After the great financial crisis of 2008, there were many workers from all kinds of sectors who, seeing themselves doomed to unemployment, they decided to open a hospitality business with your compensation. The premises were cheap and who doesn’t know how to cook something and serve some beers?
Today we know how most of these supervening hoteliers ended up: in ruin That’s why it’s nice to hear the story of the Eduardo Albiola former worker at the closed Gamesa Cuenca wind turbine blade repair factory, from which he was fired in the midst of the crisis.
Albiol had always liked cooking, but he did not launch a bar without having a clue. what he did was enroll in the School of Hospitality at 30 years old. There, surrounded by kids, he learned the trade and insisted on training in the best restaurants he could: first with Ricard Camarenathen with Jesus Safe and finally with Albert Adria.
The El Barri group, owner of Tickets, where he was working, offered him to stay on staff in the new premises they planned to open in Barcelona. But Albiol wanted to return to his familyto Cuenca –“the town”, as he refers to the city throughout our conversation–, and, as it turned out, the time had come to open his own store.
“I started with my wife in a bar, with a bar, with a thousand problems,” explains Albiol. “Everything was wrong on this site. I got tangled up a lot to make the skewer of the reeds, making spherifications of olives from the Tickets. Imagine it in town, people had only seen it on TV. We went on vacation and when we returned the place was a shame. There were rats like hares.”
Albiol, moreover, was tired of working in a conventional bar: “The bar in Cuenca is a waste of time. You have to put a pincho and people are entertained in the bars. Let them go to the park. If you’re with two drunks at night just putting wine… I understand that there are people willing to do this, but it’s very hard. They came in at half past 11 cooked and told you ‘put on the last one’ and on a Wednesday you still left at 1 in the morning”.
Chop suey in the city of morteruelo
Fate led Albiol to what he had always wanted to do, but he did not dare: a gastronomic restaurant. Something not easy to conceive in Cuenca. and less in the new part of townto which tourists do not approach even by chance.
“We give up 80% of the city that will never come”
“The premise was to do something totally away from Cuenca food”explains Albiol. “All bars are the same. All. It doesn’t matter what you get into. We gave up 80% of the city that is never going to come, but little by little people tried it, they liked it, they saw that nothing was wrong with it, that it did not die, that they did not grow antennae, and they have I have been accepting.”
Albiol’s cuisine goes against the prevailing discourse. It is what, before the term was banned in gastronomic circles, we called fusion cuisine, without anything that ties it to the traditional cuisine of La Mancha –although without giving up the good local product–, executed with professionalism and good taste. And, what is most surprising, especially if you come from Madrid, at a very reasonable price.
In the letter they coexist asian influenced dishes, like the chop suey –very tasty–; Peruvians, like lomito saltado; dishes with seasonal products –on our visit there was asparagus from Navarra and morels in sauce– and own creations, like its understandably successful pork jowl in peanut sauce. All this with an average ticket of around 30 euros and good wines to choose from from 12 euros.
“We know our local customer, and if I go up a bit, I lose whoever goes out to dinner on a Wednesday”, explains Albiol. “A couple is not going to spend 100 euros on a Wednesday. They are civil servants.”
a quiet kitchen
Olea Comedor opened in a first place just in front of the current one. “We would have stayed there forever, but the landlord decided that I wanted to be Donald Trump and sell the building and told us that the rent had ended”, explains Albiol. “Stay exactly the same. He wants to make a move that no one has done nor is going to do, the building is going to stay there until it collapses.” Luckily, shortly after they were kicked out, the restaurant across the street became vacant.
Albiol does not dream of big projects, not even of earning a lot of money –something that many people consider when, as has happened with Olea, they give you a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a rating of Recommended in the Repsol Guide–. He wants to do the cooking he likes and not work more than necessary.
Currently, the team is made up of two people in the kitchen and two in the dining room, which manages to provide 200 covers per week. “You can’t do many flourishes”explains Albiol. “At the beginning I dedicated thousands of hours to it, but we got to what we got and we tried to do the best we could, without going crazy and above all respecting the boys’ schedules”.
Since he brings up the subject, we can’t help but ask Albiol about all the recent controversy surrounding the lack of waiters. And he is very clear about it: “Now that sustainability is becoming fashionable, I laugh. When you are already a millionaire you worry about sustainability. We have been fighting two and a half days for 10 years. And now the saviors of the country come to you who have had people working 20 hours a day without eating to tell you that you have to do it that way because it is sustainable. The one who is not sustainable is you. There were also no clients in the concentration camps to spend the night.
What to ask for: in Olea everything is designed to share. The portions, which range from 10 to 17 euros, are quite large and can be shared between four people. We let ourselves be advised by the service and everything we tried was delicious. It is also worth drinking wine: the menu has references to the best La Mancha wineries at very reasonable prices. There is a taxi stand in front of the premises.
practical data
Where: Castilla-la Mancha Avenue, 3. Cuenca
Half price: 30 euros.
Bookings: 628 85 97 42
Schedules: Lunch and dinner from Wednesday to Saturday. Sunday only meals.
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