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Yolanda León and Juanjo Perez

Spanish chefs Yolanda León and Juanjo Perez on being a couple in the kitchen

The married chef-owners of Cocinandos, in León, Spain, who were recently guest chefs at Mesa 15, in Central, talk to Vanessa Yung about the concept behind their Michelin one-star restaurant and learning to cooperate in the kitchen

Yolanda: "Juanjo is from Madrid and I'm from León. We met 20 years ago when we were both practising at Arzak, a famous restaurant in San Sebastián, Spain. We have worked in many restaurants in Spain since then and have been trained under three-star Michelin chefs, including Juan Mari Arzak and Sergi Arola. But after 10 years, we were a bit tired of working for other people, so we started our own restaurant in 2003."

Juanjo: "I take care of the creative stuff and came up with both the name and the logo. The name of the restaurant translates to 'two cooks' - ' means kitchen and ' ' means two. Our logo features two tables and beside each table stands a stickman representing me and Yolanda. Everything comes in twos. There is a picture of two peas in a pod on the back of our business card."

Juanjo: "Our restaurant is very similar to Mesa 15's minimalistic design. It has many windows for natural light and an open kitchen so people can see what we're doing. It seats 35 guests. The most important thing in our kitchen is the produce. Everything should be fresh and we source everything from the area where we are. We don't have an a la carte menu but a six-course tasting menu, which changes every week. There's an aperitif, a soup, salad, one fish, one meat and then dessert.

Yolanda: "We are now on our 440th menu. We're closed on Sunday and Monday, so when our two children are asleep, we come up with our new menu for the week."

Yolanda: "We use a lot of olive oil, and mushrooms, because where we live there's a lot of it growing nearby. We go to the mountain ourselves to get the mushrooms."

Juanjo: "It was a bit troublesome for us in the first two years. There were confrontations between us. But eventually we [grew to] understand what areas we are good at and work best in. Since then, our cooperation has improved. Yolanda is good at cold dishes, like salad and desserts, while I'm good at preparing the proteins and talking with the customers. I love to go [into the dining room] to explain the dishes and ask if everything is OK."

Yolanda: "It is a great thing for Cocinandos because our restaurant is very out of the way and not many people knew about it. But many people from different countries look for us now."

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Q&A: Yolanda León and Juanjo Perez
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