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Interview
Nicole millar - 5 February 2017 2.00 h

Food for thought

Laurier Ngilimana Every Friday evening on El Punt Avui Televisió, Nicole chats with an English-speaking expat. For this month's interview she had a conversation with pastry chef Lairier Ngilimana
- Nicole millar
You have lived in Cat­alo­nia for 16 years but the story of how you came to live here is in­ter­est­ing:
I was born in Cameroon –where my mum was in train­ing for fi­nances. My par­ents are from Rwanda. When I was 12 years old we had to move due to the area being dan­ger­ous, so we moved to Tan­za­nia and then onto Zam­bia. This is where I learnt my Eng­lish. From there we wanted to go to South Africa but when we ar­rived in Mozam­bique we found there where many more op­por­tu­ni­ties.
Mozam­bique has a rep­u­ta­tion for being beau­ti­ful.
Yes, it is re­ally very beau­ti­ful. My sis­ter still lives there. It still feels like my home. Mov­ing around I learnt lots of lan­guages. I love lan­guages.
How many do you speak?
Five: Eng­lish, Por­tuguese, French, Span­ish and Cata­lan. I wish I could learn more! Al­though I have for­got­ten my mother tongue; I don't re­ally speak it any­more
Which lan­guage do you use to speak to your fam­ily?
My mum changes her lan­guage with her mood. So if she starts in Por­tuguese you know it will be a nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion. If it is Eng­lish, it will be more pro­found and deep. And in our mother tongue, then I need to pay at­ten­tion, it means it is a se­ri­ous con­ver­sa­tion!
How did the move to Barcelona come about?
My fa­ther de­cided. I wanted to be a doc­tor and he found that I could study and stay here but it wasn't guar­an­teed that I would get a job straight after. There are many of us: eight broth­ers and sis­ters. He said I could go and if I didn't like it I could come back.
But in the end you came here to be­come a chef!
Yes, and I am still a chef!
Where did this love of food come from?
I re­mem­ber when I was 10, my mama said: “Right, you can­not just sit on the couch!” She said I needed to help her in the kitchen. The first time I tried to cook some­thing it came out good. And my mum said: “You are the el­dest, so you can feed your broth­ers and sis­ters!” After a while my dad said that if I liked it then I could try to make some­thing of it.
Do you re­mem­ber the first thing you cooked?
It was a rice cake! Boiled rice, milk, eggs and lit­tle sugar. Not how you would imag­ine a rice cake to be, more like a rice pud­ding, per­haps?
When you came to Barcelona you stud­ied at the CETT, Barcelona's hotel man­age­ment school. I pre­sume that was just the culi­nary side?
At that time it was train­ing in cook­ery and ser­vice. I liked the ser­vice side of things and be­came quite good at it. I had a teacher who I loved so much. I would work for him at the week­ends at ho­tels and I loved it. You learn so fast like that. The first two years are cook­ing and ser­vice, and then you have to choose to study just cook­ing, just ser­vice, or you can carry on with both. I chose both as I loved them both and couldn't de­cide. After a while I de­cided to just con­cen­trate on the cook­ing. I got fed up with ap­pear­ing as some­one I wasn't; you al­ways have to smile, what­ever the cus­tomer is like. At least in the kitchen you can shout and get angry! It is a tough job though; you have to re­ally love what you do. The hours are long and late and you spend many hours on your feet. In the be­gin­ning, you don't care about the hours; you are learn­ing and lov­ing it.
You trained at Hotel Omm and the Sauc Restau­rant, which are Miche­lin level.
Miche­lin stars are a whole dif­fer­ent level. It is how you pic­ture cook­ing. Some places you can cook fast and dirty and in oth­ers clean. A Miche­lin star means it is super clean, or­gan­ised and fast, re­ally fast.
I thought things at that level took a long time?
They do take a long time but you have to be fast and each one is an exact copy. You cant miss an in­gre­di­ent. In a nor­mal kitchen, for ex­am­ple, I could miss out a tomato, if the toma­toes aren't good enough. That can't hap­pen if there's a Miche­lin star.
You cur­rently work as a pas­try chef at La Car­marga.
Yes I am back to my thing now!
How would you de­scribe the food here in Cat­alo­nia?
Sim­ple. Good but sim­ple.
From which coun­try do you pre­fer the food?
Here is good, French is good. Ours is so dif­fer­ent. In pas­try I choose French. But for meat I chose here, Cat­alo­nia. Fish, I chose French again. Stews I would go back home!
Can you rec­om­mend three restau­rants in Barcelona?
La Bar­ba­coa, I love burg­ers! To eat slowly, La Car­marga, where I work. For desserts, La Patis­se­ria.
What ad­vice would you give any­one want­ing to go into the culi­nary busi­ness?
Pa­tience. And know what you want. If you want to cook, just cook. Enjoy the ex­pe­ri­ence and move. Don't stay in the same place all the time.
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