“The spirit of Sant Pau returns”.
This is how Carme Ruscalleda celebrates the reopening of the restaurant she created in Sant Pol de Mar (Barcelona) in 1988 together with her husband Toni Balam and which wore three Michelin stars until it closed in October 2018. The resurrection of the space, which will take place on next June and will be called Cuina Sant Pau (Kitchen Sant Pau), run by his son Raül Balam Ruscalleda.
Accompanying him on the adventure is the Brazilian chef Murilo Alves Rodrigues, trained in the cook's kitchen, Balam's right-hand man for seven years at the restaurant with two Michelin stars Moments in Barcelona and his partner at El Drac de Calella, a coastal restaurant also located in the Maresme.
Balam and Alves will develop an informal proposal, market cuisine.
“It will be a living restaurant, without a tasting menu and with dishes to share.
We have a humble project, with a kitchen that does not exclude anyone due to price and without great pretensions, but without creative limits”, advances Raül Balam.
“We want people to eat Maresme in every season of the year, with local ingredients, from the same producers that served Sant Pau.
There will be vegetables, fish of the day, pig's trotters, the mythical cannelloni from Botiga Ruscalleda... A blackboard will display the day's suggestions.
We will make classics that are part of my life and my taste memory (in which the Mediterranean and Japan are mixed)”, continues Balam (Sant Pol de Mar, 46 years old).
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"The Ruscalleda touch is in Raül's genes, and also a little in Murilo's, who has worked with us," says the chef with the most stars in the world, satisfied.
"Murilo Alves and I captain the ship and we will have my mother as an observer, as a guide... But she has to dedicate herself to enjoying herself and having a good time in life," says her son.
“Although if one day she wants to go into the kitchen, there is no problem, it is her house.
The spoon is going to put her in, the mothers don't shut up about anything and she should never shut up!
Indeed, there will be moments where the hand of Carme Ruscalleda is the protagonist, since the long red table in the kitchen where she directed the orders and ate before the service with her brigade, may host private meals in the future.
“In these almost four years of closure we have received requests from various groups and companies from here and abroad asking us to make them a special menu.
We were unable to assist you due to lack of
staff
[personal].
But if an interesting request now comes to us, we will be able to attend to it, because we will have personnel, infrastructure and gastronomic discourse”, announces the Catalan cook, who posts recipes, with her artistic drawings, videos and “gastronomic and healthy ideas” on her website Cuina Estudi Carme Ruscalleda .
The chef closed her three-star restaurant to reinvent herself, according to her, and although she has slowed down after the closure of Sant Pau, she remains "very busy and very committed to society, to cooking and nutrition."
She collaborates in the press, radio and television, as well as with schools, from elementary to university, and with a local company of natural, "chemical-free" stir-fries.
Raül Balam (left) and Murilo Alves play with the old pool table that will become the Cuina Sant Pau table.
In the enclave of Sant Pol de Mar where the Sant Pau was, in the central Carrer Nou, the projects of their children will coexist.
Mercé Balam Ruscalleda leads El Jardí del Sant Pau with her husband Albert Rovira, with good tapas and drinks, and in the summer Cuina Sant Pau de Raül will arrive.
When Cuina is active, there will be synergies.
“The good thing is that my clients who arrive soon will be able to have an aperitif at El Jardí del Sant Pau and if the table is too long they will be able to have the coffees”.
The brothers will share the wonderful garden that overlooks the sea, where the sound of the train and the waves mix with the clinking of glasses.
“Both Toni [Balam, her husband] and I grew up in very enterprising and creative families.
Seeing how our children complicate their lives creating their own business, we love it”, says Ruscalleda, who feels “very happy” with the recovery of the Sant Pau facilities.
The fact that Mercé and Raül follow in their footsteps "full of pride" to the Sant Polense couple "and to the entire town".
With the summer opening of Cuina Sant Pau, the charming fishing village of Sant Pol de Mar, with a catering school, shops for gourmets
and fine beach bars, will encourage your gourmet offer.
For Cuina de Sant Pau, Raül Balam is inspired by the beginnings of his parents, and although the atmosphere will be different, he will evoke the history of what was cooked in that place: "We are going to fill the walls with history, with what once there were there, with photographs, figures, paintings of my mother... We recovered the old kitchen from when the restaurant opened, which served as a table to support the trays, and we will place it in front of the cellar.
An old pool table belonging to my father that was at the entrance to Sant Pau will become a community table with room for 12 people”.
According to the design of the reform, by Bruno García Blas, before reaching the two dining rooms, customers will approach through a paved passageway like the street that will make them navigate through a kind of sea of paper, created by the artist Victoria Rabal and the walls,
Designs by Bruno García Blas for Cuina Sant Pau.
The name of the renovated restaurant is also metaphorical.
“Cuina (kitchen in Catalan) frames everything.
The kitchen is the sharp point of a compass, the center where everything happens.
In family celebrations, the party begins and ends in the kitchen, where happiness is cooked, "says Balam.
Although it will sentimentally retain the original Sant Pau plaque on the façade along with the new name, Cuina Sant Pau will not be a clone of the restaurant that the Ruscalleda-Balam family closed after a successful 30-year history and a replica in Japan, San Pau Tokyo (one star), born in 2004.
The bistro concept is the idea, the luxury will be in the product, and in some other element: "I don't have to buy any crockery, I'm going to set up an informal restaurant with three-star dishes and cutlery!" ironically the chef .
With a capacity of 50 people, and in a place where the kitchen and dining room staff will mix, “people will be able to come to eat at one or three.
We will start from Thursday to Sunday in June;
into the summer we will open every day, then we will return to the weekends and in winter we will close for a couple of months, ”he explains.
His "soul friend", the sommelier Meritxell Falgueras, will create the wine list.
Raül Balam does not drink alcohol and “of course there will be drinks for those who do not drink wine”.
Raül Balam lives a moment of energy, of entrepreneurship.
He is preparing the launch of an autobiographical book, where he speaks openly "about addictions, how to overcome them and how you can return to life without any problem and without shame."
And in April he debuts a new themed menu at Moments, at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Barcelona.
In this two-star restaurant, where mother and son work together on culinary moments, the script will be the 17 objectives that the United Nations has proposed for the 2030 Agenda. There will be 17 steps, with representative dishes, such as a
dashi
broth in a version Mediterranean, made before the guests, exemplifying the right to clean water.