"The restaurants that open in Albacete are always a copy of another copy", Espeta Juan Monteagudo, leaning on one of the tables of the Ababol restaurant, behind an apron. It is the uniform for a particular fight: putting haute cuisine on the radar of this provincial capital and doing it in a unique way. “I have put everything I had into this dream. I have mortgaged my life to carry this out", he confesses, attentive to a service that mixes the spontaneity of the young 31-year-old chef with the depth of each of the dishes with which he wants to "grow and improve" since it opened at the beginning of this year. year.
His attitude in the kitchen is the same that he employs in life. The stream, without parapets. "I have done everything to get here, even selling underwear," she explained about a life that he defines as complicated. Son of La Manchuela, he seeks the metaphor of that poppy that one day is there and offers the best of itself. Ababol ('Papaver rhoeas') has flourished in the area where he was born.
Monteagudo is representative of where the 'new Manchego cuisine' has been defined as beginning. And somehow it already gives the first symptoms of that spontaneous flowering. He has just been recognized as one of the eight candidates for Madrid Fusion Alimentos de España 2023 Revelation Chef. mushrooms– and the English refinement that he boasts by right and blood.
"My father was born and grew up in Paris, although his roots were from here," he stresses in an exercise of filial pride and the terroir, in which he recalls the hunting and field days with him. Also of the sensitivity that his father should print on him as an artist – the painter Philippe Monteagudo, who died in 2016. And that syncretism between the native, of the products that come from the two farms that his family has owned for four centuries in Fuentealbilla –famous for being the town of Andrés Iniesta– and Tarazona, and the universal that hedonism represents at the table. Sauces, funds and, above all, flavor.
On these lines, above, grilled peppers and bloody Mary ice cream. Below, on the right, one of Juan Monteagudo's pumpkin creations, with a curious work of the cucurbitaceous as if it were a pastrami. On the left, a deer tartare and ABC mushrooms
“I want the people who come to eat well, beyond gastronomic or technical experiences. Let them fearlessly dunk bread on my plates, ”she says, fleeing from any snobbery that the local clientele may attribute to this restaurant. “It is the first gastronomic that opens in Albacete city. I know that if it had opened in Bilbao, as I wanted years ago, it would be easier, ”she admits.
hunting menu
However, he believes that he is “where he should be”. Monteagudo's kitchen recalls her childhood in Fuentealbilla, which she remembers picking morquera – savory – to season olives with his grandmother. Memory of the flavor that she brings to the aperitif with a mimesis of olives in cocoa butter enclosing that house dressing. Also in the tartare of that manchego grilled peppers and 'bloody mary' ice cream -in the image above-.
And from the garden with creations in which the simplicity of a cauliflower, fennel or pumpkin –treated as a pastrami– is combined with a dish that “was salty and ended up being a dessert, or vice versa”. That "unquestionable personality" that has led him to be a candidate for Madrid Fusión's Revelation Chef imprints the game dishes he handles on his menus -Tierra, the short one (50 euros) and Ababol (80), more extensive-: from a deer and mushroom tartare that is an exercise in balance; to the recovery of the power of the escabeche in some ravioli of pigeon and black garlic; to the culmination of the menu with blue duck.
He entrusts the sommelier Laura Caparrós, his partner, with winks to surrounding wineries for the wines. Juan Monteagudo worked in great Basque temples, such as Mina (one Michelin star), Azurmendi (three stars), Zarate Jatetxea (one Michelin star) or Aizian, and also for years in Madrid he worked in such renowned venues as Álbora, Adunia, Santerra and sea wolf
