'I will never get tired of the sea'

How do you feel about chang­ing the At­lantic for the Mediter­ranean?

The At­lantic is my ocean for cook­ing but I know a lot about species from other seas. The Mediter­ranean is not new for me, I have sailed on it and it is not so dif­fer­ent from back home. What is a great chal­lenge is to cook from this sea from Cat­alo­nia.

Why did you ac­cept the chal­lenge?

I liked the Man­darin Ori­en­tal hotel be­fore I got to know Barcelona. It is a chain of world renown ho­tels with great food. More­over, com­ing to Barcelona, where I've had great eat­ing and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ences in my life seemed a mar­vel­lous idea. I value its lo­ca­tion on the coast, its re­la­tion­ship with the sea. I would never start any­thing in a city that wasn't on the sea.

You say that if you had to choose be­tween cook­ing and the sea, you would choose the kitchen.

I al­ready liked fish when I was lit­tle, but the sea came first. The sea is the best place to es­cape to when you are fed up. It al­lows you to think, dream, breathe. There is no mo­bile cover there, or emails, or any­thing. I will never tire of it.

You spent time in boats as a boy, with your fa­ther, who was a doc­tor like your mother.

We used to go out in a small boat. When we got back my mother never liked clean­ing the fish we had caught, so I did it and this was the be­gin­ning of a very emo­tional and per­sonal re­la­tion­ship with the sea and its fruits. I al­ways thought that one day I would be­come a cook and would be able to show my grat­i­tude to the sea for giv­ing me my most im­por­tant hobby, fish­ing.

For such a lover of the sea, isn't it a sort of shame to have to eat the fish it sup­plies?

Not a shame, no. But what is true is that you do end up hav­ing an al­most emo­tional re­la­tion­ship with some fish. When I have had to spend six hours reel­ing in a 300-kilo tuna fish, I feel it is a bit of a shame be­cause I have lived with that fish and there is a re­la­tion­ship be­tween us.

Talk­ing of tuna, you are a cham­pion of the less glam­orous fish.

Yes, there are fish that I have caught that I some­times throw back if I do not need it be­cause the restau­rant is closed. I pre­fer to throw them back in rather than give them to some­one who will not cook them with the re­spect they de­serve. I cham­pion all types of fish. It seems as if there are only six or seven types when re­ally there are mil­lions of species. We only con­sume 32% of what the sea has to offer. The sea is not se­lec­tive and we have to learn to lis­ten to it and re­spect it. It is ridicu­lous to in­sist on eat­ing cer­tain fish, such as hake, when bot­tom trawl­ing kills tonnes of other types. Things could be done dif­fer­ently but not every­one could af­ford to pay. That's how so­ci­ety is.

The EU has just ap­proved plank­ton as a food in­gre­di­ent. That is a suc­cess for you!

We are happy. We have swum against the tide for 11 years, eight of which we've spent fight­ing the health de­part­ment and the EU. I was lucky enough to dis­cover this in­gre­di­ent and this flavour. The first time I put plank­ton in my mouth, I de­cided I had to have it in my kitchen. That led me to into re­search: I tried mak­ing a ma­rine al­lot­ment, I went to see sci­en­tists and uni­ver­si­ties, plank­ton com­pa­nies. At first I had re­spect for some­thing so un­known that I wanted to serve up to peo­ple but the bi­ol­o­gists said that there was no tox­i­c­ity.

The op­po­site is true; plank­ton gen­er­ates life. For the past few years we have had an ex­clu­sive on plank­ton and now I'm ex­cited at the prospect of other chefs using it. At the Fòrum Gas­tronòmic I cooked romesco sauce with plank­ton, a dish I was plan­ning for the Man­darin be­cause of its Cata­lan over­tones.

Was Fer­ran Adrià and El Bulli an in­spi­ra­tion for you?

No, I never had much to do with great chefs. An­doni, Martín, Fer­ran, are all friends, but I got to know them later, as peo­ple. I and my team have been fo­cused on the sea. We have our own cui­sine.

It is a cui­sine that makes an im­pact, like the il­lu­mi­nated algae dish you pre­sented at Madrid Fusión.

We wanted to do magic and this light is in the water, in na­ture, so why not play with it so that peo­ple can eat? Swal­low­ing light in the 21st cen­tury seems to me a pre­cious thing. We make it in the Aponiente, though we won't bring it to the Man­darin be­cause it is made with micro-or­gan­isms that I keep in a tem­per­a­ture-con­trolled cup­board. They are very sen­si­tive and when they travel, they die.

Did you ever imag­ine you would get where you are today?

I chose to be a cook when it was not fash­ion­able and look what cook­ing has be­come today! Peo­ple now come to eat with a mind open to all. Five years ago I was nearly ru­ined be­cause I would not com­pro­mise, I was rad­i­cal: I did not serve meat or veg­eta­bles and made unique set meals in order to ex­press what I wanted to. And when things do not go well fi­nan­cially, a time comes when you won­der whether it is you going against the world, or whether the world has a prob­lem with you. You won­der if you are mad, es­pe­cially when you have 26 pay slips to ho­n­our. Today I am happy be­cause we have con­tin­ued to be our­selves. I can sleep well be­cause I do not owe any­one any­thing. All I want is to feel free.