The father of Murcian gastronomy dies

Raimundo was “one of the pioneers” – in the words of chef Pedro Subijana – who, since the First Conference of the Gourmets Club held in San Sebastián in the 70s, led the great revolution that brought Spanish haute cuisine to the forefront of gastronomy. world. Another of the leaders of great Spanish cuisine, Juan Mari Arzak, recalled “his decisive intervention, transcendental for the future of our cuisine, at the II Round Table on Gastronomy, within those days, in defense and exaltation of the wonderful garden.” Murcia and its deep-rooted cuisine. Testimonies both provided for the book 'Raimundo, Rincón de Pepe, a lifetime', published in 2015 by the Murcia Gourmet Club.

Among the recognitions that the Murcian chef received throughout his extensive career are the Gold Medal for Tourist Merit, the National Gastronomy Award, the title of Favorite Son of Murcia, his appointment as a member of the Chaine de Rotisseure; the election, by the National Academy of Gastronomy, of Rincón de Pepe as one of the ten best restaurants in Spain, and the granting of an 'honoris causa' doctorate by the University of Murcia. LA VERDAD awarded him the Lifetime Award in the 2017 edition of the Gastronomy Awards of the Region of Murcia.

Raimundo maintained practically until the end the lucidity and that prodigious memory that he displayed and that made him a living archive of the evolution of Murcian cuisine. An evolution to which he contributed by traveling inch by inch, in the company of his beloved Encarna, to the last corner of Murcia, rescuing, fixing and updating hundreds of traditional recipes that he incorporated into his restaurant's menu, thus creating an invaluable map of flavors of the Region. In November 2022, the chef received one of the hardest blows of his existence, which took a toll on his already delicate health: the loss of Encarnación Molina Sausano, his life partner, whom he married in 1953, after seven years of dating. –“and without touching us,” the teacher was responsible for specifying at the time with that cachaça and sense of humor that characterized him.

Born in Llano de Brujas

Raimundo was born in the heart of the orchard, in Llano de Brujas, in 1925. “When I was ten years old I began to live with my uncles Pepe and Aurelia,” says the chef himself in the monumental book 'De re Raimundo', published by the Academy of Gastronomy of the Region of Murcia. These were the dramatic times of the Civil War, and when the war ended the family reopened their uncle's tavern, Casa Pepe, which the parishioners called Rincón de Pepe. Some parishioners “who drank wine from empty tomato jars.” This humble place, which offered to pass the wine 'torraos' and peanuts, boiled potatoes, beans and peas, and where the glasses – which had arrived with the reopening – were washed in a basin, would be the germ of the temple par excellence of the Murcian gastronomy, the nucleus that for decades radiated culinary and restorative wisdom, a gastronomic reference that attracted the attention of people of the stature of Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway and that represented a focus from which the image of Murcia was projected to the entire country. .

Because Raimundo's work not only influenced the professional careers of hundreds of cooks, waiters and sommeliers, but also the leisure and consumption habits in Murcia restaurants and more. Something so common today, the concept of bar food, was invented in Rincón de Pepe and later in Nou Manolín, in Alicante. The bar where you can eat, the tapas and portions bar, the bar stocked from the kitchen, the bar with stools and individual tablecloths… a concept that the most 'starry' chef of all time copied, Joël Robuchon, to move it to his luxury Parisian restaurant, L'atelier, and later a dozen locations in Europe, America and Asia. Raimundo devised the bar food thinking about the figure of the 'Rodríguez': “A swallow's nest, a donut and a glass of wine then cost three or four pesetas, and with that they had eaten and returned to work.”

'Nouvelle cuisine' and Montalbán

Another of the losses deeply felt by Raimundo was that of Paul Bocuse, promoter and popularizer of what was called 'nouvelle cuisine', a movement that, at the beginning of the seventies of the last century, renewed and updated classical cuisine. French. But not only that. His ideas caught on strongly among a series of young Spanish chefs, led by the Basques Pedro Subijana and Juan Mari Arzak and supported by dozens more throughout Spain. Raimundo recalled not long ago: «And supported by dozens of others throughout Spain, we enthusiastically extended those changes – simplifying recipes, eliminating heavy and fatty sauces, looking back at regional cuisines and, at the same time, taking an interest in technologies. avant-garde, applying creativity to the presentation of dishes – expressed in its famous 'decalogue'. In this sense, I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that the current regional gastronomy, Murcian cuisine, owes a lot to that decalogue of 'monsieur' Paul. The two greats established a close relationship. «He didn't know Murcia, so I told him about our regional cuisine; Then he gave me the recipe for his famous covered soup, which he served at the Elysée to Giscard d'Estaing, – from whom he ended up taking his name – and which I later reproduced at the Rincón, in the wood-fired oven we had, with his puff pastry. four fingers high; and I told him about my creamed eggplants, he was very interested in the sea bream with salt and I gave him the recipe for the sea bream with fisherman's garlic.

A long journey for the chef that was not always easy: «The first criticism came to me when I began to modernize the dishes, to adapt them to their time. Accustomed to those huge dishes with two fingers of fat, they criticized: 'They have reduced the portions but they charge the same.' It was not understood that it was much more work to do it in this new way. 'You can't see the fat…'

Manuel Váquez Montalbán called him a precursor of the Nouvelle Cuisine, and dedicated this paragraph to him in one of his columns in 'El País', in August 2000: speaking of Murcian cuisine, “it would be an incomplete warning not to mention the cult of the eggplant and very especially one of the top dishes at El Rincón de Pepe: eggplants with shrimp, a testament to the fact that the eggplant was a symbol of the united and never defeated Mediterranean nature. An essential emblem was an eggplant rampant over a field of eels. In fact, the writer wanted one of his best-known characters, detective Pepe Carvalho, an unrepentant gourmet, to cook the famous creamed eggplants in one of his novels.

And as a good description of what one could feel when one crossed the doors of that gastronomic Olympus, here is what a critic from the newspaper 'La Voz de Galicia', ecstatic, told his readers: «El Rincón de Pepe was, in the year of grace of 1975, so lavish, succulent and hospitable, so surprising, that I could hardly believe my eyes, because by then I discovered it. My God! Those baskets of fruits and vegetables from the Murcian garden covering the unforgettable counter under an unrepeatable canopy of hams, those salted meats, those sauces, that service, those fish, that terrace full of flowers seemed to me something supernatural.

Fondly remembered

Raimundo was great. As a chef, as a restaurateur… and as a person. Today, dozens of chefs who worked with him, spread across different restaurants in the Region, are indebted to his teachings and remember him fondly. He paved the way, from a poor Murcian restoration, anchored in the past, locked in regional limits and brought sophistication, professionalism and updating. He did it from a very humble tavern with empty tomato jars as glasses, going through many difficulties and, in the end, forgotten by some when he needed them most. But he never lost his smile or his memory.