Applied research and cooking come together in A Coruña at the Gunnen restaurant

It would be hard to say that Chechu Rey is a rising star in Galician cuisine. In fact, after 29 years of a discreet yet steady career, he is a well-known chef in the industry who has had a diverse trajectory and is now returning to restaurant kitchens.

After opening Agar Agar two decades ago, one of those small establishments that at the beginning of this century brought a new culinary approach beyond the big cities and tourist centers, in 2008 it took a different direction in its trajectory, collaborating in the following years with different brands and hotel chains, both in culinary tasks and consultancy.

This is how he ended up accumulating enough experience to open his own consultancy in 2019 and, two years later, also take the lead of La Familia, a project of prepared foods for distribution and communities. All this has given the chef a broad, different vision, where product and innovation take on special relevance.

In fact, working in La Familia has allowed him over the past two years to develop products for third parties and research technical possibilities that working in a restaurant kitchen would have left out of his reach. Now, with the maturity of all these years of experience under his belt, he decides to combine his entrepreneurial work with a return to the frontline through a small personal project.

That's Gunnen, a business that opened its doors last August in the Matogrande neighborhood, one of the business centers in A Coruña. With just three tables, the project has managed to win over a local audience in these past months, some of whom remember Rey's work at the Agar Agar in the city's outskirts.

Two people in the kitchen - one in the tiny space of the stoves, the other, Chechu himself, at the pass - and one in the dining room are more than enough. They are because a whole part of the work, what in other businesses would be the R&D department, feeds off the synergy with the chef's other businesses, opening up possibilities that would otherwise be out of reach for a restaurant of this scale.

That, combined with Rey's trajectory, which included running his own businesses and working for others, both here and in America, cooking for the public or for companies in the industry, shapes a small yet multifaceted universe, independent of the trends that all cities share and that often repeat themselves, with more or less interesting nuances in their menus.

Chechu Rey goes his own way in that sense. He keeps an eye on trends, on the work of chefs he admires, and on technical advances, but from there he shapes his own proposal, something that is evident from the sip that kicks off his menu, a mix of homemade kvass and kombucha with hibiscus leaf, or snacks like the white strawberry filled with chickpea tempeh hummus, which they make themselves, with a sherry vinegar syrup.

However, the chef maintains the local cuisine as another guiding principle of his work, as evidenced by the tirabeque with chestnut puree, native herbs such as catnip (nepeta cataria) and wild fennel, and crosne, the tuber known as Chinese artichoke, pickled. Or, following that, the clam turnover tartlet. When it arrives at the table, one might think it will be just another tartlet, among the dozens that have appeared here and there in menus of all kinds in recent years, losing interest in most cases. But things are different here: the dough is that of a Galician pie, the clam tender and its foam, flavored with codium algae, explode with all the flavor of this traditional preparation.

Steamed squid pasta. Another one of those dishes where the chef plays with flavors and textures, preparing a traditional pasta - flour and egg - to which a purée of squid scraps is added and then painted with a stew of squid ink before gently steaming them. The result could be reminiscent of the cephalopod's meat if cooked that way, but it also evokes Asian noodles, somehow reminiscent of a steamed shrimp bun, but with all the flavor of traditionally stewed squid. The grated lemon zest adds freshness, but perhaps a dipping sauce would be appreciated, maybe sweet and sour, perhaps citrusy...

The lobster salpicon is magnificent, with the shellfish meat cooked to perfection, firm, enveloped in a sabayon of its corals. The same goes for the steamed spider crab, which arrives at the table shredded, accompanied by a foam of its juices flavored with sage, an unusual combination that works wonderfully, a subtle lacework of its juices, and a nasturtium leaf that enhances the herbal nuances taking the dish—iodine and green—down paths different from the traditional ones.

Razor clam braid. A dish that evokes the fusion of two classics from the recent Spanish haute cuisine scene: on one hand, Quique Dacosta's razor clam knot, which introduces a unique texture to seafood; on the other, the razor clam offal stew that Angel León used to serve a few years ago. Both are combined here: the razor clams, flash-frozen to break their fibers without losing juices, are intertwined, resulting in a completely different yet recognizable bite; they are accompanied by an emulsion made from their discards, dollops of fermented garlic cream, and a sea grape that adds a certain crunchiness, rounding off this outstanding dish.

Crayfish, emulsified yolk with the juices of its heads, winter truffle. Three elements —aroma, texture, flavor— for a dish that plays everything, and succeeds, in the cooking points, in the juicy seafood flesh, enveloped by the mellowness of the egg, and in the aroma of the truffle, at an optimal ripeness point, that wraps around each bite.

Sea bass, lightly cured and smoked with orange wood, in a roasted pepper juice, fantastic in its apparent simplicity. Served over a feijão tropeiro - a Brazilian bean stew with cassava flour which is brought to the local imagination through cornmeal and the use of beans cultivated by La Despensa de Lujo just a few kilometers from the restaurant. The dish is drizzled with a demi-glace made from fish scraps, nuts, and kombu that is pure marine power.

The savory section of the menu ends with a 45-day dry-aged beef loin, seared and served with meat juice, steam-cooked wild eel with garlic, and glazed purple carrot.

Perhaps it is with the sweets in his proposal that the chef moves furthest away from local flavors, exploring the possibilities of the product: osmotized persimmon in its syrup, cream flavored with spices, ginger and turmeric gel. Sweet, but nuanced by the spicy aromas, by the almost citrus acidity of the ginger.

The same happens with the unclassifiable, but very interesting, oxidized plum in Ocoo with garlic, a gel made from its juices, walnut toffee, Savel blue cheese pearls, and crispy milk. The garlic is more present in aroma than in flavor, which leans more towards slightly stewed, towards memories of licorice, and which explodes here and there with a certain bitterness from the toffee, with the pungent taste of the cheese, and with the crispy, almost crumbly texture of the milk wafer that accompanies the freshness that the fruit retains to some extent.

In summary, Gunnen's cuisine is local, but it does not limit itself; it is restricted by the scale of its kitchen - space and equipment - but takes advantage of the resources it has access to by offering identifiable, yet often unprecedented results. The right amount of travel-inspired elements, justified by the chef's background, combines with unquestionably local produce and a technical display that the chef is familiar with and handles with ease.

Chechu Rey's cuisine has always been personal, with the ability to seek its own approaches. Now, with the technical equipment and experience provided by his entrepreneurial side, and with the help of a very young Josué Neira in the kitchen supported by the expertise of Angélica Vieira, the director of the space, he finds the space to develop a differentiated proposal, full of meaning and not looking sideways.

A Coruña is, probably, the Galician city where gastronomic novelties occur most frequently. It is also, likely, the town with the most interesting restaurants in Galicia right now. Therefore, achieving something different, that somehow stands out for its personality in the constant coming and going of openings, closures, changes of focus, and menu redesigns in this setting, is something worth highlighting.

Furthermore, doing so with imagination and originality, without going overboard, while respecting the product and taking it in new directions, turns Gunnen into something more than just one of the new spots in A Coruña this semester, positioning it as one of the most intriguing and refreshing openings of this season in the northwest.

Gunnen

ADDRESS

15 Rúa Juan Díaz Porlier. 15009, A Coruña

34 613 73 95 50

www.gunnen.es/