20 days now. I am working for this long to my new restaurant. Its time now to introduce u Monvinic, Barcelona.

Its not one of the places which serves “unreal” food. In our kitchen the meat is meat, the olive is olive. We are not even playing with textures, no foams, no jellies, no crazy savoury icecreams. I have a feeling, that i am the craziest chef here. BUT…

The food is good. I mean most of my normal friends would love it :))))

I am learning a lot. I do the hot service – what i never did before, so its really exciting! And i think im doing fucking great after my first week. Especially with that fact, that i needed to catch up really quickly my catalan language, cause people talk me in spanish but the menu, the service, the ingredients are all in catalan. How fucking crazy is that… anyway. I do the hot mains (fish&meat) – my hands are looking ridicoulus, burns and cuts everywhere… ehehehehe. Well, i need to practise i guess. But i love it. The team is great, we have fun big times, great talks and cold beers. The reason i stayed here to work is the guys, they remind me to the team of Due South.

A bit about the food… hm… im not quite sure. The facts are: the menu just had been changed 3 weeks ago, and if i beleive the gossips it is going to change again. So hard to describe it now… but simple and honest.

The starters… from one side they are pretty easy (chorizo with honey, kalamata tapenade, yoghurt w/ caviar), the other side they are just superovercomplicated (choux paste balls filled with fresh cheese-mousse)… it has not really settled yet i guess.

The mains? Well… quite “wild-ish” with lots of animals from the jungle… :) We do hare (rabbit), deer (bambi), partridge, woodcock etc… but we change this obviously cause the hunting season is over. Lamb, ox-tail (with oysters), duck, Wellington are coming up now. All served with a spoonful of rustic mash potato and greens in a big glass plate. My mentor is a really Crazy Swedish Blonde covered with tattoos – always ^tired^ but never stop. He told me the thing about the hands – that all the greatest chefs have got *monkey hands* – like i do. :D Well i will not gonna touch more violin i guess (sorry Mum).

The ingredients are in pretty good quality and we have special/private/organic suppliers (honey, yoghurt, milk, fish, meat, bread, veg, herbs etc etc…) so no complains. I work with herbs never seen before, fish (20 kilo) still breathing in the sink, and i could make yoghurt of the milk we are using. No place for doubt.

Sweets? Hm….. i could spend hours and hours to describe it. The most developed and balanced section – but unfortunately the less popular. Probably because we are a wine bar and people mostly drink alcohol to finish the meal instead of licking some amazing icecreams… dont know what they are missing…

Our “not pastry-chef” Jordi does his job good enough for a star i think with a m*ther f*cking good mentor, our french pastry Guru to show how things should be done. So i am lucky enough having my section in front of the pastry one – stealing all the little secrets and tricks with my eyes. Just love it.

Soooooo… we are a ·kindof· traditional restaurant. I can not think about textures, foams, jellies, air, clorofil etc etc… when i mentioned the ^agar agar^ they just simly called me a witch :D…. hehehehehe. I dont know. They just dont like it. I do wish to use things like this in a moderate way cause they can help a lot and reach unapproachable things in any other way (warm jelly, creamy foam, caviar….). Whatever. Here i am not going to develop my technical skills for sure. However i do learn a lot about meat and running the whole hot section by myself. Amazing feeling when u dictate the rhythm.

The menu is set by our Exc-chef – we can not touch it. Only thing we can play with is the cheaper daily menu and aperitif… and we are just doing that great that the boss said: its too good, we should ^slow it down^. TOO GOOD?¿?¿? Hehehehehehe what the f*ck Man?¿ Just imagine yourself sitting in a place ordering your plates – and first coming the surprise aperitif, tiny plate with a couple of bites and u reach a point of orgasm. After coming your actual choice of main – and u disappointed cause comparing the amuse bouche to the ^real food^ just too simple.

So thats how we are. Full of ideas and lack of time as always. But we do love challenge and working crazy 13 hours a day. If u dont believe… come and visit us!