With confirmed booking
With confirmed booking
With confirmed booking
With confirmed booking
tracks
linked Joaquin Schmidt, the Valencian designer Paco Bascuñán, the artist from Alzira Joan Verdú and Víctor Martínez, who designed the header and contents for the restaurant’s first website during shared meals, hours of laughter, camaraderie, and conversation. The chick that began to walk in 2003 will keep telling a story in the current web version [joaquinschmidt.com/huella]
In a relatively short time, Valencia’s culinary scene has begun to open up to modernity. Joaquin Schmidt is an incredibly unique restaurant, where the owner creates signature dishes using local produce.
Opened in 1993, and beyond the city’s downtown gastronomic circuit, the new restaurant “Joaquin Schmidt” is located on the Rivière of the old Turia riverbed. Joaquin, whose parents are German but who was born in Madrid, chef to kings and gastronomic advisor to the most prominent figures in Madrid’s entertainment industry, has succeeded in making a great dream come true: “to open a restaurant and cook for a group of friends.”
The history of modern and contemporary Valencian cuisine is marked by two crucial events: the invention of the paella and the revolution of the 1990s. During the last decade, a certain gastronomic modernity has finally been achieved in the city and kingdom of Valencia, which will always seem irreverent to some and prudish to others. Joaquin Schmidt has been one of the leaders in this peaceful revolution.
Xequebò. Canal 9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLfnacqFbow&feature=youtu.be
Feel The taste. Televísame
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCTPejI_zBA
El Faro de Alejandría. Canal 9
(1/5) https://youtu.be/R8YvOr2XUmY
(2/5) https://youtu.be/dnz_TBSiN4s
(3/5) https://youtu.be/9xccd_EGdPM
(4/5) https://youtu.be/tBxXgE-iX0k
(5/5) https://youtu.be/SCiwVZEYZIk
Interview.
—What are the similarities and differences between Joaquin Schmidt the man and Joaquin Schmidt the restaurant?
—I would say that there is no difference. The restaurant reflects what Joaquin Schmidt is.
There is a restaurant in Valencia with the same magic that captivated us at El Bulli. It is hidden, away from the media spotlight, fads, or snobbery: Joaquin Schmidt. A great admirer and follower of how El Bulli used to be, Joaquin has managed to develop his own language, his personal story, his life philosophy. And he puts all that into his restaurant, making it something unique that cannot be copied by others.
Do not be deceived: Valencian cuisine has matured. It has an unbeatable natural pantry – which is essential – and chefs who believe in their cuisine, their recipes, and their imagination. Valencia has plenty of the latter, as Joaquin Schmidt and Ricard Camarena show in our “mano a mano”.
The neighbourhood It may seem obvious, but from time to time we need someone like Joaquin Schmidt to remind us: Food is something to be enjoyed, alone or with others, but to be enjoyed.
Joaquin Schmidt would be his ‘pater’. Sergio discovered the wider gastronomic world with Joaquin. The first time Sergio went to el Bulli it was with Joaquin. And then Sergio flew away. “It awoke a desire to explore more, to visit restaurants, to read books… This is how I developed this vice.”
I leave you a handful of dishes from his hands. Cooked urban poetry, poached pop art, dream oil camouflaged in sauces, principles and values cooked up with the genius of a gastronome. I will let you have a look. But I will not tell you what it is. Just like he does. Fine, just between you and me, I will give you a hint.
In the 80s he cooked for the jet set in Madrid; in the 90s, he found love and left everything to open a restaurant in Valencia. Now, he works there, happy and alone, creating almost clandestine poetry submersed in music and pots.
Tricicle’s (non-)sense dinner at Joaquin Schmidt. A dinner of the senses at Joaquin Schmidt’s restaurant where the guests were Tricicle, members of their team and friends (about a dozen people) who did not know that they would be devoured by dreams.
On a quiet street far from Valencia’s city centre, away from the media spotlight, is Joaquin Schmidt’s restaurant. Joaquin buys groceries, cooks, and waits on his customers himself. Joaquin was one of the pioneers of the “cuisine d’auteur” movement during the 1990s, and for more than 10 years he has devoted himself entirely to his restaurant, without the help of waiters or kitchen assistants.
While he sharpened his pencils, Talking Heads was playing in the hideout of this anchorite chef. «It is a tribute to my friend Joan Verdú». The artist, who just passed away, came up with the ArtCrem design that symbolises his restaurant. Joaquin was dressed in black. A T-shirt with the message: «I don’t follow the script».
Joaquín Schmidt has the same illusion as the first day. He has always known that he was going to have a restaurant like the one he has. With three tables he is happy “for what else, the limits are up to you”. “Life is three days,” says Schmidt, “and you have to be able to enjoy what he does.” Ferran Adrià has influenced his way of understanding gastronomy and cooking. “With a classical training and with techniques I make a very personal kitchen, the imagination is free”.
A chef, a baker and a pâtissier. A private evening where words were blended with sourdough, foams, and fruit mousse. A menu of culinary thoughts, where the food was more than just a pleasure for the palate, and conversation more than just sharing.
Joaquin Schmidt. “Life has thrown us into an overly complex and difficult situation. To get out of it we need to bring out the best in all of us so that we can help and support each other. “I will cook again as enthusiastically as on the first day”
Joaquín Schmidt is the restaurant of the homonymous chef. A space in the city of Valencia where highly creative cuisine is practiced that moves away from the prevailing fashions.
more detailsHello Maria
It was just two eggs, oil and salt. Three simple ingredients that became a dish that I hadn’t enjoyed so much in a long time. In my hands they would have become something banal, but in those of chef Joaquín Schmidt they mutated into the best French omelette I have ever tasted.
The story begins during the course of an interview, in which almost out of curiosity I asked him about the chefs’ obsession with examining their pupils preparing a simple omelette. Schmidt started talking about the importance of the quality of the ingredients, but in the end he said to me: “Look, it’s best if I make you one in a moment and you can check it out.” Eggs at room temperature, something crucial for the final result. Extra virgin olive oil and a good unrefined salt. And a pan that should not stick. Let a couple of tablespoons of oil heat up and pour in the beaten eggs in a James Bond style, that is, shaken; nothing to start the centrifuge. It is poured, stirred in the center so that it sets and the pan is tilted forward to wrap it with great care. It is not worth making folds as if it were puff pastry. The result, a creamy tortilla with a flavor so defined and round that not even in my wettest dreams have I managed to emulate.
That day I tried several more dishes at their restaurant, such as their version of gazpacho and some Iberian pork cheeks with a slightly pickled sauce. Everything was there to dip a couple of loaves of bread, but that tortilla… Oh, that tortilla! It has already been recorded in the drawer of my memory, where I keep simple recipes that we inevitably return to, especially because its flavors anchor us to our history and transport us to a pantry of indelible aromas.
Cooking has not been done in many homes for a long time. When you open the door, there is no longer an aroma that surrounds the entire house, reminiscent of a childhood of stews and spoon dishes. Between work, commuting, extracurricular activities, the gym… there is hardly time to put on an apron and prepare a chickpea stew or some lentils that, after eating them, you could go out naked in the middle of the snow without noticing the cold. Now what is popular is having lunch or dinner in front of the work computer. There will be some, the smartest ones, who have stocked up on maternal lunch boxes, but the vast majority resort to supermarket salad.
What’s more, the other day a millennial told me that she has never seen the ceramic hob in her house turn on. That she has eaten all her life at school because her parents worked all day and went to restaurants. That at night, with everyone at home, what was placed on the table had been bought at take-out places. Or he prepared a salad. Or, directly, they didn’t have dinner. And I wonder: aren’t we losing that atmosphere that is created around a kitchen and that fills us with memories that will last a lifetime? So I like those restaurants that in winter have village pots or noodle soups on the menu made with the kind of broth that makes your lips stick when you close your mouth from the gelatin they contain… Or those stews made with local products. places that warm your stomach and transport you to another time.
But in the end, what gives us life is that juicy potato omelette that, don’t fool yourself, has nothing to do with that packaged one that would be better used as a bookend; or that sausage sandwich with peppers that you were looking forward to at school recess; or that Valencian paella that my friends nail every time we get together.
Meanwhile, I continue with my broths made at dawn, with legume stews and sauces in which to dip bread without stopping and I will continue cooking memory for my children. And, of course, one of these days I will stand in front of Joaquín Schmidt to tell him to please make me a French omelet again.
It does not matter how long your journey is; nor if you were among the celebrated, or just a survivor. We will all leave our mark and all that will count is the depth of the imprint, what we leave in it, what is remembered of our passage.