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Why O Grove?
“It’s my home basically, my roots, the people I know, the suppliers,
the environment I’m familiar with and which flows through my veins.
O Grove is a natural paradise.
The sea is fundamental, the little hideaways, the scenery is beautiful.
Is there a particular time of year when it’s best to visit the area?
I think it’s better to visit outside of summer.
In spring and autumn the colours, the natural produce is much better.
It’s much quieter and calmer, and to be honest,
you enjoy what is the village of O Grove much more.
Galicia isn’t sun and beach. We have those but it’s something more than that.
Galicia is gastronomy, quality. It’s scenery.
How would you define the restaurant Culler de Pau?
Culler de Pau begins the moment you get in the car and begin the drive to the restaurant.
The first bends in the roads that take you past the beaches and through the Galician countryside
that leads you to Culler de Pau,
where the idea has been to bring the scenery,
the surroundings and the nature that Galicia provides for us to the diner.
Culler de pau begins to make sense in the context of its setting and its location.
How do you change the way you work in the kitchen?
We work with the seasons and with our surroundings.
One only needs glance out the window we have overlooking the surrounding countryside
to see which path to take when it comes to deciding what to cook.
A lot of sea and a lot of vegetables.
What are the criteria for choosing which produce to use?
The produce, in function of what the land provide for us and then that part,
which sometimes goes unseen, that of the producers, who for us are important,
whether fishermen or people who work the land. Without them we wouldn’t be able to do anything.
A pea that lasts a month in optimum conditions, well, we work with that pea for the month and then move on to the next thing
It’s not an obstacle, quite the opposite. It’s what we enjoy.
Where do you get the ideas from when it comes to creating dishes?
Yes, there are many ways, above all, tradition is fundamental and it is a platform from which to grow as a chef.
It’s a style of cuisine that has a thought process behind it but it’s an intuitive one.
Sometimes when you think about why you’re doing what you’re doing, that’s when you realize certain things.
And we depend on this; we depend on what we come up with, what we fancy and what we feel in every instant when cooking.
Do you have a favourite dish?
That question.. Who do you love more? Mummy or Daddy?
For us, all the dishes we prepare are equally interesting.
In fact, with the dishes we change, the replacement has to be at least as good as or better than the one it is replacing.
But they are all like, children.
There’s a mollusc dish which I call “Con ***”
Con *** because it’s a special place near the restaurant where we often go to smell the sea
and understand nature a little bit better in order to understand what we do here.
It’s a dish of molluscs, or rather, mussels, clams and cockles with a base of rock.
We say a “base of rock” so it reminds us of the rocks where we find the molluscs – and it’s a scene really
the representation or interpretation of a scene.
We like to represent it, more than aesthetically, we’re no virtuosos arranging it on the plate,
we like it to evoke, to remind you through its aroma, with your eyes closed, and in flavour, the nuances.
You close your eyes and say “Wow! This takes me back to a place in O Grove.
It’s called “Molluscs on bed of rocks and beach herbs”
Javier Olleros, you belong to Grupo Nove, a group of chefs who are well-known within Galician gastronomy. What is the group about?
Above all, we’re chefs, with a capital letter.
And yes, there are connections with other artistic disciplines.
It’s what gives this profession life and what makes it interesting too,
but in the right amount.
We’re artisans, we work with our hands but we’re chefs.
I’ll leave it there.