The stable love that we all profess for the Motel Empordà

Fig treesLove is love if it is not unidirectional. This is stated with a mythical image by the actress Emma Vilarasau in the film The House on Fire When the daughter tells her that "to love is to give without expecting anything in return," and the mother responds with the expressive "Fuck you" raising her middle finger. That is, the gesture that the French saydo a good deed of honour, and in our house we complete the gesture with a sausage. In the grain: the journalist Xavier Febrés (Barcelona, ​​​​1949), perhaps one of those who is best known for the great restaurant that is the Motel Empordà (which we know as the Motel), says that he has always felt affection and love when he has gone to eat, and that he has done so at different stages of his life. Hence the title of the book he has written, Motel Empordà, praise of stable love, published by Gavarres publishing house (editor Àngel Madrià), in which he has wisely explained why everyone feels "comfortable".

One Friday at noon we entered the Motel Empordà, the editor, the writer and I. Everything is in its usual place. We see the grandfather clock that does not strike the quarters or the hours, but it does not need to, because they already strike well in the kitchen and in the living room. The photograph, symbolic and descriptive of the great history of the Motel, is located on another side of the column on which the grandfather clock rests. In the book Febrés lingers for a few good pages: "On the column next to it hangs a framed black and white photo, apparently banal, of three elderly gentlemen sitting on a terrace in 1978. They are Josep Mercader, Josep Pla and Ramon Canet. Neither the photo nor its location are at all banal, on the contrary." Febrés then explains the close relationship between the writer Josep Pla, Josep Mercader (the founder of the Motel Empordà) and Ramon Canet, "one of the most beloved men in Figueres, heir to the Canet bookshop on the Rambla and one of the founders of Esquerra Republicana in Figueres".

We cross the bar, with its large wooden bar, and enter the basilica-like room. Large, bright, with round tables dressed with white tablecloths, and we see Jaume Subirós serving some customers at a table, and his young son, Lluís. At the table we find a dish described on the menu that raises applause. It is very close to March, and on the seasonal menu there is a broad bean salad with mint. It is perhaps the oldest dish at the Motel, the one that represents the ingenuity of Josep Mercader, and the reason for his capital legacy in Catalan cuisine. In 1973, when stewed broad beans were an obligatory spring dish, Mercader invented the broad bean salad with mint. "With eternity won, the dish is still on the menu more than fifty years later," writes Febrés. Of course, there have been changes. "Instead of thin strips of lettuce, they now make the salad with a micromix of leaves that didn't exist in 1973." The ingredients are the same: "blanched white-bellied broad beans" al dente, finely chopped fresh mint, encenalls of Iberian pork and pork peu and vinaigrette sauce with a thought of white mustassa. The one with respect to the receiver, all in one place. This is the one that Josep Mercader was born in Cadaqués and died in 1979 when he was 53 years old, due to a heart attack when he returned just after a visit to the hospital. school holidays, it's He stood at the capdavant of which Mercader had built both men. Les filles de Mercader, orfenes de mare des 12 i els 6 anos, tenien 24 i 18 anos. Now that we are about to say this, Xavier Febrés explains the key: "The founder ruled the helm for 19 years and he [in Jaume Subirós] takes him for 45. They are honorary course linked, but different."

After the broad beans and an omelette that is a single dish perfumed with leeks and a prawn, comes the Cadaqués fish with vegetables that add a nested aroma to the fish. With the fish we begin to talk about a word that Subirós details in the prologue and that Xavier Febrés explains in detail: the shell. When fish are well cooked, when they have a tender and firm flesh, "we say that they have a shell, because once cooked they come apart in perfect shells", that is, in layers, as also happens with cod. And be warned, Jaume Saburiós, to prepare the broad bean salad, also assures us that he cracks broad beans, that is, he shells them from their pod.

We eat the Cadaqués dentulo and we entertain ourselves by talking about the suppliers of the Motel, one of the pillars. Jaume knows fishermen who call him as soon as they finish fishing. Xavier, who one day accompanied him to search and met him, confirms this. "The channels of the suppliers, maintained over the years, provide a lot of literature," says Febrés, and also realisms, because once the journalist felt that a supplier told Subirós that what he brought him was not perfect, but that it did him a lot. Then the supplier found the answer that he perhaps did not expect: "It doesn't matter to me, so I'm not keeping it."

We jump off the fish on the cheese cart, which Jaume Subirós himself brings to the table. He describes them to us and we opt for matured. He describes the temperature at which they should be, how he prepares them every morning and, with his mischievous humour, assures us that "the cheeses grow" with them, because they evolve. It is the work of a good refiner, the one that is not seen, that is invisible, but if it were not done, when they were served to us we would not find them with pleasure.

Cadaqués Corks from Can Cabrisas

After the cheeses, we asked Jaume for two legendary desserts: Cadaqués tapones, from the Can Cabrisas bakery, which he prepares in the dining room with burnt rum, coffee and cinnamon, and the crepe Suzette, which he makes with confidence and firmness, as they do in other legendary restaurants, Via Veneto and Racó d'en Binu. With the desserts eaten, we asked Jaume to sit at the table and asked him for a tricky word, happiness. We felt it with the food he served us. "Me too, because I work every day, and because I have my replacement assured with the children." The youngest is in the dining room. The oldest, Albert, is at the Hotel l'Almadrava. Jordi is in the kitchen. Silvia, the great Silvia, is the one who links them all with her stories brought to film and theatre. She adds another nuance to the word happiness: "I am also happy with the arrival of new ingredients in each season of the year."

The conversation goes down paths like boasting, which Subirós doesn't like at all. And also in the definition of classic and traditional. "Classicism means constancy, perseverance and determination; tradition is the most difficult and not everything is traditional, in fact, in the word tradition The same thing happens to him as in the word natural, that now we say to everything that it is natural, and it is not like that." And we finish.

"Love presides over all the manifestations of life. Without the love for the profession and for the country they would not have done what they have done," says the journalist Xavier Febrés. Jaume Subirós has been given stability by the generational change (with grandchildren who also enter the kitchen); love is what he professes for everyone who enters his room. "We say good morning to them, and it is the way I say to the waiters hello to greet is Castilian. In Catalan, we greet with a good day", words of Subirós. It expresses the stable love that we all profess for the Motel Empordà.