Miguel A. Palomo Madrid

Madrid

Updated Tuesday, February 20, 2024-00:24

Getting out of the front line of starred gastronomy has been good for him. He is still limping from an untimely foot injury, but he is

Paco Patón

(Madrid, 1967), he does not know how to stop and he seems happy. The day on this shore of the Fleming Coast begins for the current head of the

Fonda de la Confianza

by entering wine references into the computer. Soon the restaurant will warm up and with the apron on the

historic waiter

- he is still young, forgive us - will go around the tables cutting ham or preparing

crêpes suzette

.

In front of Sacha and five minutes from Ugo Chan, the century-old wild olive tree replanted by chef Jean-Pierre Vandelle as a landmark to locate his memorable

El Olivo

survives . Patón made it his own in the spring of 2021 to undertake

his first major personal project

after leaving behind a successful career at the Urban hotel and beyond.

It was not his first choice: "I wanted to open a bar because I also stew, something small, quick and simple with a griddle in the foreground, a Japanese knife, Iberian meats and braised cheeks. In the end we saw this place that had been emblematic and I fell in love" . After El Olivo, no restaurant had taken off, they gave it six months.

"We've been there for three years and we're full

," he says proudly.

Prominent people from the neighborhood and many

locals

come to the Fonda to eat comfortable dishes, some infrequent without the need to aspire to excellence. Pickles, offal, dry rice such as rabbit and snails, desserts such as the colonel made in the room with vodka and cava.

"Now everyone makes tiradito and fusion but beans and paella are fusion

," he claims. He drinks fortified wines for which he feels a weakness and with which in cocktail format he remembers the pioneering years of the Glass Bar, where he hired the bartender Carlos Moreno.

That happened and Paco confirms the liberation:

"I stopped being happy, I had lost my essence

. "

Travel, balancing numbers, a lot of rigidity and pressure at the Cebo restaurant stage. "I was losing contact with the client, receiving them, asking about their children, what I had done all my life. Here I have resumed my job." He has accumulated more than forty years in it.

It all started in the early 80s, times of little work and a lot of heroin. 110 meters from here, he began to scrub in the Italian Darenzo, where El Frontón II was later. He discovered the lights and shadows of a job that allowed him to remove the stars of the moment, like Ana Belén, from TV.

"For a kid from Vallecas it was like being in Hollywood

," he recalls with emphasis. He went to Switzerland to learn and earn money, which was missing at home. With an absent father and a pregnant sister, he served as head of the family, with the military involved.

He wanted to go to London but he met his wife and mother of his children, so he ended up opening La Trovata recommended by José Jiménez Blas, from

Zalacaín

. "Blas was God and Jorge Juan was not yet Jorge Juan." That place was huge, with Fabio Morisi as head chef and fourteen waiters, including him. "But the owner told me that it was obvious that I was carrying the baton in my backpack. And where, ma'am, I don't see it?"

At the age of 21, he opted for Patón and started having fun in the room. From there to Paradís, where the generation that ran the country, politicians and general directors who had not turned 50, ate 200 times a year. She continued traveling the world,

opening Millesimé in Mexico, a tapas bar in Nairobi

when he had already stopped at the Villa Real, more classic, and the Urban, more groundbreaking hotels. They were crazy years in which Patón was transcendental and for which he won the

National Gastronomy Award for Best Room Director in 2003

. "I had been wanting to do something like this my whole life and my boss allowed me to do it," he admits.

He removed the tablecloths, for the first time the waiters sported tattoos, he took the

party from the Glass Bar

, where the champagne flowed - eleven thousand bottles a month - to the first hotel rooftop in memory. "It's not that they were New York trends, it's that I paid attention and learned by being silent, I was amazed by those who came from outside, it was a golden era that I don't know if it will be repeated."

The

Urban

was a turning point for a new Madrid modernity that returned to cosmopolitan luxury without protocols. "You arrived at two in the morning and it was a party,

people weren't sleeping

, you didn't have to go out, it was an amusement park for adults." In that climate of the economic Champions League, "we thought we were the host, we made a lot of money, there was a lot of joy", the magician Patón emptied himself: "That was tremendous, I slept 200 nights in the hotel and I went to work three days in a row "

I would get into a hot tub and when it cooled I would wake up to function again

."

Everything has changed. Madrid, still frenetic but less spontaneous. Paco himself, who no longer alternates, although service continues to be everything for him and he is worried about intrusiveness and lack of desire. "Food is the senses but we also provide service, which are the feelings with which you treat a person, you receive them and look them in the eyes. That cannot be faked. We have to make people happy.

In the end I am Paco Patón, waiter by vocation

."

DNA

  • When he started the Fonda, he ended up sleeping in a room because he didn't have enough money to rent. She now lives above the restaurant.

  • Integrates disabled personnel into its team.

  • He does not believe in immediate return, in personnel shortcuts or in lowering quality.