Jordi Roca
Roca in Spanish means rock, stone. Something solid, on which you can build, but also a symbol of provocation, of scandal. And also, in a ternary sequence, the emblem of the Celler de Can Roca, on whose tables the guest finds three pebbles representing the different souls of the restaurant. Well, the third stone is the one launched in the stagnating waters of the pastry-making of the restaurant. The stone of Jordi Roca, ready to bounce, with a virtuousistic jump, in a psychedelic play of inspirations.
For strictly age-related reasons (there are 14 years of difference between him and the firstborn Joan), Jordi was the last to arrive in the brigade of the Celler, in 1997 to be precise, at the end of a double apprenticeship, in the family restaurant and at the local catering institute, where he studied management. He then went around all the stations before choosing the pastry one, with which he familiarised with the English pastry-chef Damian Allshop, to whom he owes the technical foundations and the pastry-chef forma mentis. He got soaked with the Roca style and technique, side by side with Joan and Josep, who tested his first attempts, while he continued to enrich his skills thanks to internships at Bulli and ice-cream making courses with the Italian master Angelo Corvitto. From all this resulted a cutting-edge pastry-making, in perfect osmosis with the savoury compartment, the frontiers synchronised in the move forward, but with the mark of a different smile, sometimes even irreverent and coarse.
The transformation into an orgasmic dessert of a goal by Messi, the sweet translation of famous aromas (a virtuosistic tour de force, but also the extreme exploration of the synergy between taste and smell, the viaticum of emotions according to psychologists, explored at the Celler as never before), the manufacturing of blown sugar during the service, the blowing of smoke into ice-cream, the study of colours through the production of monochromes or distillation, just to give a few examples, have launched him among the leading figures of world gastronomy. He’s the one behind the success of the Rocambolesc ice-cream shop, that spreads the Celler’s sweet culture in the streets of Girona.
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Identità Milano
The lastborn of the Girona Trimurti, Jordi Roca, born in 1978, is the pastry-chef of the Celler, the legendary three-starred Catalan restaurant. Nobody like him has explored the techno-emotional potential of the sweet universe, matching rigour and research with subtle conceptual implications and euphoric and dysphoric engaging game
Umbra di Perugia con residenza a Bologna, è giornalista e scrittrice di cucina. Tra i numeri volumi tradotti e curati, spicca "6, autoritratto della Cucina Italiana d’Avanguardia" per Cucina & Vini