✅ Our hidden icon of today is Jonay Hernández, creator and chef of Mallorca’s trendy Canarian restaurant, La vieja de Jonay. Highly recommended.
▷In a snapshot
Innovation, quality, and love for recovering the flavours of the mother’s cooking and his home, the Canary Islands. He nail it.
#Talking
- CREATIVITY. In COVID times.
The first 15 days were hard, my head was only focused on how we were going to get out of this. Then, I thought I had to be ready for the return and I had to take advantage of that free time I have NEVER had to think about the path La Vieja had taken and how we could improve. I began to review cookbooks, I read a book that I had wanted to read for a long time: ¨Rich Dad Poor Dad¨ and get back in shape, something that I had lost since I rode La Vieja.
2. YOUR BASICS. Which people have accompanied or inspired you?
These days I have been able to talk more with my parents and they have been the ones who have encouraged me because only they know the struggles I have had to endure in order to be able to depend only on myself.
3. TALENT. What has been created by this confinement? Some new concepts or dishes that we can enjoy in La Vieja?
So new dishes NO! Because new dishes come out in the middle of the action, in the day to day: with the new products that I see in the market, in these two years of La Vieja many new dishes have been created. If there is anything I have done these days in making an overview of the menu of La Vieja and see what preparations I can do better in terms of taste .
4. LA VIEJA TOP. What dish do you consider basic that people try in your kitchen?
Uff!! is a complicated question, since I don’t usually recommend dishes to people I don’t know in the culinary field, I prefer to see what they order first and then recommend. It’s very difficult to offer a dish to someone I don’t know about their taste. I usually recommend dishes to repeat customers, whose flavors I already know.
5. HIDDEN TIPS. Your recommendations to really enjoy Mallorca. Your 3 favorites: where to go, what to do, what to see. Surprise us.
I don’t really have any favorites, I have places according to the occasion. There are restaurants I go to when I have to go with family and I have others when I go without. But actually the ones I go to the most are Casa Jacinto … because it’s close to home, it’s a family business that has been running for years and where you can enjoy good wine and good meat. I go a lot to Bodega Barahona in the summer, another family house with a great product, and where you always see the family working. And another place where I usually go because my wife and I like Mexican food a lot is Xoloto. I think that maybe my answer will surprise you because I haven’t mentioned any fashionable or starred restaurants but you have asked me for 3. If you asked me 5 years ago I would have answered you starred or trendy restaurants but in the end the restaurants that last for life are the ones run by the owners and where the treatment is warmer.
Jonay Hernandez, a talented professional, a master at what he does, and who has earned the success he now has. He pursued his dream and has achieved it. An example of a hidden icon. Congratulations.
+ HIDDEN ICONS
