Nomadic cuisine with Priorat roots
"When you grow up going tomato picking with your grandfather, you also develop certain values and a culinary identity." Martí Mestre Domènech is a young chef trained at the Università di Scienze Gastronomiche di Pollenzo in Italy, who has been fortunate enough to have his culinary training at home in the Priorat region. "The fact that my other grandfather and mother ran the Hotel Hostal Sport definitely sparked my curiosity for gastronomy." Today, he works alongside his colleague Andrea Picchione, whom he met at the university. slow foodThey act as nomadic chefs; they travel to the place, read about it, understand it, and then cook it in the most honest and sincere way, with "powerful minimalism," he clarifies. At university, he learned that "gastronomy is everything because we have evolved through food." And he adds: "Cooking is becoming aware of the world we live in; it's a process of food transformation that begins with a tuber."
His is a generation that shuns conventional career paths. As a student, he partly ate the garden he cultivated with Picchione. They made "mystery purchases" for each other and cooked every day with boundless passion. Together they traveled to Rancho Tehuan, Mexico, to work in a wood-fired, smoke-heated kitchen in a nature reserve with an organic garden. "There we learned about coexistence, anthropology, about the whys and wherefores of things. We slaughtered a bull at seven in the evening and cooked it for twelve people that night. The food, the music, and the mezcal brought us together, and the next day they invited us to one of their family celebrations." At Sport, in Falset, they've showcased their culinary skills on several occasions, presenting the Ebro Delta on their plates or creating contemporary surf and turf. Obviously, they've created harmonies with wines from the Montsant and Priorat DOs, but they've also used them as ingredients in their cooking.
"We live with our knives in our backpacks, uprooted, with friendship and mutual respect coming first. The combination of techniques and cultures helps us grow both gastronomically and personally," he reveals. They plan to travel to Japan in March, while confirming gigs for four, six, or eight hands in the coming days and weeks; word of mouth has already worked its magic, and offers are pouring in. pop up From all over. After the adrenaline rush in the kitchen, the Priorat chef needs to retreat for weeks at a time; he has done so in the Italian Alps and in central France, working as a shepherd and making cheese. His advice for young people: "Cook, go to the market to shop with friends, enjoy the atmosphere of a dinner party with good food and wine. We have a responsibility to value who we are and to pass on our grandmothers' recipes to future generations."