A virtual gala for real stars.
Three new two-star restaurants, the Catalan Bo.TiC (Corçà, Girona) and Cinc Sentits (Barcelona) and the Galician Culler de Pau (O Grove, Pontevedra);
21 new with one star and no three-star is the balance of the Michelin galaxy 2021 for Spain and Portugal.
The red guide, which has held a digital gala, open to the public and broadcast live from the Real Casa de Correos de Madrid, also launches a new award, the green star, intended for restaurants with ecological sensitivity.
One of the 21 green stars goes to Culler de Pau, whose intimate 0-kilometer kitchen has made it the only two-star restaurant in Galicia, a community that also wins three new places with one star.
“This momentum is very nice after fighting for so long.
It is a background job and the second star gives us encouragement and a lot of strength ”, assures in a telephone conversation the chef Javier Olleros, head of Culler de Pau with his wife Amaranta Rodríguez (in charge of the room).
The restaurant receives the recognition while the town in which it is located in the Rías Baixas is in "on high alert for Covid and with the team in Erte", although their hope is in being able to reopen, "if possible", the Dec. 18.
“If they don't open up the cities to us, who is going to come?
We will have to endure and be responsible, ”explains Olleros.
Treating the product with five senses (as announced by the name of his restaurant, Cinc Sentits), in delicate dishes focused on the Catalan cuisine of small producers, has earned Jordi Artal the second star.
Located in the Eixample of Barcelona, after a recent move, Cinc Sentits is a family project.
“We do not depend on a large hotel or a business group.
This is a personal adventure, a great teamwork ”, says this self-taught chef of migrant parents in Canada, where he was born.
The second star is "a rush" for the team at this restaurant, which is open and attended by a clientele "who have gotten used to having dinner very soon because of the curfew", which in the city is established at ten o'clock.
The third new bestseller is the Empordà restaurant Bo.TiC, which has just turned 13 years since its inauguration and receives the second star “as a gift”.
In this case it is also a family story for which chef Albert Sastregener is responsible along with his wife, Cristina Torrent, sommelier and head of the room.
They have obtained the new award thanks to "elaborations of enormous technical level respectful of tradition and with great clarity in each flavor" that they have known to "great personal and professional satisfaction".
“We are grateful to all the people who spend moments of their lives coming to our house.
Our commitment is to work with maximum excellence.
But we must not stay here, we will go for the third or fifth star if there is one ”, says Sastregener.
In total 38 restaurants with two stars for the new 2021 guide.
"Being such a complicated year for the hospitality industry, we have continued to find young values and innovative dishes that, increasingly based on local or proximity products, are capable of offering us a real gastronomic pleasure"
,
declared in his speech Gwendal Poullennec, international director of the Michelin guides.
In his opinion, the guide reflects a "singular symbiosis between fresh sap and consecrated cooks."
“Behind each dish there is a creativity and a passion that the inspectors have fallen in love with,” explain Michelin spokespersons, who have preferred despite the special circumstances to continue holding the gala “as a tribute to the hospitality industry” and publish the 2021 guide instead of parentheses.
But in the toughest year for gastronomy, with restaurant closures (many of the winners are inactive), economic losses and uncertainties, you cannot speak of a meteor shower, only a drizzle.
Neither have the pools that were shuffling names like Atrio, Coque or Ricard Camarena among the triestrellados, nor Mugaritz already become an eternal candidate for the three stars that seem not to finish arriving.
The inspectors, however, have been more generous with the one-star options, although according to industry sources there is a lack of recognition, which in their opinion always occurs.
Of course, the 11 Spanish three-star restaurants - a category in which there are none in Portugal - renew their status.
With the new jackets sent by the organization, they appeared on screen, from their respective homes, during the
online
gala
: Elena Arzak (Arzak, with three stars for three decades), Pedro Subijana (Akelarre), Martín Berasategui (who has 12 stars), Paolo Casagrande (Lasarte Barcelona, from MB), Joan Roca (Celler de Can Roca), Quique Dacosta, Eneko Atxa (Azurmendi), Ángel León (Aponiente), Jordi Cruz (ABaC) and Jesús Sánchez (Cenador de Amós).
Dabiz Muñoz, whose DiverXo restaurant was the only three stars in the capital present at the venue of the gala broadcast, accompanied by star colleagues such as Paco Roncero, Ramón Freixa, Diego Guerrero, Mario Sandoval and Óscar Velasco, were the representation of the Spanish chefs at the ceremony, presented by two small kitchen actors, Cayetana Guillén Cuervo and Miguel Ángel Muñoz, who also made their first steps in the kitchen during their participation in the
MasterChef Celebrity
program
, where they were finalist and winner, respectively.
Cayetana Guillén Cuervo, with some 'starry' chefs behind, in a meeting organized by the Michelin Guide.
On video, the announcement of the restaurants that were awarded the new Michelin green star (Video: EPV)
After the granting of the new recognitions, the holders of a star are now 203 in the Iberian Peninsula, added the 19 new ones from Spain and the two from Portugal.
The bet, Michelin insists, is for the kitchens of the different regions and for young talents.
Catalonia, Galicia, Mallorca and Aragon benefit from this gastronomic firmament.
There are chefs like Begoña Rodrigo (La Salita, in Valencia) and Pablo Airaudo (Amelia, in San Sebastián) who have changed their locations but the star follows them.
The list of new arrivals is completed by a 2021 star: Ambivium (Peñafiel, Valladolid), Atempo (Sant
Julià de Ramis, Girona);
L'Aliança 1919 d'Anglés (Anglès, Girona);
Quatre Molins (Cornudella de Montsant, Tarragona);
Baeza & Rufete (Alicante);
Béns d'Avall (Sóller, Mallorca);
DINS Santi Taura (Palma de Mallorca);
Callizo (Aínsa, Huesca);
Space N (Esquedas, Huesca);
Eirado (Pontevedra);
Miguel González (Pereiro de Aguiar, Ourense);
Syllabary (Vigo);
In la Parra (Salamanca);
Muna (Ponferrada, León);
Odysseus (Murcia);
Saddle (Madrid) and Raíces (Talavera de la Reina, Toledo), by Carlos Maldonado, winner of
MasterChef
in 2015.
In Portugal the restaurants 100 Maneiras, in Lisbon, of the Bosnian Ljubomir Stanisic, and Eneko Lisboa receive a shine, with which the Basque chef adds six stars to his galaxy.
The absence of new three stars is justified by Michelin for "the closures and the lack of continuity, which make it difficult to maintain excellence".
“That there are more stars is always good news for the international projection of Spanish gastronomy.
We thought we were going to celebrate it with many more colleagues, but we have to accept it and put all our hopes that this nightmare of the pandemic will pass.
There is a lot of talent, a lot of work.
And what we have to do is turn the page and think about next year, ”says Jesús Sánchez, chef at the Cenador de Amós, the only new three-star in the 2020 guide.
Losses of stars due to the definitive closures of restaurants due to the pandemic crisis will appear in the Michelin Guide 2022. The inspections were closed last October and once the guide was launched, the 12 inspectors start their trips again, as long as the pandemic he allows it.
Green stars for sustainable restaurants
Michelin gave the Sustainability Award to chef del mar Ángel León at last year's gala, but in the 2021 guide it has decided to create the Green Star.
The symbol resembles a four-leaf clover and will be worn by 21 Spanish restaurants regardless of their number of other stars.
Although not all ecochefs restaurants are on the list, this institutional green nod is appreciated at a time when environmental and ecological awareness, sustainable practices and support for local production have become socially and economically necessary.
One of the new Green Stars, Eneko Atxa's Azurmendi restaurant, was already recognized in 2018 as the most sustainable restaurant in the world by The World's 50 Best guide.
In addition to Azurmendi, Aponiente appears again in this eco list, who was the one who inaugurated it in the last edition and they are joined by Eneko (the other Atxa space in Larrabezu), Les Cols (Olot, Girona), by Fina Puigdevall ;
Sollo (Fuengirola, Málaga), Ricard Camarena (Valencia), El Invernadero (Madrid), by the gastrobotanist Rodrigo de la Calle;
Andreu Genestra (Capdepera, Mallorca);
The Llar de Viri (Asturias);
L'Antic Molí (Tarragona), Somiatruites (Igualada, Barcelona);
Refectory (Sardón de Duero, Valladolid);
La Botica (Matapozuelos, Valladolid), La Bicicleta (Hoznayo, Cantabria), Els Casals (Sagàs, Barcelona), Casa Albets (Lladurs, Lleida), Lluerna (Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Barcelona), Hermanos Torres Kitchen (Barcelona), Pepe Vieira (Raxó, Pontevedra), O Balado (Boqueixon, A Coruña), and one of the new two stars, Culler de Pau.
For Culler's chef, Javier Olleros, of whom Michelin highlights “his kilometer 0 kitchen with environmental sentiment”, the green star “makes him especially excited”.
"It's an interesting badge for everyone to see that responsible work is recognized," he says.
"For many years we have had 85% organic product, we recycle, we compost ... This award is worth us to tell our story with a projection and a differential part that previously cost to talk about it," concludes Olleros.
