Spanish chef Kiko Moya of L’escaleta restaurant eyes third Michelin star, but is his own worst critic
The owner of the two-Michelin-star restaurant, located in a small town near Alicante in southeast Spain, talks about keeping it simple in the kitchen and working hard to improve the quality of their food and service
Tell us about L’escaleta. “It’s been around for 38 years and I’m the second generation, running it with my cousin, who is the sommelier. We experiment with local ingredients and ancient techniques that make our cuisine simple and natural.
“For example, we use garum, a fermented fish sauce that dates back to the Romans, but use different fish in it and make different marinades from it. Each dish is an opportunity to tell something about the landscape, or my personal experience.”
El Celler de Can Roca is run by a great family – mother, father and three brothers – and I thought about my own family and realised we are a great family, too. It was at this point that I knew I wanted to be a chef
Have you always wanted to be a chef? “I didn’t want to be a chef when I was a child because I didn’t like my hands smelling of garlic and fish. My uncle was the head chef of L’escaleta and my father the maître d’. The restaurant is a family business so we all had to help out. I started when I was 14 years old, working there on the weekends and one summer. Afterwards, I was a waiter for four or five years.
“In 1998, I went to intern at El Bulli [Ferran Adrià’s now-closed restaurant on Spain’s Costa Brava] for three months. I was 22 years old. I enjoyed my time there, but I still didn’t want to be a chef.“I went to El Celler de Can Roca, in Girona, in 2002, just before they received their second Michelin star. El Celler de Can Roca is run by a great family – mother, father and three brothers – and I thought about my own family and realised we are a great family, too. It was at this point that I knew I wanted to be a chef. I was around 26 years old.”
Which ingredient are you most interested in now? “Salt – it can change the taste of food, and you can marinate ingredients with it. For example, garum is a salty sauce but we make sauces from it that aren’t salty.”
