BARCELONA: After they have been simply eight years outdated, Spanish twins Sergio and Javier Torres set a objective: they wished to change into cooks who could be among the many finest of their subject.
To realize this, they strategically cut up off to coach in numerous acclaimed kitchens around the globe, publish cookbooks and host a well-liked TV present.
The plan labored.
Greater than 4 a long time after they stunned their household by saying they wished to be cooks, Sergio and Javier’s Barcelona restaurant, Cocina Hermanos Torres, was awarded a 3rd Michelin star final month.
“We developed a plan, which I believe is an ideal plan,” mentioned a smiling Javier, 51, on the restaurant, one in every of solely 13 in Spain and Portugal with the highest three stars within the prestigious French information.
“Once we began popping out of Barcelona, we thought that Sergio will take a technique, I’ll take one other and we are going to by no means coincide till we’re prepared,” he added. The journey took the twins – who grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Barcelona – to numerous high-end eating places in Spain, Switzerland and France.
Earlier than transferring to Paris, the place he labored with high French chef Alain Ducasse, Sergio spent two years on the award-winning Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier, additionally run by twins — Jacques and Laurent Pourcel.
“We have been separated, however each month we met in a restaurant, ate nicely, spent the little cash we had and developed the following steps of our technique,” Sergio mentioned as he sat subsequent to his brother .
Every brother specialised in several areas — one realized to cook dinner meat and greens, the opposite fish and bread, he added.
Each siblings credit score their grandmother for his or her ardour for cooking.
She was a part of a wave of people that moved from the southern area of Andalusia to the extra industrialized Catalonia within the northeast in the hunt for a greater life following Spain’s devastating civil battle of 1936-39.
“Our grandmother took care of us, and since she was within the kitchen all day, we actually grew up in a kitchen,” Sergio mentioned.
After successful two Michelin stars with their earlier challenge “Dos Cielos” and changing into family names because of their participation in a cooking present, they determined to open Cocina Hermanos Torres in 2018.
The twins visited round 200 doable places earlier than selecting an industrial constructing close to Barcelona’s well-known Camp Nou soccer stadium.
They invested virtually 3 million euros to rework it right into a restaurant, which seats a most of fifty individuals at tables with out a wall to separate them from the three workstations the place the employees prepares the meals.
“We wished to replicate what we skilled in our childhood, which was a kitchen and a desk and everybody across the desk,” mentioned Javier.
