When I was preparing this text, I heard the news of the death of Ángeles Quirós, Geles, matriarch of Casa Gerardo, at the age of 97. Beyond telling the current moment of one of the great Asturian restaurants, these paragraphs are, therefore, a tribute to the person responsible for starting the process that led the restaurant to become a roadside eatery in the reference of contemporary Asturian cuisine.
Casa Gerardo is actually the story of a family. Or, if you prefer, about the vicissitudes of Asturian history over the last century and a half through a family and its kitchen. Casa Gerardo is a reflection of contemporary Asturias, of the progressive transition from rural to industrialization, of the arrival of tourism, of the integration into a traditional gastronomy of the postulates of contemporary cuisine.
All of this is reflected in the history of the restaurant, which thus becomes much more than a restaurant to be a reflection of a constantly changing society. We cannot understand the transition from traditional cuisine to modernity in this house without understanding what was happening around it, just as we cannot understand the crucial role that Pedro Morán played in its transformation without knowing the Asturias of the 70s and 80s, for a side, and the influence of the New Basque Cuisine first and of the revolution that arose in elBulli later on.
141 years of history make a restaurant a crossroads, a place that has seen changes and fashions and has known how to adapt its cuisine to the times without losing its hallmarks. When the fabada arrives at the table, after a tasting menu of current dishes, it is all of that, really, what is on the plate. Because Casa Gerardo is one of those very few restaurants in Spain where history is as important as cooking.
That’s what one comes to Prendes, actually. To enjoy a great meal, of course, but also to enjoy something else, those intangibles that make this roadside restaurant a place that any gastronomy fan should visit at least once.
And if you have already made this trip before, you should return to find new dishes coexisting with house classics, be it historical recipes – the fabada, the cream of rice pudding, that bugre salad with the Geles dressing that is still on the menu- or iconic flavors that are reinterpreted over and over again. To go back to the compango croquette, as good as I remembered it, and the Asturian cheese sandwich that tells you from the first bites that everything here is as usual.
To look at another review of the suckling pig, one of the products that Marcos Morán returns to again and again, in this case the belly, with its delicate and crispy skin, served on a spoon, to be eaten in one bite, accompanied by a chilmole.
One returns, if it’s summer, to rediscover the tomatoes, which Marcos now brings from a neighboring farm, La Huertina de Peñas, and proposes with capers and anchovies in an intense tomato and olive consommé. Or with the baked baby aubergine with mild curry cream and Massimo, from the Rey Silo cheese factory, another of the producers that is never lacking in his proposal.
However, although the orchard has been gaining some prominence, people return to Casa Gerardo, fundamentally, for the marine sequence of their menus. Few houses have known how to read fish like red mullet, swallow or king fish as well as this one; work with shellfish from the area -andaricas, bugres- or those that come from the Rías Baixas -espitiñas, razors- in such a natural way, traditional in a certain sense and sometimes radical. Hard to forget those razors in almond fat or the oyster smeared with coffee, whiskey and pine nut fat.
This time it starts with the kokotxas, served in an Asturianized gazpachuelo with nuances of apple and hazelnut. The following dish is one of the great moments of the menu and summarizes the point at which the restaurant’s cuisine is at: product and tradition as the base, accompanied by some of the characteristic flavors of the cuisine of recent years in this house -torrefactos, light bitters- and influences that Marcos has brought from his travels: lobster, fennel and yeast stew, with the stew made from two broths, one of the lobster carcasses, more traditional, and the other of red curry.
Squid, monumental, at the best of the season, barely caressed by the fire and served with figs. The king -red pomfret- of pearly meat, impeccable, simply covered by a light potato cream with a touch of cumin and ginger. And the tuna belly with its skin, pitu juice, grilled garlic sauce and seaweed.
The fabada, to finish. A dish capable of enclosing a story that began when the first generations of the family turned it into a reason to stop, that Geles began to lighten and that his son Pedro turned into a reference for a new sensitivity towards traditional cuisine, at the beginning of the 80s, defatting, working the beans in a different way and taking great care of the compango. The Prendes fabada was, and continues to be 40 years later, one of the great examples of well-understood culinary tradition, assumed as a sensitivity and not as a corset. There are dishes that are museums of gastronomy. As is, also, the cream of rice pudding, although with this I am not discovering anything new.
Casa Gerardo continues as always, which means that it continues to evolve, assuming the main lines of its work and reviewing them, updating them, a task that Pedro Morán began almost half a century ago and is continued today by his son Marcos, capable of maintain the essence of the house and continue exploring its reference products.
Going back to Casa Gerardo is going back to a familiar place, but it is also always going to a new place. Few restaurants are capable of combining these two apparently conflicting approaches and of doing so, furthermore, maintaining the packaging of the big houses, those of regular clientele who seek tranquility, comfort and a place where they know that, despite the novelties, the things are as they have always been.
