The creator of the first dessert restaurant in the world and creator of the prestigious Espai Sucre school, recently announced that it will close its doors in July. Jordi Butrón explains in the new episode of the Stay to eat podcast the health reasons that led him to make the decision, and confesses that he was not happy with a job that required a lot of management, a task that he is incapable of delegating “because for better or worse.” Unfortunately, Espai Sucre is very personal and I am very controlling in my professional and personal life.”
The restaurant pastry chef – he hates people referring to his profession as a sweet cook and claims the job of restaurant pastry chef – reflects on his vocation as a teacher, which arose when he was very young and spent years as a tutor for kids, and how when he considered abandoning his teaching career, he ended up by pure chance in a world that he was passionate about.
Butrón gives his opinion on the lack of memory that has led many young people to not know who the characters are that have been crucial in the disciplines to which they themselves dedicate themselves and tells the anecdote of one of their great teachers, Pierre Gagnaire: ” A few years ago they paid tribute to him at a conference, Gagnaire walked through the hallways and no one recognized him and instead you saw an influencer and everyone behind him.”
Butrón talks about the difference between that creativity with a method, like the one he teaches in his school, and that other creativity more typical of free spirits like Gagnaire himself or like Jean Luc Figueras, for whom he worked for seven years (“I will never thank you enough that you gave freedom to create. These are, he explains, characters who have had a reputation for making irregular cuisines but when they create something fantastic it is exciting. “I remember dishes by Jean Luc Figueras or Gagnaire that I will never forget. On the other hand, I remember dishes that were not good that day, and you asked yourself, but what did he do?”
In both cases, he explains, “we are dealing with non-methodical creativity and that is why they have always had a reputation for being irregular. But when the flute plays, you don’t forget it.” Butrón asks the question: “What do you choose? “punctual magic or the constant method?” And he himself answers: as a teacher, the constant method, but as a diner I prefer magic.
Jordi Butrón also talks about the proliferation of cooking training centers and remembers that, “as a friend told me, before the students looked for you, now you have to go look for the students.” He also gives his opinion on ephemeral trends in pastry and is critical of our need to constantly look for new things. And he explains his personal experience when he underwent surgery for the morbid obesity that he suffered from. “I know that it has changed many people’s lives, but not me, because it did not cause me any major problems and because I had the intervention when I had no health problems derived from that disease.”
