Claiming brown

In an interview with the newspaper Ara , chef Jordi Vilà once again champions the values ​​of Catalan cuisine. It's an act of consistency with a career in which, with the intuition of a sniper who prefers to act rather than live in constant regret, his legacy, in the face of the threat of imported pretensions, marks his own vocation. In response to a question from Trinitat Gilbert, the chef replies: "Our cuisine was white, because in addition to onions, almonds also played a significant role. Later, tomatoes and peppers arrived. And then our cuisine turned brown."

Vilà's combative nonconformity appeals to a consciousness that, unfortunately, doesn't match the sector's falsely cosmopolitan mainstream. It's true that the brown color of our cuisine is evident in many establishments, which revive traditional recipes and embrace the breakfast craze (Maria Nicolau maintains that weekend cyclists are partly saving our recipe book of peus de porc , fricandós, and cap i pota ). Curiously, this brown color has its detractors, not only among food lovers but among those who defend that dishes are visually appealing and that the important thing is that they are photogenic, fun, and Instagrammable.

Photographing dishes is part of the liturgy of the so-called 'gastronomic experience'

Recently, while serving a pistachio tiramisu to one of my companions, the waitress warned us that the best thing we could do was film the moment. Protected by a cumbersome plastic structure that, when lifted, spilled a creamy topping onto the defenseless tiramisu. I was surprised by the waitress's insistence, but my companions told me it's standard practice and that the ritual of photos and videos is not only part of what they call, alas, a gastronomic experience, but also forces many restaurants to take it into account when creating their menus.

Read also

For those addicted to this liturgy, our brown is an scatological vulgarity, a chromatic insult to the strident colors of pink, fuchsia, red, or yellow. Vilà, who has found an outlet for his bad temper in the irony of the Self-Defense Manual of Catalan Cuisine , reacts to the servitudes of the market and the habits of the new generations with an indignation he would like to see productive. Perhaps we should start a campaign in favor of brown with snobbish arguments, but based on real facts. It's the color most present in nature. It has a comforting warmth that we associate with coffee and chocolate, providers of serotonin. In chromotherapy, it's used as a relaxant. Some luxury brands consider it a symbol of opulence and status, and, on a psychological level, it's linked to memory and a return to one's roots.