A few weeks ago, director Richard Linklater explored at the BCN Film Fest the criteria that lead us to choose watching one film over another. Similarly, we often visit restaurants not only for their gastronomic offer or type of cuisine ---which we could equate to the genre, the actors, or the film itself---, but for reasons more linked to the team and their worldviews.
This is why many establishments, like Disfrutar or Smoked Room, gain great recognition a few months after opening. And it is that guides and gastronomy experts identify restaurants in the same way that critics know a Tarantino film will get five stars. Here the plot is the least important: the actors, the screenwriters, the director, and even the production company are the sole focus of attention.
Let's start with the most abstract topic: it's not the same for a film to be distributed by A Contracorriente Films or communicated by MadAvenue as by Sony Pictures, since each of them works with a different concept of spectacle. Similarly, there are gastronomic agencies with different sensibilities: giants like Interprofit, XXL or GSR represent the local Indiana Jones; Pica Pica, SRC or LaMaga bet on Before Sunsets and Past Lives.
Studios like The Walt Disney Company or Artisan Entertainment could be equated to restaurant groups: under the same name, Tragaluz, Goût Rouge or La Confitería propose a shared story in several locations; Grupo Cabo, Grupo Varela or Collonut, for their part, could be a Pathé; more reflective, but equally multiple. Projects like Tramendu, without a doubt, embody the Linklaterian spirit of Detour: three layers of experience for three differentiated films/locations.
We already know who film directors are: those great chefs who run kitchens and attract attention with their name. They may have made a single film or several; direct them daily or only advise them, but they always mark the final result with their own vision, commercial or authorial. Sciamma, Hong Sang Soo, Ducournau or Spielberg could be compared to Sara Valls (Xeixa), Arnau Muñío (Direkte), Laura Veraguas (VER AGUAS) or Dani García, who, by the way, will soon open Leña at the Grand Hyatt Barcelona.
Other times, we choose a movie or a restaurant based on its genre, type of cuisine, theme, or interior design. Recipes, which require meticulous work, could be considered as characters following detailed script instructions. Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden can be imagined as a bacon burger, without this being a disparagement; in fact, the reason we find a restaurant interesting has a lot to do with the recipes that define it.
And we come to one of the most fascinating figures in the world of cinema: screenwriters. This hidden and reflective species, often forgotten by the general public, are the true Geppetto of the show. The decision to watch a fiction because it is written by Kaufman, Dunham, Sorogoyen, or Fielder is a detail that also translates to the gastronomic world.
An example would be visiting Jon Cake & Wines because the wine list is prepared by Partners in Wine (Rubén Pol is a former sommelier at Disfrutar) or noticing who Oriol Rovira from Els Casals (PORK… boig per tu), the chocolatier Pol Contreras (Bodega Bonay) or Carlos Bonnin from La Destilateca (Assalto, Lluerna and, obviously, the omnipresent Disfrutar) work with. Gastro-screenwriters who, it must be emphasized, shine thanks to a technical and front-of-house team made up of many professionals.
In the talk I mentioned at the beginning, Linklater also explained that "cinema is for those people who want to escape reality." I often wonder if restaurants are not, in fact, precisely that.