If someone had predicted years ago to Elisabet Farrero that her future was not in Barcelona, ??that she would soon return to her town, Barruera, to open a restaurant, the chef at El Ventador would have thought they were crazy. She left the family home very soon. Her skill in the equestrian jumping specialty led her to enjoy a scholarship in Lleida when she was in her fourth year of ESO. And when she was 18 years old, she moved to Barcelona excited to start Physics, which she left in second year to go to Humanities, at Pompeu Fabra. At that stage she doubted a lot, she had intense creative impulses but she did not know how to channel them. The kitchen was not even remotely in her plans, although she did entertain the idea of ??getting some more or less stimulating job in the cultural sector of the capital. Neither one nor the other. Her fate provided her to express her art in a different setting, in the kitchen and surrounded by the mountains of La Vall de Boí.
Elisabet Farrero, 38, is the protagonist of the first chapter of the seven-part series Life in the Pyrenees, which begins today and will offer the testimony of people, with very different profiles, who live in this area every day until Sunday geographical.
“I had finished my degree and had done small jobs at Casa América, at Arts Santa Mònica, making visits to La Pedrera…, but I didn’t sense interesting opportunities. I did a postgraduate course in Documentary Filmmaking with the prospect of staying in Barcelona, ??I liked the city a lot, I had no intention of returning to Barruera”, she confesses one July afternoon on the terrace of her cozy restaurant accompanied by her young assistant, Sergi Fernández. , after the meal shift.
The answer to your concerns came when you least expected it. Elisabet rarely went to Barruera, but in December 2012 her mother asked her for help to open a wine bar specializing in local products, cheeses and sausages. “As he had planned to go up for the Christmas holidays, I said yes and gave him a hand. I don’t know what happened to me, my idea was to stay for a few days and return to Barcelona, ??but I entered the premises and fell in love, something woke me up, a kind of intuition, for the first time I felt safe, I was hooked and I stayed”, He has a slight smile. Soon her mother withdrew from the project, they had very different visions of how to approach it, and Elisabet, at the age of 27, took charge of the business to put the path that has led to the current El Ventador, in Barruera, just over 1,000 meters. The Catalan Academy of Gastronomy and Nutrition recognized her work with the 2022 Revelation Chef award.
It has not been easy for him to make his way in a destination where traditional gastronomic establishments and grilled meats are very popular. The tapas bar became a creative cuisine restaurant with a nod to the mountains and with the added bonus of prioritizing local products: organic meat -his father is a farmer-; wild trout when he finds them; game, mushrooms and the vegetables that his garden offers him.
Elisabet undertook this stage with her partner, Pierre Cosnard, a French cabinetmaker and adventurer whom she had met during a trip to Canada. “We met again in Paris, she liked the idea and she came with me to Barruera. I felt an inner bustle, an energy that exploded, I finally saw the light in the distance. More than a business, he wanted to consolidate something that made sense in this territory, that would revalue it, and this could be expressed in the kitchen, in the decoration, in the music”. A piano with a lot of tradition presides over the dining room. Much of the furniture has been made by Pierre with oak wood taken from Elisabet’s father’s meadows. Pierre is a man with many facets, including that of a prospector for gold in remote countries. Both are parents of a girl and have contributed to revitalize the population of Barruera, which has 240 registered residents, a hundred more than 30 years ago. The whole of the municipality of Vall de Boí adds up to more than a thousand compared to the 800 at the end of the 20th century.
“Lots of people my age have come back in the last decade and have had children here, there are about 70 children at the school. Before, those who marched and studied a career did not come back ”, he comments. Tourism is one of the engines in an enclave that fights for deseasonalization. Livestock farming depends on subsidies and there are many families that combine it with other activities.
The dishes he has created speak of his hopes, of his love for the Vall de Boí, of his travels and also of his passion for Asian cuisine; not in vain, he spent two months learning in Dos Palillos. Her crispy confit duck rolls are a tribute to the Raval restaurant and her lamb with yogurt, mint and quinoa takes her back to the Middle East and her student days, when she ate shawarmas. Its deer carpaccio smoked over tea wood and with Ribagorza truffle oil smells like fallas, the tradition of many towns in the Pyrenees of lowering burning logs from the mountain.
“I work 14 hours a day, I don’t have a fixed team because the strong season only lasts four months, it’s very short”, he comments, while regretting that this summer is being “lazy”. But living surrounded by nature brings you tranquility and inspiration. “This is the best place in the world to raise my daughter, everything is close, I feel very rooted here and my life is very close to what makes me happy. I like to listen to the stories from before, from my grandmothers, both very good cooks and fighters, ”she reflects.
The beauty of the place falls in love. The peaks, the landscape, the history, the rich Romanesque legacy… She only leaves her base camp from time to time to continue training in Barcelona and other cities.
The main challenge of La Vall de Boí, like that of many other tourist municipalities in the Pyrenees, is to make affordable housing available to young people. “This is the number one problem,” says this chef who lives in a rental apartment.
