The tortilla that earned a place on the menu of the Romero brothers' gourmet restaurant

Luis Blasco

Irene Fernández Jubitero (Video) Madrid

Madrid

Updated Saturday, March 9, 2024-00:03

• Mythical dishes (I) The secrets of Lhardy consommé

• Mythical dishes (II) The divinely inspired dessert that they create in this restaurant with 60 years of history

Sour potato, free-range eggs, onion, olive oil and salt.

Ricardo Romero

, creators of Colósimo along with his brother Mané, quickly lists five of the six ingredients with which he makes his tortilla.

The last, intangible but the most important for the Cádiz native, is "affection."

There are no large pots of pre-cooked

potatoes and onions

waiting for the order to add the beaten egg.

The tortillas are prepared "one at a time" depending on the orders, says Ricardo.

And judging by the pace at which they leave the kitchen, there is a lot of demand: "40 every day."

At 11 in the morning, there are hardly any free tables and in all of them, without exception, there is a

tortilla skewer

.

Up to 40 tortillas can come out of Colósimo's kitchen every day.

And the dish arrived at the restaurant

by chance

.

"The tortilla was not in our plans," confesses Ricardo.

"We made one for the bricklayers who were helping us with the renovation of the premises," says Ricardo.

When he tried it, his brother said: "This is very, very good."

When they opened the store, they remembered that tortilla.

They decided to put a few on the bar to attract the attention of curious people who came to see what was in what was once a

pub from the 80s

.

The Cádiz people's heads or tails bet came out heads.

"Success caught us unexpectedly," he explains.

From putting skewers on three or four tables they went to having

a queue

.

"We had people waiting at the door, queuing on the terrace," recalls Ricardo.

Colósimo's skewer.LB

All thanks to

word of mouth

, something he is "very proud of."

And the tortilla has not been on Colósimo's menu until the first days of March.

"That may have been the best marketing strategy without meaning to," Ricardo says with a laugh.

During the pandemic, Ricardo himself was in charge of distributing the tortillas that his brother made on a motorcycle.

In Colósimo they have stopped serving it to go, something they continue to do in

Menudeo

, their new location.

Each tortilla, which weighs one and a half kilos, is made with

12 Galician free-range eggs

and a good handful of onion that is poached for at least forty minutes with the potato.

Ricardo and his brother flee from the caramelized onion trend.

"The potato with the onion, like the grandmothers used to make, all in the pot," he adds.

The time that the potato and onion spend in the pan allows some of the tubers to become slightly toasted, which gives a second

texture

to the omelet.

The other key is, once the potato and onion are cooked, use their residual heat to begin to set the tortilla.

This causes the egg to begin to gain temperature and you only need to turn it

over and over

in the pan, which is over high heat.

This prevents the tortilla from spilling when you open it, something that Ricardo doesn't like.

The success of the tortilla is such that they have even offered the brothers to open a branch in

Barcelona

, ​​a market stall or take it to London.

But they both rule it out.

"We are happy with what we do," confesses Ricardo.

"Why do you want to win three times more if you are going to destroy history," he adds.

"Greed destroys businesses," he says.

Ricardo eats a pincho every day, as a kind of

quality control

.

"And you don't get tired," he says.

He is even able to tell which of his workers cooked it that day by the size of the potato cut or the condition of the chickens.

"In summer, they are out of the cages and drink more water," he explains, which is why the eggs are less yellow and a little more liquid and the omelet costs a little more to make.

From Andalusia to Madrid

Both brothers are trained at the Conil hospitality school, where their mother, their great inspiration, invited them to sign up given the interest they had in cooking.

After finishing training, Ricardo and his brother worked in a store.

He later went to restaurants like

A Poniente

.

"What you learn there in a very short time is incredible," he acknowledges.

They put that learning into Colósimo, their first solo Madrid adventure after going through several groups.

"I entered this place in 2013, having recently arrived in Madrid," he recalls.

But it was not until

2018

, just at the time when they were looking for a location for his project, when he remembered that location, "anchored in the past", and it just so happened that it was available.

Fate seemed so capricious that they decided not to even change the name of the establishment.

After reforming it, they began to pour what they had learned onto their plates.

"I came from

gourmet restaurants

and my idea was to bring that gastronomy closer to people who don't eat in these places every day," he explains.

That is summed up in "very elaborate" dishes, such as squid stuffed with cuttlefish and coñeta broth;

clams with mushroom and ham stews;

or cheek cannelloni.

"But from day one we haven't stopped making tortillas," he says.

So many that the

pincho

has earned, five years later, its own place on Colósimo's menu.