Debut vindicates from l’Hospitalet a Catalan cuisine without labels

Ten years ago, Guillem Salazar and a friend of his decided to start a gastronomic project in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. Covid caused a lot of damage and changed the mindset and priorities of many people. Ignasi, his friend and partner, decided to take another path, and Guillem was left alone at the helm of the project. Today he is the owner, leader, and chef of Debut, a very personal proposal that has the support of a great team.

Guillem studied at the Hofmann School as an adult, an experience that, like any other in our life path, has influenced the character of the restaurant. His is a mature project adapted to the neighborhood that hosts it. We are facing a cuisine based on the product, simple, which does not mean basic, but harmonious and straightforward, with recognizable aromas and flavors and without artifice.

While we have a beer, we are served some mini-cured sausages from Cal Tomàs, in La Pobla de Segur, accompanied by good bread, good oil, and good salt. They are the perfect ingredients to enhance a product that is so much our own. We continue with a Russian salad with tuna belly and the Debut potatoes. Without being the restaurant's star dish, they represent quite well the way Guillem works. First, they are baked in the oven and then fried. They are served with two sauces, brava and romesco, which harmonize the whole without masking the taste of some good potatoes, which, after all, is the most important thing.

On the menu, we also find a tribute to Hofmann: the sardine flatbread. It is an iconic dish from the school that has remained on the restaurant's menu since it opened. It brings together ingredients that are very much our own, such as roasted bell pepper, eggplant, and sardines. An excellent dish.

We finish with four very significant dishes: leeks in vinaigrette, with mustard and vegetables, which shows the French influences and helps to understand where Guillem's culinary ideology comes from; white eggplant with shredded cod and the aromatic touch of ras el hanout, an iconic spice blend from Maghreb cuisine, and, finally, a taste of the iconic macaroni and the tripe with calf's snout.

Throughout the lunch, we are accompanied by a bottle of Collita Roja, a red wine from the Pardas winery, a personal project of Ramon Parera and Jordi Arnan, two deeply-rooted winemakers who began making wines in 1996.

Escaping labels

“We are trying to strengthen our commitment to wines. We are training so that they are aligned with the gastronomic proposal. We want the experience to be joint,” Guillem tells us after the meal. He is a good conversationalist, but above all, he is honest with his clientele. “I want to run away from labels. It is increasingly difficult to define what Catalan cuisine is, because we are an integrating country in every sense.”

The cuisine of Guillem and his team, consisting of Antoni Camara, Jayzer Jen, Beta Curtichs, and Ahmad Khan, is flavorful and very well crafted. We are in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, a city marked by the intersection of cultures, a trait that also contributes to defining contemporary Catalan cuisine.

Debut's proposal is honest, gratifying, and well-executed. Regular and occasional customers can be very proud to have gastronomic projects like Guillem Salazar's. We are fortunate.