✅ Edu Martínez. Chef of the Brut Restaurant in Llubí, Mallorca. A professional who, first and foremost, is an artist, who has worked in the world of advertising, and now we can enjoy his creativity in gastronomy.
▷In a snapshot
His personal stamp is respect, awareness of the environment, work, and a lot of passion. He is committed to innovative cuisine: seasonal products and a social table that allows the chef and diners to interact. All this within an authentic space, a remodeled building, an old carpentry workshop. A highly recommendable experience.
#Talking
- CREATIVITY. What have you done to keep it active in COVID times?
Out of respect for all those who are having a really hard time, I can’t just complain. Without going any further, the fact that I can be here now doing this interview is proof of how lucky I am. The next thing I do is to understand this new scenario as well as possible and consequently look for new formulas and, if they do not exist, we will have to invent them. I only depend on myself to provide myself, and others, with a more satisfactory horizon; and having a good attitude and predisposition are fundamental. In these cases, and I say this in the plural because I come from Argentina and we are already quite used to going through crises, I always remember a phrase from Einstein, which now re-reading it I think is worth quoting entirely because it explains it in a “brilliant” way: “Let us not pretend that things will change if we always do the same thing. The crisis is the best blessing that can happen to people and countries, because the crisis brings progress. Creativity is born from anguish as the day is born from the dark night. It is in crisis that inventiveness, discoveries, and great strategies are born. Those who surpass the crisis surpass themselves without being ‘overcome’.
Those who attribute their failures and hardships to the crisis violate their own talent and respect problems more than solutions. The real crisis is the crisis of incompetence. The downside of people and countries is the laziness to find solutions and ways out. Without crisis there are no challenges, without challenges life is a routine, a slow agony. Without a crisis there is no merit.
It is in the crisis that the best of each one comes to the surface, because without a crisis every wind is a caress. To speak of crisis is to promote it, and to remain silent in crisis is to exalt conformism. Instead, let us work hard. Let’s put an end once and for all to the only threatening crisis, which is the tragedy of not wanting to fight to overcome it.”
2. YOUR PLAYLIST. The songs that have accompanied you in this confinement.
One of them came up as a result of having seen the documentary “Punk” produced by Iggy Pop from which I have been reviving bands I haven’t heard in a long time, such as Dead Brains, Bad Religion or Ramones. And another good example of the creativity that accompanied me during these days was La Boa de Isaac. Some friends musicians decided to “get together” virtually to play tribute songs from different musicians but inviting the musician in question and the day they don’t perform a song with Fito Paez, they do it with Jorge Drexler or Leonor Watling.
3. CONCEPT. Your restaurant, the gastronomic experiences for a limited public that you offer are now the best offer. Are you going to change or modify anything?
It is difficult to predict which is the best offer at the moment, or which will be in this period of the upcoming opening. The consumer habits, that necessarily many people have changed, I think will leave their mark, at least in the short term. I would think that people will feel more protected in a place where there are only 16 people with a full restaurant, including the staff. And I think that those who decide to go out to a gastronomic restaurant will be eager for a relaxed atmosphere with warm and close service. As far away as possible from all those measures that they have had to adapt and encounter during confinement and that went against the very nature of their habits and customs.
4. TALENT. Beer, kombucha, rice vinegar… What will you surprise us with next?
It’s probably the next thing I’ll surprise myself with. There are many variables and conditions that make most of the ideas we have unfeasible, especially because sometimes we work on things we don’t have references to or on a technique that is new to us. Besides, it must have a reason for being, a meaning and a coherence with our way of understanding cooking. But to give you an example, we are now working on an idea that emerged in this period of uncertainty and need, perhaps a little ahead of its time, at least in the West, which is a dish called “Waiter, there’s a fly in the soup”. And it’s a Thai style soup but made from fly larvae milk. For this we have contacted BioflyTech, a company that arises from a research group specializing in breeding dipterous insects. First of all, it has to be enjoyable if your prejudices allow it. But I also see it as necessary, that someone from our sector, shows a possibility in the challenge of food in the future, in sustainable development, in environmental economics or in a lesser impact on climate change.
5. BRUT RECOMMENDATION. What signature dish will you surprise us with when you reopen?
One of the dishes I feel like making as soon as we open is a piece of hunting macerated with kombucha lees from fig leaves.
6. HIDDEN TIPS. Your recommendations to really enjoy Mallorca. Your 3 favourites. Surprise us.
After a few days of rain, a nice experience, which is somewhat unknown in Mallorca, is to go to “Ses Fonts Ufanes”, to see the water emerge from the stones, causing a turbulent flow. And have a picnic right there.
I recommend breathing Mallorca from its people and traditions. For example, experience one of the festivals related to the grape harvest or gastronomy such as the “Festa des Vermar” in Binissalem, where you eat some impressive sheep noodles and drink wine of the denomination of origin. Collaborate in a grape harvest and then enjoy good “brut” rice. Or go into a typical Mallorcan house to make “Espinagades“, the flagship dish of Sant Antoni in Sa Pobla.
And as for what to see of Mallorca, clearly, you must see the sunset, specifically from Sa Foradada, in the Tramuntana Mountains. Where I also recommend you take a good wine and a couple of glasses.
Edu Martinez. An excellent bon vivant. He loves the pleasures of life and as such, takes care and pampers the details in his work as a chef. An artist who will stand out in other fields.
+ HIDDEN ICONS
