The cook at the Follia restaurant (Sant Josan Despí) stars in the new episode of the Stay to eat podcast. With 40 years of career behind him, he says that he took refuge in the kitchen of the business that his parents had set up, El Balancí, in Sant Joan Despí (before they made him practice tending the bar of a bar, where he had a terrible time), because the stage fright caused by exposure to the clients in the room.
Baixas talks about how he fell in love with a profession that he continues to be passionate about and that led him to open, 20 years ago, his restaurant Follia, an ambitious architectural work that he helped build and the creative experiment of a character as introverted as he is restless where he continues to enjoy of the profession despite the fact that he confesses to having often felt very alone. “I have never done anything for others. I have done what I liked and whoever does not like it should not come,” says this cook who confesses that his extreme shyness has caused his work to go unnoticed.
But he does not regret having dedicated his life to the restaurant or his desire to continue learning from all the people who have passed through his house. “I haven’t gotten rich but I’ve had a great time.” For him, she says, “cooking is the most beautiful thing, and there is nothing better than doing it for friends.”
Baixas reflects on the collective Joves amants de la cuina, to which he belonged along with other characters who have passed through Quédate a comer, such as Sergi Arola, Alex Montiel, Toni Massanés or Philippe Regol and which he considers has been magnified. “The beautiful thing about this group was when we cooked, ate and laughed; Then things changed, there were interests involved. It was good but it’s not that big of a deal.” He also talks about his passion for constantly learning and challenging himself to make his own bread, wine, craft beer or now ceramics, and about his practical spirit in the kitchen. “Excellence is achieved when things are super simple. It happens with the design, when a plate is simple, the lamps, the simpler the more beautiful. And the kitchen is the same.”
The importance for him of the beauty of the spaces (“although a beautiful restaurant always generates more expectations”), his love of traveling and discovering new cuisines and new people or his nostalgia for times when the team dedicated all their time and effort energy in a common project, which was the restaurant (“today we have so many stimuli that we don’t have time for anything”) are some of the topics he addresses during the conversation.
The problems that his extreme shyness has caused him since he was a child (“when they gave me an oral exam, I stood in front of the teacher and didn’t even make the effort to speak and waited for time to pass”). He also confesses how difficult it has been for him to overcome the fact that his daughter Fran, whom he describes as a great cook and with a very complete training, did not end up staying at El Follia, which would have been his dream as his father. “She had warned me when she said she wanted to be a cook, but I didn’t want to listen to her.”
