Joan Vallès: "Many restaurants that make Catalan cuisine buy it ready-made"

BarcelonaI interviewed chef Joan Vallès (Barcelona, ​​​​1995) on a Wednesday at noon, an hour before the first diners arrive at the restaurant Gegant (Pujades, 93, Barcelona). Juan has been working for hours, and, as always, every minute counts. He is happy because in the month since he opened Gigante, every lunchtime is full. I will check while I talk and then eat, because there will be a constant stream of people asking if there is a free table to have the 22.50 euro menu with tables with white tablecloths and good, very good Catalan dishes. I especially notice that it is residents of the Poblenou neighborhood who come, but not only. In the dining room, as maître d', there is Ivan Fernández, who is a mainstay of Gigante for his dynamism and his understanding of wines. Joan Vallès is one of the great chefs of our house and youth and his commitment to Catalan cuisine is a hope for the future for the preservation of traditional dishes, the ones that have always existed, such as stewed lentils (with pig's ear), chickpeas with cod or rabbit with snails. An important note: the Gegant restaurant is open from Monday to Friday; it is closed at the weekend.

Juan, this is your first solo adventure. It must have been difficult to find a place in Barcelona.

— No, I had help because this place belonged to Jordi Mestre, from Nomad Coffee, who are right next door, here where on the wall you will have read Frutas Selectas. When they were renovating their café, they kept the adjacent premises, where we are now. So when Jordi moved back to the renovated café, he suggested that we open a restaurant.

So, behind Gigante, there is you as a chef and Jordi Mestre, from Nomad Coffee.

— And also Ivan Fernández, as head waiter. Iván had another establishment, which was a 035 wine bar, serving natural wines, where he worked for seven years. At first he wanted to combine both jobs, but in the end he moved on from the wine bar and is now with us.

I met you when you were working with the chef Oriol Ivern, from Hisop. We could say that You are part of the Hisopo school.

— Spending time with Oriol is wonderful, both working and sharing a table. Having worked has made me value the profession of cook. You learn to value what you do and also your colleagues, the hours you have to work. You also learn to ground ideas, to think that it doesn't make sense to spend fourteen hours if what you do doesn't make sense. I mean that with him I have learned that work must be done well, but that we must not neglect health. And that premise is one of the ones I learned. There are many others, such as that cooks are not star system, that we are not unique in providing food and that we have no glamour in doing what we do.

He strongly insists on the idea that the profession of cook should not be glamorous.

— We shouldn't feel superior to anyone. Look, you've probably noticed: my kitchen is six square metres; it's very small. You have to be very well organised to make everything work in such a small space.

Hisop's kitchen and premises are not much bigger than yours either.

— More or less, but Hisop's kitchen is twice as big as mine, and the premises are certainly similar to Gigante's. We can use Frutas Selectas as a warehouse, but I don't want to say too much, because we have to make do with our space.

Tell me what cuisine you make.

— I have a daily menu at lunchtime, which changes every week, and also a menu at night. I make classic Catalan cuisine, which means stews, traditional casseroles and dishes with the idea that we know that the neighbourhood is for workers and that, therefore, they must return to work, so I don't make traditional dishes that are difficult to digest, such as a dish of tripe or meatballs. I follow the Catalan recipe book, but I lighten it up; this at lunchtime.

How do you lighten the cookbook?

— Clearer sauces; I make stocks but not reductions. I give intensity to the flavours with the ingredients without overloading them, and without making small dishes, either.

At night everything changes because there is a menu.

— I make newer dishes, as I did when I was at Monocromo (Plaza Cardona, 4), but always based on Catalan products and recipes. Since I have a small kitchen, I have a limitation on the quantity, but this also becomes an advantage, because then I change the dishes. At lunchtime, every week, all of them are completely new; and at night too.

With the amount of people I see you have, you might run out of dishes.

— And nothing happens. We must lose the fear of to stop, which is a very typical expression from kitchen jargon, to say that a particular dish has run out, that there is nothing left. We don't make a fool of ourselves by telling the customer that we don't have the whole menu, because that would also mean that we haven't made anything for days, that we have a fresh menu, and that if we don't have that dish, we offer a replacement.

Sometimes there are lunch menus with dishes with extra price. I say sometimes, but it is becoming more and more common. How should we interpret this? Are they offering us a dish from the menu that they have in stock and putting it on the menu so that it can be sold?

— It doesn't always have to be like this. Maybe the supplier brought a really good rap to the restaurant that day and the kitchen decided to make a suquet, and that's why they put an extra on the menu. I mean that the dishes with extras don't always have to be the ones that died in the cupboard from the night before.

In the dining room, I saw people of all ages. Young people, older people, groups of friends, work groups.

— I am very excited about this welcome. We have young people who are looking for traditional Catalan food at an affordable price, and then I see that Catalan cuisine is not in crisis. I also have neighbours from the neighbourhood who live further away from these streets, because right around here the neighbourhood has been destroyed to turn it into office space. So, even though they live further away, they come. And, to continue, and it reassures me, this month colleagues have come; for example, Oriol Ivern has already come, and I had a good time feeding him although I felt the pressure of wondering if he would be up to the task.

Changing the subject. Do you think there is a link between Catalan cuisine and Barcelona?

— What I see is that there are many restaurant openings, paid for by investment groups, which indicates an excessive interest by foreign funds to do business in Barcelona. These are people who will mostly never visit the city, but, nevertheless, invest in it. Another thing that is happening is that many restaurants are opening with the model of natural dishes and wines. And I say it right and it is what we have done here, at the Gigante. So I think it is good to bet on Catalan cuisine, but let us analyse what Catalan cuisine they offer.

Which is it?

— Many restaurants that cook Catalan food in Barcelona have bought it all ready-made. It is a cuisine that they do not produce in the establishment but rather buy: it must be said that everything they offer is excellent. I mean that Perelló's Russian salad is indisputably good. Now, these new establishments like wine cellars and restaurants that serve small dishes buy everything. They do not prepare anything, and what they do is oversize the offer to levels that will hurt us. First, because the oversupply is dangerous; second, because they put jobs at risk because they will close and workers will be left without work.

It has nothing to do with your letter, then.

— No. We produce everything from a carefully curated network of suppliers who bring us the products. Our menu has not been created by anyone, neither the dishes nor the wines.

Juan, in this week's letter there is rabbit with snails.

— It's a dish that I'm very happy to have on the menu this week. There have also been weeks when I've made tongue with chanfaina and pickles.

I have two questions to finish. First, why the name Giant.

— Because it appeals to our tradition, to Catalan folklore, because a giant is big, but it doesn't work if there isn't someone underneath it to command it. The idea for the name came from Jordi, from Nomad Coffee, and I later wrote a text to support it.

And lastly, what are your dreams for the future?

— My dream is for Gigante to work and to be able to pay off my debt that the business, Jordi, left me with within five years.