Vacations are the ideal time to rescue that book we’ve been wanting to start for a long time, cook that recipe we never found time for, or recover that podcast we’ve been longing to listen to. From Comer La Vanguardia we bring you some episodes of the Stay to Eat podcast so you can enjoy them calmly this summer.
Chef Pau Gascó, who announced a few months ago the closure of his restaurant in the Barcelona neighborhood of Sants, is the protagonist of this episode of the Stay to eat podcast. Gascó explains how by making his decision he has freed himself from that dose of ego linked to his own insecurities and what it will mean to get out of a routine that he ended up making every week at Petit Pau “like groundhog day.” .
He explains that the pandemic has made us see the fragility of our lives and wonders what security a restaurant can provide. “It doesn’t give you any. What gives you security is your way of being or your knowledge, your job, the years you have in it, what you have learned, how capable you are of carrying out a bad job, that is what gives you security. “What gives me security is not what comes from outside but what comes from within: 25 years as a chef.”
He confesses to being impetuous and recognizes that he had to choose: “either raise prices or lower costs.” Until he had the idea to close, “one of those ideas that gets you out of your hamster wheel.” That hasn’t stopped him from now fearing for his future, because he doesn’t have a plan B, but he explains that he is attracted to the emptiness in front of him.
Gascó considers it important that the owner of a restaurant business is on top of the game. “It changes a lot when you are in an office and you do not have contact with the workers or when the boss is in contact with the clients and the workers. There are decisions that you don’t dare to make, even if it seems like they may be necessary for the business when you are going to have to show your face, like telling your employee to come on their holiday.”
Regarding his beginnings in the profession, he explains that “the explosion of Spanish gastronomy in the 90s is a giant with feet of clay. It was done on top of corpses of people who worked 14-hour days, 7 days a week and sometimes without rest between shifts. These anonymous people raised the gastronomy of this country and have taken the laurels 4”.
It seems unfair to him that some businessmen complain about the increase in personnel costs: “For someone to tell me right now that their labor costs are going up because they have to comply with the law, look, I’m very sorry, but take advantage of everything you have earned before.” ”. He explains that before you would start a new job and they would tell you: “I will pay you the fee by agreement, but that was the only thing they read about the rule. Never, ever, in any restaurant I have worked have they complied with the working conditions.”
Pau Gascó remembers the times when he left the country to escape his problems and the episode of an anxiety crisis he suffered while working in a restaurant, without being allowed to go home. “The problems are not the fault of the working conditions, but those conditions do not help. “I have made peace with myself by not feeling guilty about the things that have happened to me. But if they make you work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week and with exaggerated tension, the fault of your anxiety crisis is not yours.”
He assures that he loves his job, that it is precious and that he has given it everything, but he denounces that “the working conditions in which we have worked for many years are not fair, the pressure, the treatment… it is not fair what we have done to ourselves.” . It doesn’t have a name. And we have tolerated that level of shit for too long.”
The cook explains that he has had very few people who taught him that employees can be treated politely and that there is another way of working. The problem, he adds, is in his subordinates, who live with frustration. “The problem in Spain is the ass-licking managers, not the bosses.”
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