Arnau Muñío: "I left with the last lifeboat from La Boqueria because a lot has changed in seven years."

BarcelonaThe restaurant Direkte has just moved to Calle París. Chef Arnau Muñío (Cerdanyola del Vallès, 1982) had been working at La Boqueria for seven years, in a small space that originally belonged to chef Carles Abellan, and which, during the pandemic, Abellan sold, including Arnau's business. I interviewed him one afternoon when the entire team had already begun preparing the three menus they offer. Just like when they were at La Boqueria, Direkte is only open in the evenings and on Saturday lunchtimes. The K for Direkte is still clearly visible on the white napkins, embroidered with the red K, and on the chefs' jackets. Arnau came up with the name because, when he was applying for a loan from the banks to open the restaurant in La Boqueria, the word "Direkte" appeared on all the paperwork they gave him. straight written. The K was a personal rebellion; Arnau has always loved punk music. We sit on two chairs at the low table in the restaurant's dining room, which is very wooden and very elegant, while we sip one of the drinks they prepare at the restaurant: cola-flavored kefir water, which Arnau has named "quefirola."

How's the new Direkte going, now that you've been here a month?

— It's going well, I'm very happy. Many of my clients who used to come to La Boqueria live in the Eixample, so we've moved closer to you. Now, this doesn't mean I don't miss the market. Friends like Quim, who used to make me breakfast and let me taste dishes he cooked; I was used to market life, and above all, to establishing connections with the people around me. Just think, I had such a small space, fourteen and fourteen, spread over two floors, that I didn't have room for a warehouse. For all these reasons, I shop at La Boqueria, at the few stalls that remain, and I'm a great defender. I'm like the violinists of the Titanic, which I continued in La Boqueria even though the ship was sinking.

But you're gone.

— True. I boarded the last lifeboat. And since I left, when I go shopping, I realize it's very chaotic. Seven years ago, when I started working, there were fifteen stalls for buying cherries and loquats, which is the fruit I buy now; well, now I have one. In fact, seven years ago the market was already touristy, but not as much as it is now. When I started working, there weren't so many stalls with food sold in paper bags.

The new Direkte is bigger.

— Yes, I left La Boquería because I wanted a bigger space. I had eight stalls at the market, and eight more on the terrace, which they gave me after the pandemic. And every night I worked two shifts; to develop my cuisine, I had to move because I was very limited by the little space I had in the premises, even though it was quite nice under the porches of La Boquería. But everything I did there was a Tetris game; fermented products, the preparations. And, as I tell you, I think that in all these years with such little space, I've seen how the limitations fostered creativity.

On the exposed brick walls, I see you have rock tea hanging.

— It's from Pallars, and I make infusions. I also make Kombutxa, which is an alternative for people who don't drink alcohol.

Since the restaurant is a low bar, cook in front of the diners.

— The entire team is made up of cooks except for Adri Martín, who is the only waiter. One cook prepares the dishes for three diners, the dishes from the three tasting menus.

What are these three menus? I remembered I only had two.

— We've added a third menu, the Eixample menu, which has twelve savory dishes and two desserts and costs €98, and I prepare it by reservation. I'm keeping the other two at the same prices: €72 and €86. I didn't want to raise their prices, as I don't want to be classist. I'm keeping the name Boqueria Menu for one of the two.

The low bar, the crockery, some products and dishes demonstrate your inclination towards Japanese cuisine.

— Of the dishes I make, I don't know where Catalan cuisine ends and Japanese cuisine begins. I have a mix of them, and we're not a Japanese restaurant. If I have to define our dishes, I'd say it's light, easy-to-digest cuisine, which is a priority we've set for ourselves; we even look at the weight of the dishes. The produce we use is local, because it's of better quality and because it's our attitude toward the world. So what I do is not give up what I like about Japanese cuisine. I have a Japanese grater, and I use it to grate the leaf and stem of wassabi from Viladrau, in Montseny. The wassabi is brought to me by the Montseny producers themselves in Japan, because they had tried to cultivate wasabi, but now they don't. Another example: I have sake, but it's a Catalan sake, made in Tuixent, in the Pyrenees, called Liquid Silk. And on the wine list, with almost 400 wines, more than half are Catalan. We also make our own ratafia, and we have twelve wines made by us.

Do you make wines?

— Yes, with several wineries and in different appellations of origin, such as Terra Alta, Priorat, Bages, and Penedès. We make runs of one or two hundred bottles, labeled with our name. And it's a project we're excited about; we'll even be doing the grape harvest. I started because I wanted to learn about wines because I didn't have any waiters, thanks to a friend at Thunder Wine Makers. And all this is because, for me, a wine is just another dish. I attach great importance to it.

Their peas have a lot of appeal.

— They're just finishing; they're the last ones. It's a surf and turf dish where I prepare smoked peas on the grill with kodium seaweed, kombu, and grated wassabi. And now, when we run out of peas, we have many other new dishes. For example, a medlar dish, which will be a savory dish. We marinate them in sake, with the sake made in Tuixent, and we serve them on the plate with Tarragona pot-bellied shrimp, a sheep's milk curd we make ourselves, and with the root, leaf, and stem of wassabi. It's a refreshing dish that respects the ingredients of each product.

I'm asking you about another dish: scallop fricandó.

— This one's really fun. I make a traditional fricandó with veal llata, with a sofrito prepared with rancid wine, and I overcook it; I mean, I give it more time to cook so the meat falls apart. That's what I'm looking for, because when it's broken down, I strain everything. Then I end up with a very concentrated juice, which I pour over some scallops previously cured with miso and tempered over the grill.

The sea and the mountains are a constant.

— They are very versatile, yes. Another one that I really like is morels stuffed with pig's feet and water chestnut, which is a Chinese tuber used for dumplingsIn this dish we could say that morels, the container of pig's feet, are some dumplingsWe add a sauce with star anise and cinnamon, and I add mustard, because I want to balance all the flavors, so there's elegance.

Arnau, where did your passion for Japanese techniques begin?

— It all started in 2003, a year after Ferran Adrià went to Japan. I was working at the Hotel Benazuza in Seville with chef Oliver Peña, and that year we reproduced the Bulli Roses dishes from the previous year's menu, with a strong Japanese influence. Later, when I was working at Carles Abellan's now-defunct Comercio 24, we had a Japanese chef, whom we became friends with. When he returned to his country, I went to visit him. I was 25, and I remember it changed my life. I saw everything through a different lens. I spent years saving money to return again and again. In total, I went four times. From the first time, I remember everything seemed very expensive. That's not the case anymore; it's cheaper than when I was there 17 years ago, because life in Barcelona is very expensive.

You are in love with Japan.

— We all look Dragon Ball We were kids, and when I went to Japan, I realized we connected. My partner even studies Japanese. Now, I have a Mediterranean personality. And we explain all of this when we present the dishes, and we ask them if they want long or short explanations of the dishes. And as for the explanations, they have to be given, and I defend them, but I remember that, when I opened, we made a mandarin with Mexican worm salt, which gave it a spicy touch, and when we explained it, people told us they didn't want to try it. If they had dared, they would have liked it, but the worm salt caused repulsion. I also see what's happening lately with pig's feet; I also see that there are many people who have a thing about them, who don't like them. And it happens with pig's feet and oysters, for which we always have alternatives.

Is it always necessary to make a reservation to come to Direkte?

— Yes, and we ask for a credit card with the reservation. We've been doing this for three or four years, and you'd be shocked at the people who don't show up. We charge them fifty-five euros for not showing up and for not letting us know they weren't coming, and that's fine. People accept the cancellation policy, in which we clearly explain that if they don't show up and don't cancel their reservation twenty-four hours in advance, we charge them. If it's a group of four people who cancel, then we charge them sixty-five euros.

Are you disappointed when people don't show up?

— A lot. But above all, I think they have no respect for our work, because we spend hours preparing them, so that when they come, they have a good time. If they don't come, all the hard work of the day is for nothing.

Finally, if I ask you about your future plans, what do you say?

— I'm living my dream. My dream was to evolve, to have a beautiful, large establishment. I'm a chef, but there was a day when I also became an entrepreneur.