In some spacious luxury kitchens, they offer the coveted chef’s table as a plus. You know, that environment where a small group of diners enjoy eating and drinking while watching the work of the team, without the risk of getting splashed or having to lend a hand in full service. Other restaurants have very special and quiet tables in the dining room that are usually awarded to regular customers, by acquired rights. And then there is the high table in the corner at the Haddock (Valencia, 181), next to the bar, a simple vantage point from which you can see the horizon of the entrance – there is no better indicator of prosperity than the of the people who enter and leave delighted?–. It’s a cozy corner and the height provided by the stools makes you feel lucky to be crew on Captain Fran Monrabà’s ship, a cook who moves gracefully from the kitchen to the tables and who occasionally ends his sentences by addressing the his interlocutor with a “cariño” that is very warm.
A cook born in Sant Celoni in 1970, trained in his own village at the stove of Can Fabes, where he explains that he started “in the kitchen upstairs”, where the ceiling was too low for his wingspan and he got used to to work with your legs well apart, just as sailors keep their balance on board. With these years of experience, or those he would spend together with Jean Luc Figueras, he acquired wisdom and craft in a time when only the involvement and camaraderie between the team compensated for so much excess work.
Monrabà has cooked and seared enough to know what he wants and what he doesn’t. And this first coincides with the taste of more and more diners: he is interested in simple and traditional dishes, “the most similar to those of the houses where good cooking was done and where sustainability was a matter of pure common sense”. Respect for “all the mothers, all the aunts or all the grandmothers” who cooked before him is his creed. What he does not want, and this is perfectly clear to him, is to practice the so-called “traditional cuisine with a modern touch”; he confesses that he is sick of it.
“Who did you think you were? Why spoil what is well resolved and has been perfected for years and years, contributing something personal out of pure vanity?”. He throws the question into the air before affirming that in the vast majority of restaurants, “not all”, what is left is the ego of the cook, who would do better to limit himself to properly interpreting preparations that they already exist and are worth it. It is what he looks for, when he cooks dishes that he already made at home (he keeps recipe books with impeccable calligraphy as a relic) or that have surprised him in other places, usually because of their simplicity and success. As an example, the cod he saw the fishermen of Arenys cook, with a tomato cooked for hours that is as humble as it is exquisite.
At Haddock, you go there to eat well and enjoy what’s available that day, starting with a simple endive dressed with courage (“It’s brought to us, like so many products, by Pau Santamaria, who’s like family”), which follows, more calmly, celery and cheese salad, or those rovellons that he has prepared canned with a mild vinaigrette, “as always done to take advantage of them in season”.
And you go to the Haddock, especially at this time, to recover the good tradition of eating escudella and pot meat (the house is a place of worship for the confraternity of this popular food; to savor some delicious Maresme peas with black sausage, jowls and a little mint; meatballs with squid, intense in flavor or chicken cooked comme il faut. The restaurant is also a refuge for those who, like Monrabà, love music, and where once a month there is jazz performance in the loft reservation Or eat with friends in that hideaway where, by reservation, they prepare whole pieces of meat or fish to share, in a version away from the chef’s table, where you’re allowed to lick fingers in the air
