Ricard Llop: "Our future dream is to turn El Cup Vell into a private club, where you enter to eat with a prior invitation"

TarragonaI interview Ricard Llop (Valls, 1995) together with his colleague Pau Feliu (Tarragona, 1992), seated at the table closest to the kitchen of the restaurant El Cup Vell. Both have proposed that I eat a menu (I will remember the turnip Russian salad with sorrel for a long time) in which I have verified the good work of both. El Cup Vell is located in the upper part of Tarragona, on a street where there are other restaurants. Its has the appearance of a private house, with a wooden door framed by a semicircular arch with voussoirs. The interior is cozy, with two spaces, and it is clear with the old vat, underground, which can be observed through a glass. Pau Feliu opened the restaurant in December 2017 together with another colleague, and three months later Ricard joined him. Nine years later, Pau and Ricard are the ones in charge. Before interviewing them, I ate some of the dishes from the menu, and paired them with kombucha tea. They also have wines, and no popular brand of soft drinks.

El Cup Vell must have been a house before.

— An old carpentry shop. Afterwards it was a bar. We gave it a good facelift, a complete renovation, to turn it into a restaurant. Perhaps before it was a carpentry shop it had been a house. The vat we have there shows that wine was made there. Pau started with a friend, Albert, who was in charge of the dining room. When I joined three months later, I had no intention of staying, but here I am.

Where had you worked before arriving at El Cup Vell?

— At Carles Abellan's bar, when it was located on Joan de Borbó promenade. There I met Arnau Muñío, from the restaurant Direkte. I learned a lot with him. We had a very good working atmosphere there. Carles Abellan's bar was a benchmark, and a small school. Then I returned to Tarragona, to Punta de la Móra, where I live. And that's when Pau and Albert proposed that I join them.

Pau told me he was coming from working in Madrid. Why did you decide on Tarragona?

— Because we are from here, and also for the product, for the ease of access to producers, fishermen, winegrowers.

At the Gastronomic Forum Barcelona, you were nominated finalists as best chefs of the year in a year when the theme was the new Catalan cuisine.

— Last summer we collaborated with the chef Jordi Vilà, and he wanted to title the event Catalan new cuisine. In my case, it was the first time I had heard the concept and the explanation. At first, it surprised me, but then I accepted it because it is true that we are a new generation that wants to maintain the Catalan recipe book and we interpret it from our vision, which is fresher. We also have influences from techniques from all over the Mediterranean, such as vinaigrettes. Today we have prepared a harissa, made with red peppers, garlic, olive oil, and spices. It is typical of the southern Mediterranean. With harissa and a bit of pomegranate molasses, we made the grilled sea bass.

Do you think Catalan cuisine needed to be renewed?

— It is true that it has heavy dishes, but I think it is a bad label to say that our cuisine is heavy because we can do everything the same by omitting fat or even eating less of it. I maintain that Catalan cuisine is among the healthiest in the world. And this is undoubtedly so. And this is because we have very good products.

I'm asking you about the dishes I've eaten. The first, the rutabaga russian salad with dill. I liked it a lot. And I'll want to imitate it at home, because I always think that rutabaga should be valued beyond just putting it in broth.

— We use it a lot. We make creams, pickles, salads with it, and last week a friend suggested we make Russian salad with it. We liked the idea, and now we have reinterpreted it. We roasted it in the oven with salt and olive oil, then cut it into small pieces and dressed it with a sauce of egg yolk and mustard.

Like a tartar sauce?

— No, we make tartar sauce for the leeks, and we prepare it with capers and green olives. The sauce for the Russian salad is more neutral. The egg yolk allows us to make the emulsion. Ah! And we grate bottarga in it, specifically sea bass roe, which we dry ourselves, and this way we give more nuances to the final flavor.

How do you work the puppet?

— First we cure it with salt and sugar, so it loses its water. Then we dry it and smoke it. The bottarga gives us marine depth. To finish the dish, we add some slices of mackerel, a blue fish that we like a lot, which has a lot of flavor. It has more than the male mackerel.

The sparrow and the sister are not usually found on menus.

— It is a humble species, which is what we bet on, and which is very good. Fish prices are very high, and we only want to work with those from Tarragona, with those from proximity. We started by offering diners whole fish, two-kilo gilt-heads, John Dory, turbot... Everything has become very expensive. We don't give up on fish, but we think there are many other fish that are also good, like the sole. We leave the others for special orders. If they ask us, then we cook them.

Afterwards I ate the leek dish. Vegetables, you like to work them.

— Yes, we like it, because traditionally they have been thought to be second generation and that is not true. We try to make them a common thread throughout the menu, which also includes fish and meat. In fact, we also have game, which we find to be more sustainable: wild boars, roe deer, birds...

How many dishes does the tasting menu have?

— Between six and seven. And sometimes we have it written down or we sing it. A while ago we had it written on a paper on the table, but we found that people told us to bring what we had. They have adapted to our way of working.

This means you have created a loyal clientele.

— Or when we go to a restaurant we don't want to read the restaurant menus. People are lazy to think and choose.

I continue with the botifarra, which is the last dish I ate before dessert.

— We make it ourselves. One part cooked, another raw. We make it with pork head meat and others.

I also see that you are drying pig's ear in the kitchen.

— We have boiled it, and now we are drying it to finish it, fry it and turn it into something like a rind. Now it is hanging because it has to sweat, it has to lose the water it contains.

I have passed in front of the El Padrí bar restaurant, which is next door and is also yours. The prices are very good. And this one has a name.

— When we opened El Cup Vell, we did so inspired by the clandestine restaurants of some countries like Japan and many others in the Mediterranean. We liked the idea of it being as if you were entering a house. And we opened El Padrí a year ago with a short menu, like the trinxat, the porqueta sandwich with caramelized onion, cheese, and grilled glass bread. We made it thinking of young people, with a more economical average ticket. At El Padrí, for fifteen euros, you eat very well. It only opens in the evenings and on Saturday afternoons.

The average ticket of El Cup Vell?

— Sixty-five euros, with six proposals, plus desserts and drinks separately. I forgot to tell you that we want to transfer El Padrí. We want to go towards less work, and not towards more. We want to focus more on El Cup Vell. There are only two of us working there, and we do everything starting from scratch. We also clean, prepare the beer tap, and other tasks that go beyond cooking.

Finally, what do you have left to do? What is your dream with El Cup Vell?

— Keep working on it, so that people continue to trust us, fill the restaurant, be able to balance work and life, since we are open from Wednesday to Sunday at midday, and we spend our days there. Our future dream is to turn El Cup Vell into a private club, where you enter to eat by prior invitation. The premises are for rent, with an option to buy. And with all these ideas we work.