Marco went from loving cooking with his mother and grandmother in León in the northwest of Spain to working in research and development at Mugaritz, a restaurant in the Basque country that annually makes it into the top ten restaurants in the world. He would spend 45 hours a week working on all the possible things you could do with asparagus, for example, and found joy in stretching his imagination and technique through the freedom of creativity. A desire to travel brought him to Melbourne three years ago where he started at Stokehouse and has now moved downstairs to Pontoon as sous chef. He has had a huge role to play in designing the new menu, which is now Basque in flavour, and has some quirky additions inspired by his time at Mugaritz.
Hola, Marco. I don’t know where to start. You have already done so many interesting things and you’re young. Now, are you from the Basque country?
I’m not actually from the Basque country. I’m from next to it, from a little region called León, about two hours away from the Basque country. I moved to Bilbao when I was 17 to do my studies. I went to culinary school and did my studies for three years there. From there I worked in Ibiza, then went back to the Basque country to work for a Michelin star restaurant, Mugariz. I did two years there.
I want to ask you about all of that. You started young, at 17, but I read that your father didn’t really want you to be a chef, and he got you a job so that you would try and not like it.
My dad knew what chef life was like and it wasn’t that he didn’t want me to like it, he wanted me to see how hard it was. When I was 16, one of his friends had one of the oldest restaurants in my town, it’s been there for about 50 years, and he spoke to his friend about sending me there to see how hard the life of a chef is and after that he will never want to be a chef. I went there during one of my holidays and I loved it. I actually loved it so much. After that, I told my dad that I wanted to do it even more.
What do you think it is that you loved? I spoke to Charlie Watson at Lupo and he said when he first started he loved the vibe; the energy of the kitchen, and then also the food. What is it for you?
I always liked to cook when I was with my mum and my grandmother. My grandmother used to be a chef and I spent a lot of time with my grandmother when I was a kid and I think she transferred to me that love of cooking and he respect for the food. Then when I first started as a chef, I saw all the other chefs who had been working for 30 years and they had the skill to fix a problem in one second. I looked at them like superheros and I thought, wow, how do they do that? I really wanted to be like them. I really wanted to know how to have that passion. The passion for a chef is amazing. You don’t think about the hours you just think about making the customer happy and getting the job done. It’s not about the timing that you will start at 5pm and go until a certain time, it’s about getting the job done. The people I worked with transferred to me their feelings and I really wanted to be like them. I keep working at that now.
I think that’s the thing. If you are a really passionate chef, you will always be seeking ways to improve and to challenge yourself. I was fascinated to read that when you were at Mugaritz, you were in Research and Development. To me, that sounds really different to cooking with your mum and grandma. You were then working for someone who is into multisensory experiences. Can you talk me through how that works?
Yes. I always wanted to work at Mugaritz. I found that place fascinating. It was kind of molecular food, mixed in with seasonal produce and it was a really conceptual restaurant. There is no other restaurant like that; it’s a unique place. I was interested how they got the science into the food. When I started working as a chef in Ibiza, I tried to apply to work there for free. That’s how you do it, you apply to work for free, on a stage, for nine months. They accepted me. Every year they get 2000 applications and they pick 40 of them to work for them for free. I worked there for nine months and learned a lot and then they asked me whether I wanted to be part of the Research and Development process.
What that means, is that the restaurant is only open for nine months of the year. For those nine months they serve the menu they have for that year. Then they close in December and keep some of the staff for research and development. For the three months the restaurant is closed, there are 10 people working and developing the menu for the year after. I was part of that. I was literally playing with whatever I wanted. I would go to the restaurant with a computer and there was a library of books the restaurant has and then you develop ingredients. You have instructions to follow. Your boss would tell you this week, I want you to work with asparagus. So, for 45 hours you would work just with asparagus every way that you think your mind that asparagus could be.
The restaurant gives you all the opportunities and then in your mind, you are thinking and trying to do something that no one else has done. That is difficult because a lot of things in this industry have already been created. I found that for me, it was a start to something else in my mind. The process was like Before and After. You discover that you have something in yourself that could create things, but if you don’t put yourself in that environment, you’re never going to get there. You need to be in an environment where you are thinking about how you do something else with a product that hasn’t been done before. I literally love that. I’ve made a few dishes from there here.
What’s an example of something you might come up with for asparagus or any other ingredient?
For example, last week, we have people who come and decorate the building with flowers. They brought Brussel sprout plants, so the trunk and then the Brussel sprout coming off that. One of the things we had to do at Mugaritz was play with Brussel sprouts. So when I saw them come into the restaurant and I saw the steam, actually it’s a trunk. It’s wood, it’s really hard, so I cut it with a saw and then vac packed it, then steamed it for 48 hours. Then I grilled it over the charcoal until it was completely black and then I cut it down the middle and there is one centimetre of wood on the outside, but the inside is like a Brussel sprout marrow, and it becomes a beautiful Brussel sprout purée. It has a different flavour to a Brussel sprout because it’s from the trunk.
How much purée do you get from a trunk?
Not much. We call it the Brussel sprout marrow and we present it as half a trunk with all the outside burnt and then the inside is the natural, beautiful purée. That’s one example, but each week, we would work on different things and a lot would come out of that. A lot od things would go on the menu but other things, we would work out how to do them, but we wouldn’t put them on the menu. Like, I would spend weeks working on something, but we couldn’t put it on the menu, because it might offend the customers. You are working with a lot of things that might be hard for people to understand in terms of the product we were using. I don’t know how to explain it, but, you know…little chickens…
Ah…ok.
Sometimes, you could do something brilliant, but it might not be received well by the customers.
I guess it makes you look at ingredients differently once you have been through that, because you are more aware of what the possibilities are. If you go through that process, there are no limits and you can really think about things in a different way.
Yes, like you can get excellent with onion. That’s what I really learned. Before Mugaritz, I thought to make something unique and really good, you needed to use caviar and sea urchin. It’s true, but I think you can make something excellent with onion if you use it in a way that no one has used it, or it has been done, but you create something completely different with it. We made our onion look like a tuna.
How do you do that?
You cook it for a long time and then you compress it with beetroot juice, then smoke it. It becomes darker when you smoke it, dark red. Then when you cut the onion, the different layers make it kinked, so it looked like tuna. We made watermelon look like a meat carpaccio, it literally does. You cook it, freeze it, and slice it really thin and it looks like carpaccio. It is super sweet. It depends how you use the product you can change the product completely.
You discover that you have something in yourself that could create things, but if you don’t put yourself in that environment, you’re never going to get there. You need to be in an environment where you are thinking about how you do something else with a product that hasn’t been done before. I literally love that.
Does that change food cost because you’ve put in so many hours?
Absolutely. The labour costs in that restaurant are insane. Just so you know, just in those three months, we were 10 people working on the new concept and the restaurant spent about a million euros on energy and the produce that came in. There was no money coming on over those three months. The restaurant starts in March with a debt of one million euros which they need to get back over the nine months they are open.
I imagine somewhere like Mugaritz is booked out all the time.
It’s booked out for months. But it’s not a restaurant where you make money. It’s part of a group, IXO Group. They have four Michelin star restaurants, and two of them are in the top 50. Mugaritz is number 7 this year and Nerua is number 32. How they work is they allow Mugaritz to be supported by the other restaurants in the group. If Mugaritz was a restaurant on its own, I don’t think it would still be open.
It’s interesting that what they do at Mugaritz is seen as important enough to allow it to be run that way.
It is. There’s no other restaurant at the moment that closes for three months just to work on the menu for the next year. El Bulli, from Ferran Adrià used to do it. El Bulli used to be open for six months and closed for six months for the menu and now it is closed for good. The creative aspect is really important but it’s also expensive.
So in those environments, does food become an art form…or is it more aligned with science?
It is science and art. I think we are all coming back to the traditional ways to cook, which I respect and really love. That’s how I learned. I learned how to make a nice croquette with my mum. That’s’ what I like from food too, but I also think the science and art part is also important. It has to be beautiful and creative, but it also needs to be tasty. At the end of the day, it’s a function. You eat because you have to eat to survive, so when it has been developed into too fancy a way, which I like, but I also think it can be too fancy sometimes. For example in my career, I really wanted to be in a restaurant like that when I was younger. I loved cooking and when I came out of culinary school, I saw that as a challenge as the highest place in the industry. Now that I have been there, I am coming back to the tradition, to the things that make me happy to cook. I like to cook something that everyone is going to understand.
The next place you went to was Nineu?
Yes, it’s a restaurant from the same group. It used to have two Michelin stars, it still has one. It is the restaurant of the exhibition centre in San Sebastian, so we work with a lot of functions and big groups. It’s more of a traditional restaurant. I was loving it a lot at Mugaritz, but I told them that I would like to move to a place that was a bit more traditional to get back to the acta cooking rather than experiments. They sent me to Nineu and I love it. It felt like coming back to actual cooking, being in a section, like on the grill. I did love research and development, but it’s not my dream.
So then you decided to travel and you came here. This is a pretty great place to work, look at that view.
I was really lucky that Frank, the owner here, contacted me and offered me a job here at Stokehouse. I didn’t think about it for even a minute, I said yes and started my Visa process and came here. For me it was a big, big change. The industry here in Australia, I think, is more respectful to the employee. The employer wants you to be happy and have a life. The industry in Europe is dirty and a bit dark, in terms of the hours you work and there can be bullying at a high level. Here I have found that it is beautiful. I started working at Stokehouse three years ago. I was working with Ollie Hansford and I learned so much from him.
For me it was a challenge to work in English. When I first came here, no one could understand me because of my accent and still now, my English is ok, but…It was frustrating for me because I wanted to learn things and I wanted to cook, but I couldn’t because they didn’t understand me. Little by little, step by step, and having a good relationship with all the chefs, I did a lot of good things here and I literally loved it. Then I came downstairs to Pontoon. They asked me to help change their menu, to change the idea of the food they were doing. A few months ago we changed completely to Spanish. It has been awesome because I can do the food I grew up with; paella, croquettes, all that.
But using local produce?
Using local produce but also using produce from Spain. It’s an authentic Spanish menu, like you would get in Spain. That’s what we wanted to do. I think the place is beautiful for that. It feels like you are in Mallorca or somewhere like that.
What are some other examples of the food you grew up with on the menu?
I have my grandmother’s recipe for croquettes. I just sent a picture of them to her and she is so proud. We have the seafood paella, and then a plate that is really Spanish called escabèche; it’s French and Spanish. It’s a vinegar-based sauce or preserve, like the classic ceviche, but ceviche is more from South America, it’s Peruvian or Mexican. In Spain, our dish similar to ceviche is escabèche and I love it because of the flavours. We have chorizo tostada.
I put a burger on the menu that I really like. One of my best friends, the one that I grew up with and then we went to the culinary school with, we would always talk about having a burger shop. He actually did it four days ago. Now he has the best burger shop in Spain. He won an award. I’m going to Spain in two days and I’m going to go and see him. He is a big success and has a line of 50 people outside his burger shop every day. I wanted to put a burger on the menu with the name of his burger place which is La Burger Canalla, which means the scoundrel burger. I feel so happy putting it in.
How long since you last went home?
From when I came, three years. My family has been over twice already, but I like it here so much. They kept asking when I was going back so I thought this year I would go.
You’ll be seeing family and friends, but I guess you’ll be dipping into food things too. Are there certain foods you miss that you can’t get here?
That’s why I want to go over and see home again and make a bit of research in my brain in the Basque country. Here, the food is amazing, but it’s not the same as in Spain, because of the products and the seasons. I miss the culture of Spanish food. I like the pintxos and tapas a lot. You go out at 7pm with your friends and have a little drink and then you have a little tapas in each restaurant.
It’s a different culture here, isn’t it? Everything happens a lot later in Spain.
Yes. The style of life in Spain is completely different and it is really based around food and drink. I love it here in Australia, but sometimes I miss home. These two weeks I’m going to eat a lot.
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