The freeze dryer that has just entered Hiu’s kitchen is at full capacity, Sergi Palacin tells us enthusiastically while showing some of the tests he is already working on. Fermentations and products that he himself collects coexist on the menu at Hiu, the Cambrils restaurant that is just now celebrating its first year. There this young chef, candidate for Chef of the Year 2024, gives free rein to what he himself calls “restless gastronomy.”
And the truth is that it is difficult to find a better definition than restless to describe Palacin’s philosophy and what comes out of his head and his kitchen. Something that has special merit in Cambrils, a town that, despite its well-known gastronomic tradition and being a reference in the province of Tarragona, “is not the same as being in the center of Barcelona”, as he himself explains.
He knows what he’s talking about because right there, in the center of Barcelona, ??he was in charge of the kitchen at The Alchemix, which made a strong commitment to combining gastronomy and cocktails. But if there is something that marks Palacin’s restless and curious cuisine, it is his eight in Bangkok with Gaggan Anand, focused above all on the R&D department. In fact, Hiu means I’m hungry in Thai.
An intense career that has taken him back to Cambrils, where he began his training at the School of Hospitality and Tourism. Owned premises, being able to renovate it to his liking and having a kitchen open to the living room were the requirements he was looking for. And he found them. The result is Hiu: a spacious, bright restaurant, with a careful and discreet aesthetic and where the kitchen at the back of the room has special prominence.
“It has been an impressive year, the project has been received very well in an area where it is sometimes difficult to deviate from the traditional,” explains the chef. Indeed, Hiu moves away from the cuisine of most restaurants in the area with dishes that want to take the product a little further, and in which you can see the technique and that almost constant look at Southeast Asia, as if Palacin had brought a little of Bangkok to the Tarragona coast.
The Asian-style seafood clams, the delicious Massaman Iberian pork cannelloni (a type of curry that is popular in Thailand) and peanut bechamel, or the fricandó of cuttlefish, enoki and blood sausage are three good examples of what is served and is eaten at Hiu.
So those who have been scared when hearing about freeze-dried or fermented products can rest assured because here the refined technique does not seek an empty show, but is at the service of a leading and usually local product that makes it clear where we are.
Palacin confesses that he is almost obsessed with doing everything possible themselves. This includes the curry mixtures, some liquors they work with, the fermented ones and also collecting ingredients that are very present in the area, but not common on the menus.
The samphire tempura with fermented lemon and pickled mussel – one of the first bites on Hiu’s tasting menu – represents this philosophy very well, one of the pillars of the house. “Sample samphire is not sold, we go to pick it ourselves and prepare it,” details the chef, who is also working on making his own vinegars from kombuchas.
An interesting work of research and creativity that translates into small touches on the dishes. They also make dried fish roe with which they finish, for example, a sea bass dish called “an ingredient.” Everything revolves around this fish: the perfectly cooked loin is served on a pil pil made with its skins and the cured roe is grated on top.
Also very round are the confit leeks with roast chicken and hazelnut emulsion that, based on apparently conventional ingredients, allow us to contribute a delicious dish. The menu with conceptually less risky recipes and flavors and the tasting menu where the creative point overflows a little more (watch out for the koji nigiri with the very Tarragona Chartreuse liqueur) plays well that double trick that allows you to work with a somewhat more conservative or who visits the house for the first time and with whom they directly come to Hiu to play.
All, by the way, at surprisingly moderate prices for the level of cuisine, the work behind each dish and the careful service in the room. In addition to the menu, Hiu offers a short (traditional) menu of seven courses for 40 euros and the long tasting, with twelve courses, for 65 euros.
Saying that Palacin will do great things doesn’t make much sense because he has already done them and is doing them right now at Hiu. But it is evident that we are looking at a kitchen and a place with a long history and that will have something to talk about.
