BARCELONA: Once they had been simply eight years outdated, Spanish twins Sergio and Javier Torres set a purpose — they wished to change into cooks who had been among the many high of their discipline.
To realize this, they strategically cut up as much as get coaching in numerous esteemed kitchens around the globe, revealed books on cooking and introduced a preferred TV present.
The plan labored.
Over 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, that I believe is an ideal plan,” a smiling Javier, 51, stated on the restaurant, one in all solely 13 in Spain and Portugal with the highest three-star rating from the distinguished French information.
“After we began to exit of Barcelona, we thought that Sergio would take one path, I might take one other, and we might by no means coincide till we had been prepared,” he added. The journey took the twins — who grew up in a working-class Barcelona neighborhood — to totally different elite eating places in Spain, Switzerland and France.
Earlier than shifting 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 which can be run by twins — Jacques and Laurent Pourcel.
“We had been separated however each month we met up in a restaurant, ate effectively, we spent the little cash we had and developed the subsequent steps of our technique,” stated Sergio as he sat beside his brother.
Every brother specialised in numerous areas — one realized to prepare 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 looking for a greater life following Spain’s devastating 1936-39 civil conflict.
“Our grandmother taken care of us, and since she was within the kitchen all day we actually grew up in a kitchen,” stated Sergio.
After incomes two Michelin stars with their earlier challenge “Dos Cielos” and changing into acquainted faces due to their participation in a cooking present, they determined to open Cocina Hermanos Torres in 2018.
The twins visited some 200 doable areas earlier than deciding on an industrial constructing close to Barcelona’s iconic Camp Nou soccer stadium.
They invested almost 3 million euros to transform it into the restaurant, which seats a most of fifty folks at tables with no wall separating them from the three workstations the place employees put together meals.
“We wished to mirror what we skilled in our childhood, which was a kitchen and a desk, and everybody across the desk,” stated Javier.
