For almost two years now, chef Juan Cebollada has been in charge of the Don Pancho kitchen. He has a long career in the hotel and restaurant industry; but most important he is a friendly, committed person and a perfectionist and innovative professional.
For him, traditional cuisine is the basis of his dishes, and he loves to transform “our old favourites” recipes and ingredients into incredible, tasty and innovative delights. And always with much affection, because for Juan Cebollada, the kitchen is his world and he has had a great passion for cooking since he was little.
How do you define your kitchen?
Normally a chef is defined by his experience and his taste, but the way he uses the ingredients when cooking determines his own style, no matter what elaborations he is preparing: traditional, modern or ethnic. The most important thing is to have your personal style that makes a difference. Our cuisine would be defined as traditional, but with modern touches, always with “respect for the raw material, taste and simplicity“.
What inspires you to cook?
Every day I am inspired by our guests, who are the ones I cook for. And in the kitchen, I have a creative corner, which I call R&D, in which I work with the whole team inventing, testing recipes and changing ingredients … to create the dishes that we will later introduce in our menu.
How complicated is it to satisfy the culinary preferences of the guests in a Hotel?
Fortunately, most of our guests leave with a very high degree of satisfaction. We are aware that the concept of buffet is constantly evolving and we must take into account that gastronomic trends have changed very much over the years so we must be more creative every time. We work on transforming our “old favourites” into new dishes with new flavours, improving the productive processes, making use of the new technologies, etc.
In addition, before including any new dish to our buffet, we analyse the exposure of the food in the buffet to ensure that the raw material does not lose its rheological properties (texture, appearance and flavours) and the dish is absolutely perfect.
We also have a show cooking area to prepare dishes in front of our guests. Plus, once a week we have a very special theme night, different from the rest of hotels. We call it “flavours of the world” and it consists of a series of ethnic dishes typical of the chosen country but with modern touches. That night the menu also includes some of our traditional Mediterranean recipes.
Can you share the ingredient you use the most in your dishes?
As a main product, olive oil, but the secret ingredient in my kitchen is love.
What’s your favorite dish?
There are many dishes, it depends on the season, the mood, the company… But if I have to choose one it will be broken eggs with truffle.
We’d love to hear about some of your recipes. Would you like to share some of them with our readers?
Of course, we will make a selection of the most popular dishes in our buffet and some inspiring recipes from our event menu. We will choose easy recipes for readers to prepare comfortably at home.
Don’t miss the next publications to find out some of the recipes of chef Juan Cebollada. Do not forget to subscribe to our newsletter!
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