If something becomes clear to you after chatting with the cook for a while Andrew Genestra (Inca, Mallorca, 1983) is that he is in love with his island. As soon as he defends the benefits of lard, essential in Majorcan cuisine, as he sanctifies the variat: the apparently absurd mixture of tapas that is religion among the islanders. “We think it’s dirty, but it’s the host,” she concludes.
We are walking with him through the fields that surround sa towerthe manor house of lucmajor –half an hour by car from Palma de Mallorca– to which he has just moved his restaurant with a Michelin star, until now located in capdepera, on the other side of the island. And that’s where almost the entire team has moved, including their head chef, Maria Adrover Riera.
“Economically it was stable,” acknowledges Genestra. “The covid had passed and he had paid all the debts. We were already in green numbers. Everything is positive, but I go and face the team and tell them ‘we’re moving’.
The reason? “The place where she was I didn’t give for more”, the cook confesses to us. “You couldn’t grow in any way and by not being able to grow, my strength and motivation lost a bit. The cooks did not fit in a kitchen that was premeditated only for a restaurant of 30 people. At the star there were 30 people, but then we had a bistro where there were days when we fed 100 people. It doesn’t matter to die of success than to die of poverty, because in the end the business is screwed”.
The importance of having a garden
Genestra’s group is still present in her old home, the rural hotel Predi Son Jaumell in Capdepera, where she maintains the Senzill bistro. But the restaurant that bears his name, Andreu Genestra, for which he intends to keep the Michelin star which it achieved in 2015, has just opened its doors at the Zoëtry Mallorca hotel, which has also recently opened in Sa Torre under the new ownership of the Hyatt Inclusive Collection.
“I have mortgaged everything. My house, my parents and the other. All”
“There were several girlfriends, but this was a crush,” explains Genestra. “I was looking for a manor housewith a space for me, with a large kitchen and separate entrance”.
“Look what we’re seeing here,” he says, pointing to the courtyard of the manor house, a huge rural palace. “They have not seen this in the United States in his fucking life because it is from the year 1275. That’s why I chose this site. I have mortgaged everything. My house, my parents and the other. All”.
In addition to the fact that the place had history, the main condition for deciding to move was have land. “They told me: ‘everything you see, put what you want here’”, says the cook. “What they didn’t know is that there was a Roman cistern downstairs. And I started with the chainsaw and, damn, there is water. All the excess water from the well, from the hotel, comes here. Because here there was irrigation and they did not know this. Then my father comes with a couple of 80-year-old colleagues with his tractors and we put the tractor all the way down. Here you feed half the island, there are 20,000 square meters”.
Although he has only been in the garden for a month and a half, pepper plants, tomato plants, aromatic herbs are already growing… Vegetables and condiments that will end up on the plates of a restaurant that, although it strives to bring a culture of kilometer zero –it has a green star in the Michelin Guide–, denies part of the false discourse of sustainability.
“When an asshole comes to me and tells me that his garden feeds the entire restaurant, I tell him, ‘that’s impossible’”, jokes Genestra. “I with this I do not even reach 40% of the restaurant. Because I’m short of onions, I’m short of potatoes… What I’m trying to do is plant varieties of native things and especially the rare ones, the ones that my suppliers don’t give me”.
Next to the orchard, Genestra and her father – who, although he is lame due to polio, helps her with all the farm chores – have planted 20 hives for bees to act as pollinators. “They will also give honey, but it is not the objective,” he adds.
A commitment to the Mediterranean
Chatting between the orchard and the beehives, it is easy to come away convinced of Genestra’s speech, whose gastronomic approach is as simple in its statement as it is difficult to execute: “I am squeezing the Mediterranean. And I think that at a technical level we can still give him a lot more cane ”.
“I am squeezing the Mediterranean. And I think that at a technical level we can still give it much more cane “
Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans… All the peoples that have passed through the Mare Nostrum have cooked. The Mediterranean is one of the gastronomies with the most history and literature in the world. But Genestra is convinced that there are so many things to claim as ingredients and techniques to reinvent.
“Ángel León has come a long way with salt, but at the level of salted many more things can be done”, he assures. “At the level of trees We also have a lot to do. We did a job for two years to see what food value pine had, what food value cypress had, what food value carob had, when carob was not yet in the spotlight as it is right now”.
Genestra assures that she receives a lot of criticism for preparing cuisine that is not authentically Mallorcan, a statement that particularly annoys her: “We try to make 80% or 70% of it local, but not because of a gastronomically speaking nationalist issue, no, because if you come to know this island, I want you to understand what the taste of here is, No? But I do not fall into the traditional. And in Mallorca they are very traditionalists when it comes to gastronomy”.
“If I take you a tuna, if I take you a cherry, if I take you a chickpea and I make you a chickpea pie type cheesecake with the cherry, I’ll make you one demi glace of fish with cherry and I put a couple of spices like maraschino and I cook the tuna in a more spicy marinade and I put it on a plate. Why can’t it be considered Majorcan cuisine or cuisine from here when all the produce is from here?”
Already in the restaurant, Genestra surprises us with a menu full of contrasts, where there are several main elements.
The first of them the black porc or black pigthe muse of Mallorcan cooking, whose butter is used by the cook in numerous dishes. “He is above everything” Explain. “She is the reincarnation of God.” Then rice, saffron and game. A kitchen that looks more at the mountain and the orchard than at the sea.
On the peninsula we tend to think of the cuisine of the Balearic Islands –also that of the Canary Islands– as something homogeneous, but the truth is that there is more difference between islands than between many autonomous communities.
“The sea and mountains were made here, but they were made here to make a bulge on the meat plate, so that it would spread more”
“Ibiza’s gastronomy has nothing to do with ours,” explains Genestra by way of example. “His is almost all sea. Not ours. Ours is a lot of orchard. The sea was for the poor and here there was pasta. Here was wine. not there Here was stone, quarry. not there Then there were the lords. And what did the gentlemen eat? Meat. Fish, the poor. The sea and mountains were made here, but they were made here to make a bulge on the meat plate, so that it spread more”.
He sea and mountain it is, in fact, an almost ubiquitous resource in Genestra’s kitchen. Roasted peppers are mixed with eel and mushrooms, duck gizzards with mussels and seaweed, squid with jerky…
The other vice – rather a virtue – of Genestra is the mixture of sweet and salty flavours, enhanced by an intensive use of spices. “In the peninsula, not so much spice is used like us here,” he explains. “We use a lot of paprika, but we don’t use the sweet one, we use the smoked one. We use a lot of hibiscus, cloves, star anise…”
Flavors that are happening in a high level menu with academicism, but a lot of daring since the snacks, where the cook plays it by putting a butifarrón – the Mallorcan black pudding – inside a cheesecake. Works.
“At the end you have the spicy flavor of our butifarrón with raisins, with pine nuts, with star anise, with all that”, says Genestra with a sparkle in her eyes. He is enjoying. And that shows in a kitchen that counts on revalidating the star and aiming for the second.
“If the star falls, it will be welcome”, concludes the cook. “But the goal is not a second or subsequent thing. The goal here is consolidate a sustainable haute cuisine financially and that we can change the Mediterranean recipe book a little. You have to start chipping away at the stone.”
What to ask for: Andreu Genestra has two tasting menus, short and long, at 125 and 150 euros, respectively. We tried a mix of both and found everything to be excellent. The choice only depends on how hungry you are. The restaurant also has a vegetarian menu, at 125 euros, and you can even set up shorter meals by choosing several dishes from the tasting menus. The wine deserves a special mention, with a well-nourished cellar by the sommelier Daniel Esteva, with many references from the island, national and international.
Mallorca 4 (Lonely Planet Region Guides)
Practical data
Where: Camí de Sa Torre, Km 8, 7. Llucmajor. Majorca.
Half price: 150/200 euro.
Bookings: 971 070 873 and on its website.
Schedules: From Thursday to Monday, dinner service. Saturdays in double shift, lunch and dinner. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday.
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