Six years have passed since the Italian chef Matteo Bertozzi opened My Fucking Restaurant, a small place with an extravagant name located in one of the busiest arteries in the southern area of ??the Raval, Nou de la Rambla. He decided to call it that because he wanted to take flight from his creative cuisine and do whatever he wanted, but he soon understood that the demands of his clientele, which included many tourists, would end up limiting him.
It was the pandemic, once again, that unexpectedly led him to pursue his dream again. During those days of very difficult restrictions in the Raval, which was more desolate and empty than other neighborhoods, he had no choice but to reopen without expectations of having too much demand for tables, relying only on his hands and those of an assistant as a team. He returned to cooking, for the first time in a long time, without pretensions or intention to please anyone, something that has meant a change of direction for My Fucking Restaurant.
His new proposal focuses much more on those vegetables that Bertozzi embraced for years as a follower of the vegetarian diet and that he even has tattooed on his body. He never wanted to give them extreme prominence in his cooking for fear of being pigeonholed, but now, convinced that they are the future, he has made them the main ingredient in 80% of his dishes and soon they will be 100%. He has also completely eliminated gluten from his restaurant, although he has already been in that line of work for 4 years, and has increased his commitment to the local product served by the farmers of the Prat orchard, trying to take advantage of it from leaf to root in your kitchen.
We started dinner with a refreshing gazpacho served in a glass, so transparent that it could be confused with a wine. After this game, a delicious and spicy sisho leaf in tempura arrives at the table seasoned just the right amount with chili, honey and tangerine sauce. We are not so convinced by the spring onion tatin accompanied with truffled tofu, bitter cocoa crumble and Salva Cremasco cheese, as we find it, like the caponata they prepare, too sweet; But kuzu gnocchi with vegetables prepared in different ways does.
Two dishes also stand out that we find very successful, the watermelon tataki with watercress milk, cashew demi-glace and lardo da Colonnata (the bacon from a Tuscan breed of pig with PGI), with which one does not miss the meat and the fish before finishing dinner; and the spaghetti with false pomodoro that they curiously prepare with Alfredo sauce, tomato, kimchi sauce – at My Fucking Restaurant they ferment at home and this is noticeable in almost all the dishes – and crunchy quinoa.
In the winery you will find mainly minimal intervention wines, although there is a little of everything. About 80 references from France, Italy and Spain, among which there is no shortage of some great classics from each country.
