooking once in a while with my mother."

At that time, getting into the kitchen did not have the current good press.

"

", he affirms emphatically.

Chicote made a hole at Easter for the photo session at the Vallehermoso Market.

He enrolled in the Casa de Campo Hospitality School and has been on the job since he was 17.

"

."

At 52 he has become a media star, he is a grandfather, he has written a few cookbooks and shortly -he does not dare to give an exact date given the circumstances- he opens with his partner Inma Núñez -she is the head of the room- restaurant in Madrid, Omeraki.

"We have chosen a shitty moment to set it up", he says with resignation, "

". The thing about speaking clearly has not abandoned him over the years, although now he avoids some (just some) puddles.

Was the hospitality industry too much of a victimizer during the pandemic? Well, I don't know.

What I do know is that there were many people in the trade who pushed a lot at that time, who were very attentive to lending a hand to everyone who needed it and I also tell you that no one has thanked them.

And that makes me quite angry.

.

He defends that the hotel industry has always adapted to the needs of the public and "that's how it will continue to be: as I tell my kids from Omeraki, there are many places to go in Madrid.

."

He feeds his networks with the progress of the restaurant, either with the oven that has just arrived or the staff that is joining the team.

He also talks about books, cinema and photography, his other passions.

The pandemic has shaken the sector very hard and that has caused changes in form, but also in substance.

"There will be new things, others that until the day before yesterday seemed wonderful to us, today they are useless. In the end,

, we do what people demand of us."

Last September, coinciding with the fact that he was recording in London, he went around the city to see what was going on there.

"I found that most places had the music on full blast, it was like half-dark clubs where people go to eat."

The trend is not that it drives her crazy, but she knows that you have to observe a lot to make fewer mistakes.

"I personally do not like the concept, but I have to say that they were full and charging a fortune, with which, maybe I am the one who is wrong. And I do not say it for my pleasure."

By the way, they still don't like eggs.

And it won't be because he hasn't tried.

"I can't handle them. I'm compromising a bit more, but I still can't have a fried or poached egg."

And he pulls pragmatism.

"

; the courage that we associate with throwing eggs at things is not always going to bring the best results."

What is a Michelin star? I have no idea because I have never been given one.

I will tell you, and this may sound pedantic, that it

.

For me a star is a rating.

Based on what?

Does anyone think it appropriate that you have to enter a list?

The Michelin guide is a list with numbers and I don't like numbers, I like reviews.

I like that they tell me where to eat in Benavente, whether or not it has a star.

If you measure the joy that a star can give you, it is not at all comparable to what it means to take it away from you.

I want to be a star in the minds of my clients, so that when they leave my house, they do so thinking that they will come back as soon as they can. Why do women continue to find it difficult to reach haute cuisine?

In the professional kitchen, when I started in 1987, it was very difficult to see a woman.

Now there are more and more, fortunately, and in increasingly prominent positions.

The way of cooking of a man and a woman is different.

Theirs is a more sensitive, sensible and attractive kitchen than ours.

A woman always has more things to tell.

.

She tells me that it is because she is a woman, because she is required twice as much as a man.

It is a case that I have spoken with many colleagues and we agree.

If that were the reason, it would be embarrassing. Who sings the forty?

My wife.

When she tells me 'Chicote', better listen.

There aren't a lot of people that I give permission to do, I mean there aren't a lot of people that I listen to.

There are my wife, my brother, my parents, my wife's children and some lifelong friend.

What does she rebel against?Especially in the face of lack of encouragement, laziness, arms down, easy complaints and not putting everything you are on the table.

and neither do people who are not willing to fight for their future. What makes you red? Being caught giving up, especially when I cook.

Many years ago, Salvador Gallego, a boss I had, told me to always try things, a thousand times.

He sacrifices your stomach before your pride, he repeated to me.

If someone returns a dish to you because it wasn't right, you're going to want to die of embarrassment.

And it is so.

All chefs return dishes to us in a restaurant for different reasons, but not because you have not done the testing. TV, social networks, restaurant... What wears out the most?

(Laughter) I try to stay away from some discussions that I can't participate in, mostly because that would take a lot of time and I don't have it.

I am the one who manages my social networks, both Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

I do not have a '

community manager' to do it for me.

There are many people who want to contact you, who want to ask you a question about a recipe, who want to ask you something... I don't get to everything right away and there are things I answer later. What percentage of luck, sacrifice and effort would you say has there been in your career?

I'm not going to deny fortune, even if I don't believe in it.

It seems somewhat pedantic to me to say that everything has been effort and dedication.

Most of it has been the latter, but it is true that it was a fortune that someone saw me and proposed me to do television.

sacrifice and effort would you say there has been in your career?

I'm not going to deny fortune, even if I don't believe in it.

It seems somewhat pedantic to me to say that everything has been effort and dedication.

Most of it has been the latter, but it is true that it was a fortune that someone saw me and proposed me to do television.

sacrifice and effort would you say there has been in your career?

I'm not going to deny fortune, even if I don't believe in it.

It seems somewhat pedantic to me to say that everything has been effort and dedication.

Most of it has been the latter, but it is true that it was a fortune that someone saw me and proposed me to do television.

When it comes to choosing three adjectives that define him, he doesn't hesitate: "

".

He explains: "I define myself with what is good because I have a fairly good esteem for myself, things as they are."

From his parents, to whom he has a very good relationship, he learned the most important lesson: "

and with whom others would like to share something of their life' I took it very seriously and it's something I don't stop working on"

.

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