How to combat ceviche and cheesecake fever: arguments to defend Catalan cuisine

BarcelonaVindication can be achieved from many perspectives, including humor. That's why chef Jordi Vilà, along with his creative team, created the Self-defense manual for Catalan cuisine. It consists of a poster that, like an auca and inspired by martial arts, shows how to combat the arguments of the misinformed who believe that pasta has more history in Italy than in Catalonia or that pickles like the one in ceviche They have come to us from the other side of the Atlantic when they already appear in the Sent Soví's Book 400 years ago.

In this poster, you'll find the definitive arguments for defending Catalan cuisine "with honor, elegance, and glory" and, we might add, with knowledge of the facts. To give you an example: with a kind of flying kick, we find The Cheesecake Hit, with an illustration by Joan Manel. It calls for us to liberate ourselves and make American cheesecake a delicacy for the 4th of July, its official day. For the rest of the year? Honey and cottage cheese, Swiss roll, cake, white food, wind fritters, pajamas, or carquiñoles. And so on, up to nine items we can defend with grace and force. And other keys to winning the battle, like The pasta defense, The ramen twist, The fork touch, The coz ceviche either The anti-umami jab.

The Catalans too

What has led the chef to pursue this initiative—which will soon be published in a book—is the feeling that Catalan cuisine is in overtime. "We're not living in a time of change, we're living in a change of era," he says. And he focuses the debate: "I love the ceviche, which is super traditional somewhere in the world. Let's eat it when we go there. And when someone here is Peruvian and opens a Peruvian restaurant, I celebrate it too. But the normal thing would be that in Barcelona, ​​for every place where they have ramen, there would be ten where you can eat escalivada, escudella, and snails. And this isn't the case. We must shake the tree," says the chef.

Vilà is very clear that defending what is ours, what defines us, doesn't mean buying into certain narratives. "If there is talent and there is something good from abroad, use it, we Catalans have always done that. It's not an approach from an exclusive point of view. It is not a "the Catalans first", but "the Catalans too".

Since the sense of humor is a trademark of the house, while the poster is presented, it has been proposed that for schools it is mengi sushi of very bad quality. It is that in these cases it is not cuisine, that it is the umbilical cord of the gastronomic tradition of a lloc. It is limited to re-poaching food, and the big industry would not exactly be a great friend of Catalan cuisine

"If we go to Sicily we will eat Sicilian cuisine," explains Vilà, who affirms that he defends it. Catalan cuisine is also defense The Sicilian woman to Sicily and the Asturian woman to Asturias. If anyone wants to join this self-defense movement, you can buy the poster for 15 euros, the t-shirt (they have two models) for 20, or the mug for 12. And for those who don't know anything, you can get all three items for 40 euros. You'll find them in the Va de Cuina stores and in the restaurants Vivanda, Alkimia, and Alkostat.