The Spanish chef died this Friday (24 years old), victim of a motorbike accident; gastronomy professionals regret their departure
“Born to cook”, as evidenced by a post on the Instagram profile of El Celler de Can Roca, the Spanish chef Daniel Redondo passed away yesterday, November 24, the victim of a motorcycle accident on the AP-7 motorway, near Salt, in Girona. According to the Catalan Traffic Service (SCT), he had collided with the back of a car.
Redondo cooked and made history. At just 46 years old, he was chef at the award-winning Spanish restaurant for nine of them. “A tenacious, passionate and talented person. Sometimes moody, due to his character and the demands of him, he had a gigantic heart”, laments the same publication, which shows Redondo embracing Montsé Roca, matriarch of the family.
“He was like a son to her, who knew how to ‘set the boy in line,'” says Patrícia Ferraz, columnist and food critic for Palate. “He grew up with the Roca brothers, at the Can Roca restaurant, a simple place with comfort food. He was an apprentice and chef there, before joining the kitchen of El Celler Can Roca, on the same street. It was there that he returned in the last years, when life got complicated”, he adds.
Legacy in Mani
It is precisely in the Celler kitchen, in fact, that Redondo met chef Helena Rizzo in 2003, with whom he married. Together, in 2006, they opened the award-winning Maní, in Sao Paulo, where the chef remained until 2016, before returning to Spain.
“He founded Maní with me, everything there is also his,” says Helena. “It’s no wonder that, even today, seven years after he left, we still say ‘hey!’ instead of ‘yes, chef!’ in the kitchen,” Helena says excitedly. “It’s also thanks to him that we still use sofrito [refogado espanhol] as a basis for recipes.”
And not only. Maní’s menu also features Redondo creations, such as chorizo rice and the famous house moqueca, served with a terrine of burnt rice.
“Daniel has made a great contribution to the gastronomic scene of São Paulo, with his talent, creativity and mastery of the techniques and combinations of avant-garde Spanish cuisine,” says Patrícia.
Luiz Américo Camargo, baker and curator of the Taste food festival, who was editor and food critic of Palate at the time of the opening of Maní, he adds: “Daniel was a brilliant chef, at the same time he knew cutting-edge techniques, he was passionate about home-made Catalan cuisine. He had a great passion for the products, for classic dishes, risottos , cooked… He, together with Helena, interpreted this passion for tradition in an avant-garde cuisine, using Brazilian products.”
“Perhaps he was the greatest chef on Brazilian soil. At the beginning of the 2010s, he was the one who cooked the most at a high level, reaching spectacular levels of flavor, technique, inventiveness, production capacity… He was a unique character in Brasil, one of the great modernizers of Brazilian cuisine together with Helena and Alex Atala”, says Luiz Américo.
Meet Michelin-starred Brazilian chefs
Source: Terra
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