Cobo Estratos occupies a huge premises in the center of Burgos, where there used to be a shopping center. While the works lasted, a giant canvas announced the upcoming opening with the following message: “It could be in New York or Paris, but it will be here.”
Its creator, the cook Miguel Cobo, keeps the canvas in the warehouses of the already inaugurated restaurant as an inspirational message. Many professional colleagues, he assures, continue to see him as a upstart cook.
“I was the black sheep of the family, I liked boxing and clubbing,” he admits. started on this late and he went through very few kitchens before establishing himself. But in 2016, after only a year of opening his first restaurant, Cobo Vintageobtained the only Michelin star in Burgos, which he has revalidated this year for his new and ambitious project.
But the cook, also marked by appearing in several TV shows -What top chef either The Last Supper–, he continues to feel neglected by the union. “I would like to earn the respect of my colleagues,” he insists. A respect that, of course, should be earned with a proposal as original as delicious.
When Cobo decided to move his restaurant to the new location, it was clear to him that I would offer several proposals. One in which they serve a more traditional meal, with an average ticket of 40/50 –which, he assures, is all that the people of Burgos are willing to pay–, the current Conch Tradition; and another in which to continue advancing in his haute cuisine project. It was the place itself that gave it the idea that has articulated what it is today Cobo Evolutionthe restaurant that premieres a Michelin star.
“When we bought the premises we hadn’t thought of anything, but We immediately saw the common thread”Cobo explains. The restaurant is located in a semi-basement, and it has been organized in layers, like the menu of the gastronomic proposal, which is based on human evolution.
Taking into account that the restaurant is located almost next to the Museum of Human Evolution, which brings together all the finds from the nearby Atapuerca site, it would have been quite easy to come up with a menu in which to place dishes with this common thread without thinking too much about it. But it is clear that Cobo, who talk at lightning speed and he defines himself as a very nervous person, he thinks about everything a thousand times.
The cook came into contact with a professor at the University of Burgos Carlos Diez Lomanaone of the great researchers from the Atapuerca site, who fully invested in the informative project proposed by Cobo: structuring a haute cuisine menu that teaches how human beings evolved through food.
At its launch, it even published a video –which we leave you behind these lines– in which it recreates human evolution, eating half-raw fish almost naked. “The water was eight degrees, I was sick for three weeks”recognize.
From Atapuerca to the New World
The Cobo Evolución menu is divided into six milestones in the history of humanity: Africa, Atapuerca, Altamira, Neolithic, Rome and the miscegenation that came after the arrival of Europeans in America –a good excuse to add chocolate desserts–.
We played that our ancestors could eat something similar, a speech that is easy to buy because everything is delicious
Cobo does not try to present dishes that emulate what was eaten in each era, but to take a tour, with updated products, through the techniques of each phase of Humanity.
Thus, in the first dishes on the menu, which take us back to the African continent 4 million years ago, the protagonists are the foods typical of the diet of a hunter-gatherer of the season: small vertebrates, leaves, rhizomes and fruits.
“We are monkeys that eat a lot of grass and are going to start ingesting fat,” explains Cobo. Of course, these monkeys couldn’t taste a mature river trout with a citrus gelé and salmon roe, but we played that they could eat something similar, a speech that one ends up buying easily, because Cobo transfers it with enthusiasm. And most importantly: because everything is great.
in the phase of atapuerca1.6 million years ago, arrive maturing and smoking –also cannibalism, to which Cobo is thinking of winking for the following season–, among which stands out a national Friesian veal with a extreme maturation aged between 250 and 280 days, which is served raw, with the fat filtered and decanted, almost like a carpaccio. “We have used salt, which was not available in Atapuerca,” explains Cobo, “but they buried the meat in the ground and there were brine processes.” Uncle has it all tied up.
In Altamira50,000 years ago, we know that human beings began to consume marine fauna. Then comes seafood and fish: langoustines, prawns and a brutal stew of stingrays accompanied by a broth made from their bones.
Apart from the curious nature of the story, and its great or little scientific precision, in Cobo Evolución there is a lot of cooking. “I’m not a technician, I’m a cook,” says Cobo, who throughout the meal names the work of his colleagues in the kitchen, pau garcia Y Blanca Velez, from whom he assures he is learning many things. “The most important thing is my team,” she points out several times, also insisting on posing with them (something that, it must be said, almost no chef does).
Apart from the curious nature of the story, and its great or little scientific precision, in Cobo Evolución there is a lot of cooking
The menu continues with the Neolithicwhere the fermentations appear: cheeses and beers which are served halfway through the meal. Also the lamb, in the form of a boneless shoulder and candied at a low temperature. We then come to the Roman Empire, with a salted tuna belly and a candied and smoked tuna morrillo with which the salty part of the meal ends. There is no tasting menu in which the dishes are ordered like this. Surprise. And works.
Perhaps the part that Cobo has baptized as “miscegenation” is taken more with tweezers, a worth anything that allows him to serve desserts with all kinds of things, like oabika ice cream, a concentrate of cocoa mucilage, which is served with lots of truffles, an addition that is left over for an ice cream that would work alone.
A very ambitious project
After the meal, Cobo sits down at the table and shows us a notebook in which he has been working meticulously in endless dishesjust some of which configure the menu that is currently being served.
It is an impressive job that combines with the adjoining restaurant of traditional food in which 80 services a day and that he is the one who pays the bills for a reform of the premises that, despite the adjustments, has cost a fortune.
“The banks asked me every day how I was, because I owed so much money…”Cobo explains. “They stopped us for nine months. Everything is going well, but one day I looked at the accounts and I didn’t even have enough to make the purchase”.
His current concern is that Cobo Evolution works by itself and attract travelers from all over Spain (and abroad). A menu of 129 euros for only four tables and a maximum of 13 diners, and a wine cellar with 450 references from all over the world –very well equipped by the sommelier diego gonzalez–, does not hold up with the Burgos public.
The best recipes of Direct to the palate (Cooking)
The project has only been underway for six months, but Cobo aims for the highest: “There is a basic need for get two stars. If in 2027 I don’t get the two stars, I’ll close it”, he says. “I am very mouthy.”
What to ask for: Cobo Evolución only serves a tasting menu for 129 euros, a high price, but one that is justified given the originality of the proposal, the quality of the product and the length of the experience. In the restaurant you can also drink very well, with all kinds of wines (and prices).
Practical data
Where: Pl. de la Libertad, 9. Burgos
Average price: 150 euros.
Reservations: 947 02 75 81 and on their website.
Hours: Thursday night, Friday (lunch and dinner), Saturday (lunch and dinner) and Sunday at noon.
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