Javier Aranda is surely one of the chefs with the least media attention in Madrid, strangely forgotten by the specialized press, congresses, foodies and social networks. However, his restaurant Gaytán has been holding a star in the Michelin guide for seven years now. And this is not the only establishment with which our protagonist has garnered awards from the red bible, which previously awarded his first address in the capital, La Cabra, in 2014, to later confirm the trend in 2019 with the Retama de La Caminera Club de Campo (Torrenueva, Ciudad Real): a gastronomic project in a rural hunting environment that vanished after the covid.
At 36, this chef-entrepreneur from Villacañas (Toledo) can boast of precocity when it comes to dazzling the anonymous inspectors of the tire company -he obtained the first star with only 27-, although not as much as the French Julia Sdefdjian, who broke all records in 2016, achieving it at the age of 21. Apart from these feats, the truth is that Javier has embodied for almost a decade those coquina values ??that so fascinate international guides; perhaps because he was trained in tables like El Bohío or Santceloni, where he spent five years. And it doesn’t seem like he’s going to lose his favor in the future, based on the regularity he exhibits season after season. The secret? Proximity seasonal pantry, recipes with just the right amount of creativity, rigor in execution and plated results, closer to minimalism than to contrived.
Place all this in Gaytán’s attractive dining room and the diner’s experience is more than satisfactory, with that oval open kitchen around which a dozen ash tables are arranged so that diners, in addition to enjoying the dishes, can dedicate a while after the banquet to admire the meticulous work of the cooks. The culinary performance, which distantly reminds us of the days when Jacques Maximin set up his kitchen on the stage of an old theater in Nice, is a gift for the most voyeuristic gourmets.
The place: a semi-hidden venue that was once occupied by Velázquez’s Los Borrachos in a small perpendicular alleyway in the northern part of Príncipe de Vergara, an area of ??the residential neighborhood of Hispanidad with little gastronomic pedigree, but which has a history in the neighborhood as solid as La Ancha, Desencaja, De La Riva… Here, far from the media spotlight and cosmopolitan clientele, Javier proposes a long and a short menu, faithful to that style of “cuisine with roots marked by subtlety, technique and avant-garde ” -as he likes to define it-, always taking care of the presentation in changing tableware of exquisite taste and the wine accompaniment with a well-chosen offer of bottles from small cult Spanish and foreign producers.
On a recent lunchtime visit, we were able to enjoy the menu that bears the patron’s name (€150 without drinks), which began with a series of fun tapas washed down with kombucha, including a purrusalda and eel fritter, a boletus temaki, enoki and sisho and a bean bonbon with his companion. Then, lunch was structured into four well-defined sequences.
The vegetable chapter opened with teardrop peas from Maresme with artichokes and crispy pork to make it seem like a direct tribute to the school of Santi Santamaría. Then, an onion from the Ebro fermented for 40 days with caviar: a daring and earthy bite marked by the concentrated sweetness of the bulb.
The marine section, for its part, started with a creamy razor clam with black butter that is already a chef’s classic and never fails. He followed with some barnacles coated with codium seaweed sauce, a conceptual game to enhance the crustaceans with an additional shot of iodized flavors. A bite that could be extreme but was eaten with pleasure because the dressing was measured to the millimeter. He continued with a daring clam with red plum vinaigrette which, on paper, didn’t look too promising and was a real find. And it closed with a wonderful San Pedro at its right point of cooking, accompanied by a cream of chestnut and green tea that was dispensable for my taste.
As for the land sequence, the creamy farmhouse egg with foie and mushroom stew in Porto is another infallible bet with comfortable flavors that prepare the palate for what is to come. And what comes later is a suckling pig from Ávila with Mediterranean touches and a deer from Montseny with tree tomatillo and cranberries: two recipes where the purity, tenderness and juiciness of the meat stand out, faced with accompaniments of very marked flavours. Demanding dishes where one wonders if it would not be more appropriate -even at the risk of losing audacity- to somehow tame such impertinent garnishes.
And desserts? Well, the beetroot, raspberry and lychee sorbet tartare seemed very original and -said as a compliment- very little sweet. Regarding the chocolate with marinated pumpkin and praline, more than a game of contrasts it seemed almost a duel of the titans, with the marinade vinegar imposing itself too much on the cocoa.
Nice selection of petit fours with coffee. Interesting wine list. Impeccable and well trained service. Commendable care of all the details of the table and the room. Apart from any specific debate about this or that dish, an original and different establishment that should not go unnoticed.
