Ramon Cabau’s story looks like a film. It is difficult to understand that in recent years he would have fallen into oblivion, to the point that one day, the author of the book that rescues his memory, (ara), would not find anyone in the Boqueria market, beyond the merchants of a lifetime, who knew how exciting and tragic life of a visionary dandi who put the Catalan kitchen in the place he deserved with his restaurant, open from 1962 to 1984.
Marc Casanovas remembers that he had heard of the Aguet d’Avignon restaurant, who did not frequent, but not Ramon Cabau, his unmistakable owner. He knew of him when he wrote a previous book and discovered that the charismatic restorer was involved in the claim of legalizing many types of mushrooms that then could not be marketed in Catalonia with the collaboration of Llorenç Petràs, who had the most famous mushroom stop of the Boqueria (which just announced its closure). “How can this story have been published before?” Asks this gastronomic journalist who already made a biography of the chef (pumpkin pepitas).
For more than a decade it was a very popular character, it appeared in the media constantly, and offered an image of a cultured and distinguished person but at the same time very close. His personality stood out among the restorers of the time. “We have a lot of amnesia,” says Casanovas. Last year was the centenary of his birth and no commemoration was made, he laments. One of the possibilities of his forgetfulness that the disseminator points in this book was that (married to one of Cabau’s steps, Tin Aguet) omitted him in Modern cuisine in Catalonia (1985), written with his wife.
Ramon Cabau I Guasch was born in a town in Lleida, Bell-Lloc d’Urgell in 1924. His mother died when he was barely a month and a half, his father went to live in Lleida with him and later, out of necessity, he left him in Barcelona with an aunt who had no children and had been a widow with a good heritage. In this way, Cabau was able to study. He graduated in Pharmacy, in addition to law, a career he did when he already worked as a pharmacist. , where he bought a pharmacy that baptized Cabau, but it would not be the last. His restlessness always boiled. After marrying Paquita Agut – the restaurant’s owner, another classic of the time – disagreements with the father -in -law mounted the Agut d’Avignon, on Avinó street, also in the ancient part of the city.
In the restoration he found his passion, and his restaurant was filled with illustrious diners, from painters to writers and politicians. He managed to replicate an environment that fascinated him, close to power. His restaurant stood out for serving local cuisine without complexes, at a time when good restaurants had financed. He also looked at Provence, a region that was passionate, and imitated and copied what seemed interesting to him. He claimed and recommended to his cook – he did everything but cook – to work with seasonal and proximity products, and he went personally every day to buy at the Boqueria market. All of maximum current, but sixty years ago.
For the author of this biography, Ramon Cabau “was unclassifiable.” He had a great formation, many knowledge, traveled, learned languages, and also had a style that demonstrated it, always well -brought, with colorful vests and birds and his inseparable hat, often Canotier type.
“He got a strange balance between good and evil and always came out with his, he was always close to power,” says Marc Casanovas, which also gives as a key to his recognition that “he understood that gastronomy had to do with politics, economy and tourism.” “His speech is in force,” he emphasizes. I even talked about lighten meals to improve the digestion of a more sedentary population.
His success was not only a local, recalls the author of the book. When the American chef Alice Waters, from, visited Barcelona, I was going to eat at Agut d’Avignon, a dining room that was also reference for chefs of the. “I had absolute transcendence,” says Marc Casanovas, and proof of this is that he was selected as one of the most impressive chefs in the world in, by Maggie Waldron and even promoted olive oil with an advertisement in the United States.
When he closed his restaurant, who was also in the name of his wife and did not get a hard for him, Ramon Cabau took refuge in his sea farm of Mar (Maresme), which he had bought to give free rein to another of his passions: grow vegetables and flowers. There he spent his last years, often with guest friends, and sold what he harvested in the Boqueria market, which he visited to the last sigh. As usual, the final day came early to the market and after a round of greetings and kisses that lengthened more than usual, Ramon Cabau took a cyanide pill that was placed in minutes. When those present, especially his friend Llorenç Petràs, realized what he had just ingested, there was no reversal.
Although Ramon Cabau’s public life seemed a party, he had depressive periods that he blamed the “love evil”, but currently suggests that he could have a bipolar disorder. On the same day of the inauguration of his restaurant he did not come because “he was in the brake,” says Marc Casanovas. A very significant fact about his state of health that he found in the archives of the National Library of Madrid and allowed him to stretch the thread of his health. At the documentation level, “that visit was key,” he says, to develop the successful time of Ramon Cabau, with ups and downs than his closest, such as the chef Josep Burse, the restorer Isidre Gironès, the merchant Llorenç Petràs or the lawyer Agustí Jausàs, corroborated him.
Marc Casanovas has taken advantage of this powerful story to put on the table, in the final epilogue, a market that surely Ramon Cabau (which has a plaque with its souvenir bust) would not recognize. Every day thousands of tourists visit it by putting the genuine businesses of this emblematic place of the Rambla de Barcelona in trouble. Convinced that “a people without biographies is a people without a soul,” Marc Casanovas already has other personalities of Catalan cuisine pending restitution.
