Jordi Artal: "I've finished my business at the Time Out Market restaurant and am now looking for a new location in Barcelona"

BarcelonaI interview Jordi Artal (Toronto, 1966) on an exceptional Monday afternoon, because in the evening he will be hosting large groups of congressmen from the Mobile World Congress. Everything is in motion in the kitchen, and in the dining room the waiters are setting tables with white tablecloths. I ask him about my mother, and he tells me how well she feels at 85 years old. Jordi was born in Toronto because his parents left to make their fortune, and, for visas at that time, it was easier to go to Canada than to the United States. His mother, Roser Artal, picks him up every day from his house in a car to go to work at the Cinc Sentits restaurant, which has two Michelin stars. She tells me that the women in her family are very strong, that his grandmother died at 101 years old. Together with his sister, Amèlia, Jordi opened the restaurant in Barcelona in 2004. He had never been a cook before because, in fact, he worked in a very different field (he was a marketing director in Silicon Valley, California). However, both proved to be very knowledgeable, and in 2008 the Cinc Sentits restaurant received its first Michelin star. At the end of 2020 it received its second. Amèlia is no longer in the restaurant, but Èric has been there for seventeen years.

Jordi, when I asked you how you are, you said you are doing well, on your own path. What do you mean by that expression?

— I don't go to conferences or cooking classes. I decided not to do so about ten years ago, because I would come home after listening to trends and chefs, and I could feel influenced. I want to cook in my own way, without following any pattern, and that doesn't mean that I don't recognize the essential importance that conferences have for gastronomy. It's just that I want to make my own path.

What is that path?

— Thinking about the customer, about the reaction they will have when they see the dishes and eat the whole menu. To see how a customer can feel in our country, once a month I transform myself into one. I go out into the street and come in to experience the whole experience as a diner. I want to see all the steps we take, from the welcome at the door, through the appetizers in the lobby and up to the dining room. I ask the waiters to give me the same explanations they would give to another person. I am very clear that our restaurant must offer an interactive show.

As if it were a play?

— As if it were, yes. Because with the price of our tasting menu (200 euros plus 120 euros for the wine pairing), the client assumes that they will eat very well. So what we offer is a complete experience, in which the food is very good, but in the three hours that they spend, they live a sensory experience. And this fact begins at the very door of the restaurant, from the moment we receive them. In addition, the lobby does not allow them to see the restaurant room. For me, this fact is very important so that they reserve more expectations of what they are going to see and experience. In addition, in the lobby I tell them about my origins, my town, which is the Torre del Espanyol. While they eat the appetizers, nature music is heard: a flowing river, birds chirping... We prepare them so that they leave the hustle and bustle, the traffic, the noise outside, and get ready to enter a new world.

And when they go from the hall to the living room, what do they find?

— Eric, the head waiterHe brings them a cylinder, which he places on the table and lights up. Then it starts to spin, and the ingredients that will be the stars of the dishes appear. We don't reveal the names because we want them to be amazed. They will have previously told us about their intolerances and allergies or food preferences, and from there we make a menu that we want to surprise them. And the truth is that the reaction is very good; people are willing to play along, they live it as a special day.

Are the dishes you prepare based on Catalan cuisine?

— Always. I make sofritos, picadas, fricandoso and fideuás my way, but they are based on them. Also, the ingredients are local, from nearby; I don't look for ingredients from any other culture. Although I, like Jordi who likes to eat, love to travel and try dishes from other cultures, but Jordi, chef at the Cinc Sentits restaurant, is clear that he wants to make contemporary Catalan cuisine.

How to define contemporary Catalan cuisine?

— The cuisine that touches food in every season of the year, based on the territory and on my memories of what was eaten at home, which I get from my great-grandmother. In this cuisine, cherries are eaten in summer and not in winter or spring, even though we have supermarkets that sell them.

How is your service?

— Dynamic. When the waiters bring the dishes, they leave small cards on the table. On one side there is an illustration of the product, made by the second chef, Carlos Flores, and on the other, an explanation of the dish. For example, with the fricandó, the drawing is the veal, and the text says how we consider the dish: "A modern twist on a Catalan classic from medieval times, a dish my mother prepared when winter was ending. My version is both humble and luxurious, with slow-braised tail and black truffle." And then I write the ingredients of the dish: "Braised old veal tail, crispy mushrooms, cheese gnocchi; black truffle and herb butter.

What do you mean when you say that the service is dynamic?

— The waiters understand the psychology of the customer, whether they want it to be more or less formal, whether they should give them more or less information. There are tables of all kinds, so we never ask them if they want to receive longer or shorter explanations, but the waiters understand how they want to be served. However, in any case, we leave the cards on all the tables.

Changing the subject. How is the restaurant you opened in the summer at the Time Out Market going?

— Yesterday, Sunday [March 2], we finished. We have been here for eight months; it was an experience that we took as a test for both parties. Lisbon and the city of Porto are doing very well. I have been happy to have been here these months. The fact is that I have finished the restaurant at the Time Out Market and now I am looking for a place in Barcelona to carry out the offer I made. I want to do other things, like events that I do outside of Catalonia, such as Singapore, China or Malaysia.

Is this place you are looking for in Barcelona to open another restaurant?

— Yes, informal cuisine. During the pandemic I created the Sentido Común brand (with the initials of Cinco Sentidos backwards) which prepared takeaway food. This range of dishes is what I brought to the Time Out Market and it is what I would like to continue doing in a new restaurant. They are dishes such as red wine marinated veal cheek with crispy mushrooms and mashed potato foam, which was the most expensive dish we offered; it cost 17 euros, but the veal had been cooked for thirty-six hours. Or prawn croquettes with cured prawn carpaccio.

Or the flan.

— The history of flan is very good. We spent a whole month testing to make a good flan. So, when we had it, did we name it The Best Flan in the World? We put a question mark because we wanted people to give us their opinion. And when they tried it right there, people told us yes, they liked it a lot.

How was it made?

— With lots of egg yolk, lots of cream, lots of vanilla and little milk. We did it very precisely, with the exact ingredients, with the oven preheated. The space we had to cook at the Time Out Market was very adequate, and we could do everything well there.

Finally, Jordi, what are your dreams for the future?

— I don't want the third Michelin star, which is what everyone asks me, but I want to have twenty.

I wasn't asking you about the Michelin Guide but for projects that you had in mind, apart from what you have already told me.

— Yes, but everyone asks me if I want the third star. I am very ambitious, demanding and I practice kaizen, which means "continuous improvement", that every day should be better than the last. So my professional dream is to continue climbing without ceasing.