Gala night once again for Catalan gastronomy, which tonight celebrated in style in the gardens of the Palau de Pedralbes the delivery of the National Awards. A meeting that has become the great event in the restaurant sector and that has brought together almost 600 people, including chefs and cooks, businessmen in the sector, dining room and wine professionals, as well as the best-known faces of civil society, who have participated in a dinner cooked by Joel Castanyé, from La Boscana, in Bellvís (Lleida).
The star of the party has been the chef Rafa Peña i Cerro, co-owner with Mireia Navarro of the Barcelona restaurant Gresca, which both opened in 2006. After a decade, the couple expanded the premises and the business with their successful Gresca Bar. Peña launched The Bar Torpedo, with succulent sandwiches, has been in operation for five years, and has been advising the Hotel Santo Mauro in Madrid for three years. The cook, who started working to cover his expenses when he was studying at the UB, fell in love with the kitchen alongside Jo Baixas, with whom he first worked at Balancí and later at Follia (Sant Joan Despí).
If Rafa Peña is one of the most beloved Catalan chefs, both the Revelation Award and the Cap de Sala Award have gone to the hands of two other professionals who have earned great esteem from clients and colleagues: the first is Nil Dulcet, a disciple of the Disfrutar y Compartir trio of chefs; currently a partner of theirs and director and head chef of Compartir Barcelona. Dulcet worked at El Bulli during the last phase of the restaurant, which opened its doors yesterday as a museum, and later became part of the team at the first Compartir, in Cadaqués, to later join Barcelona’s Disfrutar. The new Cuiner Revelació opened Compartir Barcelona last year together with its until then bosses.
The award for best head chef went to Pablo Sacerdote, from Cocina Hermanos Torres, the new three-star from Barcelona in this year’s guide, from the twins Javier and Sergio Torres. A priest, born in La Plata (Argentina), in his day he had already been a key player in the Abac room, where he remained until he obtained the highest recognition from Michelin and later from the late Marea Alta, under the orders of Enrique Valentí .
As every year, the Catalan Academy of Gastronomy and Nutrition announced its Special Award, which in this edition has gone to the well-known chef José Andrés, who was collected on his behalf by his friend Joan Roca. The chef installed in the United States has highlighted his leading role both in the spread of tapas cuisine throughout the world, as a great chef, in charge of the Minibar by José Andrés, haute cuisine, which he runs in addition to many other establishments and, of course, his leadership at the head of the World Central Kitchen Foundation, from which he provides meals to people who suffer the ravages of various natural catastrophes or those caused by wars.
As explained to La Vanguardia by the president of the Catalan Academy of Gastronomy and Nutrition, Carles Vilarrubí, the annual gala is an opportunity to show the transversality of an area, gastronomy, “which fulfills the function of uniting people in a few moments complicated social context. Vilarrubí pointed out that “there are other disciplines, such as music, that also unite, but during a concert we are silent while around a table we talk and share with people who do not always think the same as us”.
There has been silence when the president of the Academy has delivered a speech full of messages in which he has praised the good moment of Catalan gastronomy but has also called for “to put an end to a fifth column that seeks to misinform and disfigure our reality”. Vilarrubí has ??insisted that “we must put an end to the heavy and dark music of this fifth column, which tries to convince that Barcelona and Catalonia have entered into decline compared to other cities and communities.”
The president of the Academy has encouraged us to be realistic without forgetting what needs to be improved and rectified, but he has recalled some achievements that place Catalan gastronomy in an excellent place: “For example, according to the Michelin guide, Catalonia has 53 starred restaurants and a total of 69 stars, figures that cannot bear any comparison”. He highlighted the leadership role of El Bulli, El Celler de Can Roca and Sant Pau, all of them outside the Catalan capital, and recalled that last year Barcelona led the average occupancy rate for restaurants in Spain, with year-on-year growth of 9.67%, “a figure that triples the growth of the Spanish average”. He has highlighted the role of Mercabarna as the first wholesale market in Europe in the trade of fruit, vegetables and fish and has pointed out that this year the city will host ten important gastronomic events. These are some of the arguments that he listed before stating that “we have resounding reasons for self-esteem.”
