September begins and at the Santiago de Compostela food market the tomatoes are still splendid and the strawberries are at their peak. The figs taste like honey and while under the porches the country women offer the beans that they shell on the apron, in their lap, flowers that they grow themselves, piquillo and Padrón peppers, or the best potatoes and fresh vegetables, inside there is a line for shop at the magnificent fish and seafood stalls.

This must-see place in the city of pilgrims is the second home of the cook from A Tafona (Rúa da Virxe da Cerca, 7). Lucía Freitas goes in and out of the counters, greets, jokes, laughs, hugs, while she buys for her restaurant – “Save me the whole box of these strawberries, I’ll get them later!” “Godmother, I’ll take that huge monkfish!”

There is not even an iota of imposture in the gestures of complicity with those saleswomen who are part of Amas da Terra, the project led by this chef who is motivated by the vital need to shift her media focus (she has a Michelin star) to empower those women who go to great lengths trying to bring the best to the market. “I can’t deal with customers who haggle in the plaza without evaluating the product.”

The opportunity to talk with some of these producers, either at the market, or fishing for shellfish on the coast of Muros first thing in the morning; Seeing how they make delicious milk and yogurt in As Cernada (what energy the women of Sen Máis!) or ready to harvest in the Ribeira Sacra (you have to meet the octogenarian Esther Tejeiro, pioneer of organic Galician wine) helps to understand who there is behind A Tafona, the restaurant a stone’s throw from the market that he has run for almost three decades.

Lucía Freitas exudes authenticity and commitment to a profession that absorbs and obsesses her, in her almost unhealthy search for harmonies of flavors, aromas and colors. But also with the land, with the sea and with those who live off it. Her dream is that the presence of the products or those photographs that illustrate the stone walls of the restaurant end up giving way to a real presence. Everything will come, because she Freitas is stubborn.

For years, Tafona served a menu of the day for 12 euros for which they say there were clients who flew expressly to the city. The move to a haute cuisine menu like the one he currently offers was the result of a series of circumstances that shook his life. Sad and happy events that, sometimes, end up generating opportunities that were never imagined. And that interesting repertoire of dishes and wines emerged through which Freitas, accompanied by her team, explains who she is, where she lives and what she thinks. This chef trained in Bilbao was marked by her time at El Celler de Can Roca or Mugaritz, but perhaps it is her apprenticeship at the Espai Sucre school that apparently left the most influence on the structure of salty and sweet dishes marked by those contrasts. complex and balanced typical of Jordi Butrón’s disciples.

The menu, titled Algarabía, moves between the subtlety of starters such as razor clams with green sauce and codium, monkfish liver niguiri or pickled mussels; the play of textures of the leek with cream from the Airas Moniz cheese factories or the forcefulness of that succulent broth that accompanies the crab; beetroot with cherry and red cabbage chutney, beetroot ice cream and hibiscus air. Freitas transforms a smoothie into a delicious bite with a smoky touch, on the mashed potato and sardine broth and plays with the Josefa cheese and the apple. His cuisine looks askance at Japan, a country to which he always returns and whose essence emerges in dishes such as the delicate “caldo de gloria”, with products from his father’s garden. And that look cohabits with the presence of the Rías (delicious curry with choco and black onion) or with the mountains and the Galician cows, so that the food is a party, as is La Vie en Rose, a dessert in which the love for your son.