El Lince, the new place of Javi Estévez where the offal gives up (a little) its prominence

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Chance sometimes plays very good tricks.

(Madrid, 1983) knows it well.

When he started looking for a place to open his second restaurant in Madrid, he found a space to which too many things attached him.

"Fortuitously, we found out that in the 1960s they worked on

as well. They made Roman brains, sweetbreads and tripe," he says excitedly.

Named

and located at

, the place captivated the chef from Madrid, who decided to call his restaurant, opened just a few weeks ago,

.

"The truth is that we couldn't come up with a name that we liked and it seemed nice to keep it."

They have recovered even the original neon and now they want to find old photos to bring life to the walls.

Estévez

, who sneaked into many homes through

-he participated in the first edition-, discovered the offal during his stage at

and saw that there was an unexplored vein in it.

"I found the niche without being very aware that there was one," he says.

In 2014 he opened

(Duque de Sesto, 48), where offal and viscera have been the undisputed protagonists of the menu until today.

"At first I thought that having gone on television could penalize me."

He was wrong.

"Before I was elected Revelation Chef 2016 at

,

(Echaurren. Two Michelin stars) asked me to do a four hands". The echo of that put him on the radar of the gastronomic world. "There are times when I look back and think: the one we have messed up".

Cheek briocheTHE WORLD

Putting

in haute cuisine has been a challenge;

in 2019, in Lisbon, he got

.

"There are many people who continue to say that it is very cheap. And it is if we compare it with shellfish or meat. But we must also take into account that the offal requires more processing and more numerous teams to clean it, shred it... ".

From the beginning, he worked for lovers of this cuisine, but also with the hope of bringing it closer to the most reluctant.

"The other day a family came to

and her mother approached me to tell me that her children had eaten wonderfully and that they had loved it."

There is no better compliment than that.

Probably, they tried the mythical suckling pig's head confit at low temperature all night and then fried for about five minutes.

"There are customers, especially foreigners, who

it. We always encourage them to do it with their hands and they freak out."

Or the

stew , another of her

, and the only one that has remained in her new eating house.

"The

is present in the menu, it is part of our essence, but we make it simpler and with a different approach," he explains.

He didn't see much point in replicating what he already did.

There are

,

and

, but also

,

,

and

.

"We have also incorporated the salad", adds the chef, who studied at the

and took

at

(by

) and

(by

).

Later he was part of

restaurant

(one Michelin star) and landed at

.

Of the desserts at El Lince, the strawberries with cream (they have nothing to do with what you are imagining) are a house brand.

They have, by the way, half portions of almost everything and that is always a plus point.

Salad.

one of the new additions to the menu. THE WORLD

's new adventure,

he is not alone.

"I jumped in because I had a trustworthy team around me."

The head chef is Adrián Collantes, who worked six years at

as a second;

At the head of the room is the

, who has also been in charge of decorating the premises.

"She has eaten the whole play by herself."

The one that has brought to light a story that revolved around the offal and today it does it again, although with a menu (average price: 45 euros) loaded with many other pleasant surprises.

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