“Born to cook”, as a post on the Instagram profile of El Celler de Can Roca testifies, the Spanish chef Daniel Redondo left life yesterday, November 24th, the victim of a motorcycle accident on the AP7 highway nearby from Salt in Girona. According to the Catalan Transport Authority (SCT), he collided with the rear of a car.
Redondo cooked and made history. At just 46 years old, he was head chef for nine years at the awardwinning Spanish restaurant, voted the best in the world by the 50 Best Restaurants in 2013 and 2015. “A persistent, passionate and talented person. At times, because of his character and his demands, he was capricious and had a huge heart,” laments the same publication in which Redondo hugs Montsé Roca, the matriarch of the family.
“He was like a son to her, who knew how to fix the boy,” says Patrícia Ferraz, columnist and food critic at Paladar. “He grew up with the Roca brothers in the Can Roca restaurant, a simple place with homestyle cooking. He was an apprentice and chef there before joining the kitchen at El Celler Can Roca on the same street. He returned there in recent years when life became more complicated,” he adds.
In fact, Redondo met chef Helena Rizzo, to whom he was married, in the Celler’s kitchen in 2003. Together they opened the awardwinning Maní in São Paulo in 2006, where the chef stayed until 2016 before returning to Spain. “He founded Maní with me, everything there belongs to him too,” says Helena. “It’s no surprise that today, seven years after he left, we’re still chanting ‘Oído!’ instead of ‘Yes, Chef!’ say,” says a very emotional Helena. “It is also thanks to him that we still use Sofritto [refogado espanhol] as a basis for recipes.”
ARCHIVE 05.02.2016 TASTE Behind the scenes of the Gelinaz dinner in SP, with the chefs Helena Rizzo, Daniel Redondo, the Peruvian Virgilio Martinez, the Chilean Rodolfo Guzman, the Portuguese Leonardo Pereira, Jefferson Rueda, Alberto Landgraf, Thomas Troisgros, the Frenchman Iñaki Aizpitarte, Manu Buffara, Thiago Castanho, Peruvian Mitsuharu Tsumura, Alex Atala and Rodrigo Oliveira. Credit Ricardo Toscani/Estadao
And not only. Maní’s menu also features Redondo creations such as chorizo rice and the house’s famous moqueca, served with a burnt rice terrine.
“Daniel has made a great contribution to the São Paulo gastronomic scene with his talent, creativity and mastery of the techniques and combinations of avantgarde Spanish cuisine,” says Patrícia.
Luiz Américo Camargo, baker and curator of the Taste gastronomic festival, who was editor and food critic at Paladar at the time of Maní’s opening, adds: “Daniel was a brilliant cook and at the same time had knowledge of avantgarde techniques. He was a lover of Catalan home cooking. He had a great passion for the products, for classic dishes, rice, stews… Together with Helena, he interpreted this passion for the traditional in an avantgarde kitchen with Brazilian products.”
“Perhaps he was the greatest chef on Brazilian soil. At the beginning of the 2010s, he was the one who did the most cooking at the highest level, achieving spectacular levels of taste, technique, inventiveness and productivity. He was a unique case in Brazil, one of the great modernizers of Brazilian cuisine along with Helena and Alex Atala,” says Luiz Américo.