Miquel Pardo: "If I made rice in a restaurant in Valencia, it wouldn't go well; the restaurant would be closed for most of the day."

BarcelonaCruix is the go-to restaurant in Barcelona for good rice dishes; everyone knows this, and it's no prophecy. I interview Valencian chef Miquel Pardo (Onda, 1989) one afternoon, just before service begins, and he tells me he's having a very busy few weeks because he's opening a new Cruix on Calle Mallorca, but he still has work to do and probably won't open until September. He's also decided to adapt to customer demand, which is to lower the prices of his menus. After the pandemic, people suggested very exclusive dishes with expensive ingredients. Now, he says, that's no longer the case. So, of the three menus he offers, priced at €43, €56, and €72, he'll reduce them to €39 (the first) and €69 (the third). And he has yet another new dish, his own onion soup with Tête de Moine AOP cheese, which won the Cheese Chef's Challenge held in Barcelona last March.

Do you like that we ranked you as the chef who makes the best rice dishes?

— I'm happy because I know I'm not disappointing anyone when I bring rice to the table. Each of the three menus has a rice dish.

Why is it complicated?

— Because the owners have changed the contract, the verbal agreement, on several occasions. I've truly seen all kinds of atrocities, but my father is a tax advisor, and they couldn't have fooled me with any of the scams they wanted me to sign. Otherwise, I'm sure I would have suffered a lot. For example, I went to see a 150-square-meter premises; everything was going well, until the contract told me I had to pay a €100,000 license fee. To that amount, I had to add the renovations, and after people came to eat, the restaurant would have to be profitable with €43 menus.

It has three menus at different prices.

— Yes, and the most expensive, the 72-euro fourteen-course menu, I'll lower it to 69 euros, because right now society is in a period of regression; there's no longer that post-COVID euphoria where people would order dishes with very expensive products. In fact, I think since I opened, seven years ago, I've done all the price engineering I could: I opened with a 28-euro menu; after COVID, the demand was for longer menus and more products, and now we're back to where we started. And, in addition, there's another added circumstance: we must adhere to the new working hours.

I'll go back to what I was saying about rice, which requires more space. And a question: do you make rice or pans?

— I make rice dishes in pans, and I also make Valencian pans, which I've sometimes had on the menu. I don't consider myself a radical Valencian, although I understand that traditions should be maintained, and this applies to Valencian paella as well as fricandó. For me, Valencian paella means sharing a meal with friends, from the moment we start by eating a salad to cooking it together and, finally, placing it in the middle of the table so everyone can eat and, above all, scrape off the burnt bits. This is the essence of Valencian paella, which is certainly similar to their calçotadas. On the current menu, I have rice dishes, which I cook in a pan, and I make three types: fish with shrimp in the fin; meat, aged beef; and vegetables and mushrooms, which is the black paella with black trumpet mushrooms.

Does everyone like scorched meat?

— Everyone has their own way of cooking. So if we order Valencian paella in a restaurant, we should say how charred we like it. I've never ordered it at Cruix, but I think it's not a bad idea, because otherwise, some people won't even be able to separate the grain, and others tell me they really liked it.

How do you get a charred caramel, and not one that is bitter?

— With the correct proportions of ingredients. If we want to make rice with char for two people, we need a 36 cm frying pan, then a total of 140 grams of Bomba rice from the Albufera region, which is what I use, and 25 grams of extra-virgin olive oil. The sofrito should be very concentrated, made with onion, garlic, tomato, ñora pepper, and bell pepper, which is my family version of sofrito. When I say very concentrated, I mean little and good, exactly 40 grams of sofrito in total for the 140-gram rice. So, we start with the sofrito. When it's done, we add the rice, mix it well with the sofrito, and then add the broth, which will be 400 ml. We do this step over high heat for ten minutes, and then for four more minutes but over medium heat. We must keep shaking the pan to distribute the broth. And then, when the fourteen minutes are up, we put the pan in the oven for two minutes at 220°C. In the oven, it will dry out completely. After two minutes, we put the pan back on the heat for another minute, as the caramelization process begins.

The broth should be very concentrated, should it have a lot of flavor?

— No, no, it should be light. I think it's a mythical mistake to make a broth that's too concentrated, because then it doesn't penetrate the rice grains, but instead stays on top. In fact, in the Valencian pan, water is used instead of broth, because when you have sautéed ingredients in the pan, when you add the water, it's as if you're making broth. That water will be flavorful. Valencian paella is a wartime recipe, and that's how it was made. Since in a restaurant, we can't wait an hour from the time they order rice until we bring it to the table, I have the broth ready.

You've talked about mythical mistakes. What other ones are there?

— Place the raw red shrimp on top of the freshly cooked rice. The shrimp will be watery, and all the effort we made to make it dry and caramelized is lost. We blanch the red shrimp in seawater for a minute, and then, when the rice is cooked, we place them on top. The same goes for other watery ingredients we want to add to the rice; they must all be cooked beforehand.

You explain everything easily, but the reality is that it's very difficult to find good rice in a restaurant. Why do you think that is?

— Because they make intense sofritos, lasting many hours, which are wonderful, but not for the rice, nor for the necessary proportions. A rich sofrito with concentrated broth will become thicker. Then we'll end up with dissociated rice, because the grain won't have acquired its flavor.

What do you think of robots designed to make rice?

— In some cases, it works better than what humans do. However, cooking isn't an exact science, so we always need a chef who tastes what they're making, because the ingredients aren't always the same; they change from one day to the next, and so can the final result.

If I ask you why you are a cook, will you tell me it's because of the frying pan?

— Maybe so. At home, Mom encouraged me to enroll in culinary studies. Since a friend had enrolled at the school in Castelló, I signed up. When I started working in restaurants as an intern, I was convinced I liked it, especially when I joined Jorge Bretón's La Sucursal restaurant in Valencia. There was a young team, some of whom had worked with chef Quique Dacosta. I was excited then, because the dishes we created had substance. storytellingFrom La Sucursal, I moved on to many other restaurants in Valencia, Ibiza (Heart Ibiza), Barcelona, and France. There was a day when I stopped because I was spending fifteen hours a day working. I asked myself why I had become a cook, and the answer was linked to rice. I became a cook because I liked cooking paellas for my friends. It's what made me happy.

That's when you made the leap to owning your own restaurant. Why Barcelona?

— Because in Barcelona, people eat rice at night. If I had opened in Valencia, I would have only worked at lunchtime, and the rest of the time, I'd have to have the restaurant closed. It's a cultural issue; people there assume that the carbohydrates in rice aren't good for you. For me, it's a misconception, because our rice dishes are light, and we don't even include bread on the menu. This whole theory some people have about not eating rice at night surprises me, because, on the other hand, they don't say anything against eating a pizza with cheese, a lot of cheese, at night. If we asked a nutritionist, they might tell us that rice at night is better than pizza. Or maybe neither.

What similarities exist between the three menus you prepare?

— They're tapas, made with local produce, in which I express what I've learned over the years; they have a touch of travel. The appetizers are bite-sized. Right now I'm making an asparagus gazpacho, without tomato, which is a cold soup, in which we make the most of the produce. I finish it with two sauces: a hollandaise and a mayonnaise with mandarin sprouts, which gives it a very aromatic touch. And all three meals end with what makes me happy: rice. And I notice that everyone likes it.