“Many Spaniards still consider eating vegetables to be part of a diet.”

What does it mean to you to have won the World’s Best Vegetable Chef award two years in a row?

This year, I’m even more excited. Perhaps it’s because we’ve been doing so well in recent years, confirming that both our cooking style and our understanding of gastronomy are making an impact. This is also a responsibility. Because I represent an industry that is treated very unfairly because restaurants like mine assume that people only eat vegetables or are vegetarian. With this recognition in mind, we must value green cuisine, where vegetables play a central role. Similarly, we like pressure and feel comfortable with this privileged situation.

At what point in your life and career did you decide to pursue this professional path and why?

It wasn’t decided at a particular moment; over the years, I realized that I’m happier cooking with vegetable ingredients, and that dishes with vegetables and mushrooms are most appreciated by my customers. We developed our first all-vegetable menu over 15 years ago and here we are today. This process has been slow and thoughtful, and we have never done anything radical. Vegetables simply take shape in our dishes, acquire great flavor, and it fills us up. We didn’t want to be called vegetarian or vegan just because we weren’t, so our dishes are served with animal protein.

What do you want to express?

I am the son of a farmer and the grandson of a chef. It’s in my DNA as a person and in the way I live. As a child, I remember enjoying eating what the garden provided, watching my parents cook, and watching them go out to restaurants in the kitchen at home. Meals are always the happiest moment of the day for me and I’m a chef because I love eating and enjoying myself. Maybe they are trying to keep their childish nature and make others happy by eating vegetables like they did back then.

There are many foreign customers. Is your work not appreciated in Spain?

We already have 90% of our customers from overseas, which is good for us because it has a huge economic impact and opens doors to other things, both professionally and personally. It’s very nice to feel valued abroad, but I want to feel valued not only in Spain but also in Madrid. That doesn’t really apply to the choices of restaurants you should visit in the capital. We understand that most people prefer to eat seafood or steak and don’t think about going to a fine dining restaurant where vegetables are the star. Perhaps it has something to do with prejudice… Many Spaniards still associate eating vegetables with what they eat in a week on a diet or at home, or they think that vegetables are boring and not tasty. But that’s what we do at The Greenhouse. Many people say similar things to me when they come for the first time and leave happily, or when they regret not coming sooner. What we want to say is that we change the way people think about vegetable dishes.

Do we eat fewer vegetables? Or does it mean we eat less variety?

Both. Fruit and vegetable consumption has been declining in Spain in recent years. We are a global manufacturing powerhouse, much of which is for export. Most worryingly, young people are consuming the least amount of vegetables, and that statistic worries me. Processed foods are displacing fresh foods for a variety of reasons, including people preferring processed foods over fruits and vegetables. The only way to change this situation is to create a subject called nutrition and dietetics in schools, teaching children to eat right, know about products and lead a healthy lifestyle. Nothing will change if you leave it up to your parents.

The greenhouse is 10 years old. How would you summarize its evolution? How has it changed from opening to today?

We have continued to create increasingly technical cuisine, but what has become more radical is the product. Almost 95% of what we use is domestically produced and very little is brought in from outside, such as coffee, chocolate, tea, soybeans and some spices. That’s because they aren’t made here or of the quality we’re looking for. We also have over 45 different vegetable suppliers, one for each vegetable and up to three for artichokes. We love scouring the peninsula for rural artisans and always find people growing amazing things: fruit, vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, vinegar, wine, and more. Estaña’s products are amazing. We also use an increasingly diverse range of techniques to give each dish its own identity. The autumn menu features more than 160 plant and fungal products and more than 30 techniques used to work with them. In haute cuisine, that means being very versatile, but that’s not easy.

What dish do you think best represents today’s cuisine?

There is something that makes me very happy right now. Because it contains everything I like. And I’m sure most people do. Garlic rice with truffles made with Madrid stew stock and finished with Manchego cheese and salted black winter truffles to bring out the soft garlic flavor made before baking. This is how I define my cooking. It’s a dish that uses plant-based main ingredients, animal protein to enhance flavor, and the magic of nature to impart aroma. It’s brutal. Everything on this menu is very delicious… mushrooms in green curry, onion soup with caviar, pickled porcini and seaweed…

The word sustainability is used for everything today. Is it annoying? Do you think we as a society really recognize its importance?

To me, it’s no longer as valuable as it once was. The word sustainability started out being used to emphasize actions to change things for the better, but now it’s just a marketing tool to show others that you’re doing things well, or that you want to do things, and the two are very different things. Now I want to speak in terms of balance and respect. That is what will make us sustainable in the long term. As a rule, now when they want to sell me on sustainability, I usually run away. The worst of all is that the majority are unaware that something sustainable has become unsustainable.

What is the most important thing in a restaurant when it comes to being environmentally friendly?

What I’m saying is that in El Invernadero, we take countless “micro actions” to change things, and the sum of them, and if we internalize them in our professional and personal lives and know how to communicate them, becomes the “macro actions” and that’s how we change things. Manage your water consumption by turning on and off the taps for essentials, recycle everything, reuse wine bottles, strive for zero waste, ask your suppliers to take away boxes and containers so they have more uses, try to locate your suppliers as close as possible, order responsibly to avoid bulk shipments… There are so many things you can do… there are so many little things…

The schedule was changed to favor mediation. This is possible because many chefs and businessmen say no.

We have to adapt. Hoteliers, cooks and waiters of my generation have grown up over the last 30-40 years enduring endless work, stress and pressure. We had a very specific lifestyle based on work, and our personal life was on the second or third dimension, and while I was a happy person, I made everyone around me unhappy because I was difficult to live with. I think the changes in my personal life, my partner, my kids, etc. made me realize that there is more to life than cooking. And so it should be for balance. That is why I have long understood that the work team of El Invernadero must be able to make everyone happy. It’s also clear that it’s impossible to achieve a high level in your professional life with eight hours a day, but I respect people who don’t aim so high, and it’s good to have people of all types and conditions in your team, so success is balanced. I usually say between 1 and 3 is 2.

What motivates you to look for new ideas in your creative process?

It’s a product. When the time comes, eating it, touching it, smelling it, and observing it will stimulate your creativity. I’ve been in the kitchen for more than 30 years, and every year I’m amazed by the taste of peas or asparagus for the first time, or go to Tudela on holiday and collect artichokes and cardoons to eat raw with good oil. For many years, I have viewed lifestyle creativity as an academic discipline that has been cultivated from various perspectives, and the foundation of this is taste, aroma, and texture.

Where are you heading now and where do you see yourself in 10 years?

I want to open a new restaurant where I can use everything I’ve learned over the last 31 years as a chef. There, you’ll try a different menu of dishes every day and cook everything yourself in a small restaurant with only six or eight seats, combining market cuisine with plant and animal products. I think that’s the end, or rather it will start soon (lol).

Madrid is experiencing a real boom, but is it sustainable?

I don’t know, but I’d like to think it’s because of the sectors that bring so much wealth to cities, food, and countries. Tourism in Spain is synonymous with gastronomy, every day more is offered, people are better prepared, customers are more knowledgeable and more demanding, and all this makes the city more enjoyable. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but I think a lot of places are soulless, don’t last long, and can obscure the work that many of us do to provide quality, variety, and service to the public.