They received the distinction at the beginning of December, becoming the 15th establishment in the town to obtain this gastronomic recognition.
Water and salt, two basic elements of the kitchen, are also the ingredients that give the restaurant its name Auga e Sal, Compostela establishment that recently obtained its first Michelin star for the proposal developed by the Spanish chef Axel Smyth and its kitchen team, which has among its members the Cuenca Claudia Merchán.
“We are still a bit like in a dream, in two hours we will receive our first clients, we are still the same people, only now we begin to receive a lot of calls and the road to get here has been very short, because we have been very little time, but very intense and in the end as a team, with the support of Claudia we have managed to get there, there are many hours of work, few hours of sleep, to be informing ourselves, improving every day and together we have achieved it ”, mentions Smyth, 30 years.
In July 2020, Smyth took over the management of the Auga e Sal kitchen, owned by Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón and located 300 meters from the Santiago de Compostela square, in the center of the city. “A year ago I took over the management of the restaurant together with Claudia and what we have done is a much more gastronomic restaurant. The restaurant has been around for five years and in a year and a half we changed the whole concept and format and equipment. We have made two tasting menus, we do not have any type of menu, simply two menus, one for 15 passes and the other for 12 and that is a bit of the concept that has led us to success and to seek excellence in each dish ”, Smyth details .
He has worked in the kitchens of the restaurant Miramar, Baluarte, Gaytán, Casa Marcelo, among others.
Auga e Sal’s proposal is not strict, there are no ingredients that define them more than the passion for good gastronomy because without water and without salt there is no flavor, no life and, of course, gastronomy.
“We rely a lot on the product and the season, we decide our cuisine that is product, technique, creativity and season and the most important thing is to take advantage of each ingredient at its best, so in the end they are active menus – as I call them – when there is a season for hunting and mushrooms, it is what there is most, artichokes, asparagus. There is no strict menu, there is a line and we play a little with what the market gives us ”, he adds.
Merchán and Smyth met four years ago at the Basque Culinary Center, while studying their respective specializations. “From that moment we have not separated and we have made a great team, as I say, I totally depend on their support and their work, it is incredible. We were in another restaurant before, due to the pandemic it closed and we decided to come to Santiago, which is where I am from and here we started the project. All this is a team effort, I am the one who goes up and appears in the photo and without them I am nothing ”, he emphasizes.
Merchán is a pastry chef and is also responsible for the restaurant’s cold room (snacks and first passes). “We always have a methodology to create dishes, we look for the most important parts and from each of them we look for techniques that can be applied to these dishes. Our star dessert is the Santiago cake, which has three main ingredients (sugar, eggs and almonds) ”, he says.
Since they received their first Michelin star, the restaurant’s reservations are full until February. “This is a very great incentive to know that people are really valuing us and are coming to the restaurant to value our proposal,” he adds.
“We have been in the restaurant for a year and a half but we were closed for five months with which this star has been born from April to today, it is an enormous support, because we are in a very difficult stage, it is a gastronomic restaurant, in the If you don’t have recognition, it is much more difficult for people to come to you and suddenly, from one day to the next, our lives changed. Iñaki and Carolina, from Ikaro, told us that in the end we are experiencing their lives a bit, that they met at the Basculinary and that the star changed their lives. Suddenly they call you and you receive hundreds of calls from people they don’t even know congratulating you and wanting to meet you, ”says Smyth.
Galician fish and Santiago cake are two of the restaurant’s famous preparations. “That dish (Galician fish) is a bit of what represents us, the flavor of tradition but technically more creative,” says Smyth.
Marta Costas is the restaurant’s sommelier. He won valuable recognition in 2019 by receiving the Magnum Award as Galician revelation sommelier.
Together in the kitchen and in life
Merchán and Smyth have been a couple for 4 years, when they met. “She conquered me in class, in a talk, her eyes captivated me, the Ecuadorian beauty conquered me,” adds Smyth, who assures that on her next visit to Ecuador she hopes to return to Spain with some national product for her menu.
The Cuenca cook traveled to Spain to specialize. Among the couple’s dreams, he mentions opening his own restaurant at some point. (I)
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