In the cold region of Valle del Alberche, crossing that of Tierra de Pinares, is a small town of just 215 inhabitants hidden by the slopes of small mountains that cover everything when the sun goes down. And there where darkness hangs over pines and walnut trees, at a distance that seems infinite from any urban trace, but just 53 kilometers from the capital of Avila, part of a star -Micheln- has fallen. The same place that has seen part of Iker Casillas’ life unfold. His people. Navalacruz.
This year’s Michelin Star Gala was also Vila’s premiere as part of the prestigious list of provinces with one of these awards. The culprit has been Barro, a restaurant located in the capital whose reins are the young Carlos Casillas. In his short 24 years he has managed to break a gastronomic wall that resisted so much to the Castilian cuisine of this part of the region.; He has done it with products from the area, from the places he knows best, those that occupy his mind and his heart.. There begins the fragmentation of a star who lets his dust fall in the small town of the historic Real Madrid goalkeeper, with whom the chef shares a last name and origin.
The menu that listened to the ancestors
His restaurant is a trip to the land on which the four walls of the establishment on San Segundo Street rise, providing shelter to its diners. Three tables, twelve diners. Seven services a week that do the honors of that region and that seem minimal if you take into account that To prepare the brief and complex menu they use up to 76 producers. Because that has always been the key. Two weeks before winning the recognition, he recognized The village diary who has a firm intention to put Vila on the gastronomic mapdemonstrating that all things can be done well because the potential is enormous.
Give value and put a face to our primary sector, which is immensely rich., he said then. And his words seemed like an extension of the word that gives its name to the restaurant’s menu. Sheltera dedication that goes beyond the culinary level and promotes the staff and is intended for the cold region where he was born and grew up, the one that surrounds the small town of Navalacruz. From there comes the wildness that Barro’s cuisine has, capable of adapting to the change of the seasons with the naturalness with which the color of the branches and treetops does.
As if it were a tribal lullaby, Barro welcomes his future diners with guttural echoes that embrace tradition. We are the feet of our ancestors sunk in the mud. We are your dirty hands. I remember her from him. We are the modeling of our land to transmit its legacy, says its website. That place that was born as a wine bar a little over a year ago transcended it, without wanting to turn food into the axis of its essence: We will not talk about dishes, passes or times that nature does not contemplate. That is not just a gastronomic experience. This is a time trip.
Village of world champions
Something different must be breathed in that valley that everyone who has left there seeks to remain linked to the place, to return to where one was happy even if one has not stopped being so. The former goalkeeper of the Concha Espina team is the favorite son of Navalacruz, the home of his parents and also that of his family. Also that of his distant cousin, the skater Javier FernandezOlympic medalist, World champion and countless times champion of Europe and Spain.
Such is his vital union with that town of Avila that Casillas decided to build a house there this same year. A modular home, a prefabricated home that you have bought and that will emerge at the mercy of the shape that the doorman wants to give it. He spends more and more time there and less in the squalid cities where the strident noise of traffic and the pollution of hundreds of thousands of light bulbs make it impossible to speak, breathe or see the stars. Now you can raise your head and look at the mountain; observe how the little pieces of a star have bathed the streets of Navalacruz. All because of another Casillas who decided to make the legacy of his ancestors into a restaurant menu.
