Maca de Castro, the chef who does not taste her dishes

In Guy de Forestier's book

It is said that the natives of the island are reserved, distrustful and discreet people. Chef Maca de Castro complies with these premises and barely speaks a word while the photographer portrays her for this report. Interviews are difficult for him, lectures terrify him, and he doesn't even want to hear about television. "I am very introverted, it is difficult for me to socialize, it is reality," she admits sitting on one of the sofas in the restaurant that bears her name, awarded with a Michelin star in Puerto de Alcúdia, north of Mallorca. The 40-year-old Balearic cook was recognized in 2021 as the chef with the greatest future projection by the International Academy of Gastronomy, an award that she received with surprise in a hard year, marked by the restrictions of the pandemic to the hospitality industry.and that she believes that it endorses her courage when it comes to innovating in a kitchen that she herself defines as “simple but direct”, with Mallorca permeating her creations.

Everything that Maca de Castro brings to the plate pivots on what the garden offers. “It is very difficult to compare the product we have here with that of any other part of the world. For me, Mallorca is the focus of the Mediterranean in terms of product ”, he affirms. The island, the Mallorcan, the seasonal produce permeate all of the chef's creations, who thinks and executes the dish based on what she picks from the garden and not the other way around. “If I have an aubergine I'm going to make it the best you can taste, or a potato. From there I link with the sea, or with the countryside or see if perhaps we pull more towards tradition. But always, in everything, the matrix is ​​the garden ”, he reflects. In a menu that changes according to what the land offers in each season,During the preparation process, the chef does not try her dishes because she confesses that it is very difficult for her to enjoy what she does herself. “The first to try it is the sommelier, Guillermo, and he tries it until it is a 'more Maca' dish. Before it was hard for me, but now I go out to talk to the client and ask him how he is, ”he confesses. A kitchen "apparently simple" but that always tries to put on the table "the best there is at that time." Just this treatment of the product and the kitchen has earned it the green Michelin star, a recognition of sustainability that was awarded along with five other restaurants.A kitchen "apparently simple" but that always tries to put on the table "the best that there is at that moment". Just this treatment of the product and the kitchen has earned it the green Michelin star, a recognition of sustainability that was awarded along with five other restaurants.A kitchen "apparently simple" but that always tries to put on the table "the best that there is at that moment". Just this treatment of the product and the kitchen has earned it the green Michelin star, a recognition of sustainability that was awarded along with five other restaurants.

Maca de Castro's vocation runs in the family. If the kitchen thing had been made easy for him, he says he probably would have already left it. Born to an Andalusian father and a Castilian-Leonese mother, at the age of 16 she began working as a waitress in the family hamburger restaurant, spending hours in summer that saw the reward in winter, when she took advantage of the seasonal business closure to travel and see the world. Between comings and goings, she told her father that she wanted to leave the kitchen and he decided to take her on a trip to a Gastronomy congress in San Sebastián, where everything took a turn. "I saw Carme Ruscalleda and I said: 'I want to try this." At that congress, he discovered that cooking "was not just a man's world" but that there were young people and a different way of working. “The lightbulb of travel, culture and the table went on for me.It was something new and I wanted to be a part of all that, "he says.

Chef Maca de Castro in the kitchen of her restaurant in Alcúdia, Mallorca. FRANCISCO UBILLA

The next 11 years were spent doing internships during the winter in restaurants where he was filming, taking the experience that later turned into the family business during the summer season. There he met his great reference, Hilario Arbelaitz, teacher and mentor, the person he has in mind when he has to undertake projects related to gastronomy. "I always ask myself: 'What would Hilario do?' And I try to follow in his footsteps ”. From his months in Mugaritz he came out with admiration for the way of thinking, cooking and executing the staging of Andoni Luis Aduriz's product. After 11 years alternating internships in winter and family restaurant in summer, in 2012 its first star arrived. It was November and the establishment closed the same with the arrival of the low season and she left to do the practices:“Everybody said we were crazy to close in November. The star thing was a boom, it was something very strong that I had to digest and I went to practice in Las Vegas ”.

The trend of fleeing from public and media pressure is a constant in his career. "It is very difficult for me to tell what I do every day, people tell me to show, to count, but that doesn't come out for me." He does not do with social networks, he is not interested in media popularity, he believes that he has lost opportunities to avoid public exposure and swears that he prefers to set up an establishment on the other side of the world rather than participate in a television program. It was precisely there that he started a successful restaurant in which he obviated that he had a Michelin star "to see if they really liked it for the work we did and not for the one we had done." The premises in Arenas de José Ignacio (Uruguay) operated for five years,Until the proposal of some German investors and the fatigue of a team that worked half a year on each continent made him opt for an advice in Dusseldorf.

Now it is focused on the family bistro restaurant Jardín de Alcúdia, which turns 25; in the gastronomic jewel Maca de Castro, located on the top floor; and in the recent adventure of Andana, a place that he opened in the center of Palma after the confinement, of which, he says, has allowed him to "continue dreaming" and make his gastronomy known among the residents themselves thanks to a "more affordable proposal ”. “Work is what really motivates me and drives me,” he says. That, and spending your free time on the family boat moored in the nearby Puerto de Pollença to wake up watching the sunrise from the sea. In reviewing her career, she notices a change in the role of women in gastronomy, which she considers increasingly relevant and with interesting proposals. "I think that we are less protagonists,we like more to share and less to compete ”, he reflects. “We are more about everyday work and not wanting to have this or that. We are increasingly recognized, but it is also a job that we have to do ”. She believes that total equity between stoves "will take a while" and is committed to the new generations of women, who come "strong" and supported by congresses and foundations "where they want us to be".

While the restaurant staff prepares for the dinner service, in which they will debut a new dish that Maca de Castro has not yet tasted - although he has promised to do so before taking it out to the dining room - tells that his travel plans for this winter they pass through the Faroe Islands (Denmark), where he wants to soak up the techniques of working with fish that the inhabitants of the archipelago use.

She wants to return to Israel, as she does to Korea, where she was amazed at the way they cook vegetables.

The high season ends in Alcúdia, hotels and restaurants prepare for the winter closing waiting for visitors to return when the heat returns.

Meanwhile, the chef will try, as she writes on her Twitter profile, to continue enjoying life to the fullest.