The chef Pau Gascó, who has announced the closure of his restaurant in the Barcelona neighborhood of Sants, is the protagonist of the new chapter of the podcast Stay to eat. 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 the Petit Pau “like groundhog day”. .
He explains that the pandemic has made us see the fragility of our lives and he wonders what security a restaurant can provide. “He doesn’t give you any. What gives you security is your way of being or your knowledge, your profession, the years that you have been inside, what you have learned, how capable you are of managing a crappy 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 admits that he had to choose: “either raise prices or lower costs”. Until he had the idea to close, “one of those ideas that take you out of your hamster wheel.” That hasn’t stopped him from fearing for his future now, because he doesn’t have a plan B, but he explains that he’s drawn to the emptiness in front of him.
Gascó considers it important that the owner of a restoration business is at the foot of the canyon. “It changes a lot when you are in an office and you don’t have contact with the workers or when the boss is in contact with the clients and the workers. There are decisions that you do not dare to make, even if you think they may be necessary for the business when you are going to have to show your face, like telling your employee to come on his holiday”.
Regarding his beginnings in the trade, he explains that “the explosion of Spanish gastronomy in the 90s is a giant with feet of clay. It was done on top of the corpses of people who worked 14-hour days, 7 days a week and sometimes without a break between shifts. These anonymous people raised the gastronomy of this country and they have taken the laurels 4”.
It seems unfair to him that some employers complain about the rise in personnel costs: “That right now someone tells me that labor costs are going up because they have to comply with the law, look, I’m very sorry, but take advantage of everything you’ve earned before ”. He explains that before you entered a new job and they told you: “I will pay you the loose by agreement, but it was the only thing they read about the norm. Never, never, in any restaurant that I have worked have they fulfilled the working conditions”.
Pau Gascó remembers the times when he left the country to escape his problems and the episode of an anxiety attack that 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 for 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 he has given it everything, but 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 has no name. And that level of bullshit we’ve tolerated for far too long.”
The cook explains that he has had very few to teach him that employees can be treated politely and that there is another way of working. The problem, he adds, is with his subordinates, who live in frustration. “The problem in Spain is the ass-licking managers, not the bosses.”
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