The Kamezí restaurant, located in Playa Blanca, received the greatest recognition last weekend after winning a MICHELIN Star that rewards haute cuisine. Its owner, Koldo Eguren, and his cook, Rubén Cuesta, have been on the program Más de Uno Gourmet of Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero, with Carlos Chavaud, to review their career that has led them to be the first place in Lanzarote with this award.
- How does a cook from Toledo get to Lanzarote?
Rubén: I wasn't doing very well in my studies and I started working in construction, but I saw that it was very hard and I decided to study a PCPI in cooking and then I entered a middle grade and I started to like the job a little, but I'm not a cook by vocation. I did my internship at El Bohío, Pepe Rodríguez's restaurant, and there I discovered another world. I spent six years working there and I toughened up a lot, but there came a point where I got tired. There I met an intern who was from the Canary Islands and wanted to set up a restaurant in Gran Canaria, so he told a friend and me that if we wanted to join the project, so I accepted.
With the pandemic, things went wrong and his father, Koldo Eguren, came to eat at the restaurant one day, which was empty, and asked the cook to come out. He told me that he had liked the food and invited me to Lanzarote where he passed my resume to his team because he liked it.
- What is the story of your father and how did he get to Lanzarote?
Koldo: My father has a movie life. He is an architect by training and is very creative and visionary, so he has had ideas that he has launched to do and during the 90s and early 2000s he dedicated his life to architecture and construction but he realized the bubble that was being created. That's when he decides to invest what he earned in another sector. He chose Lanzarote for its climate and he and my mother fell in love with the island. He got a land near the Pechiguera Lighthouse and was building houses.
In that evolution, about five years ago, he decided to bet on the gastronomic part and invest in a restaurant. Then came the pandemic but with the creativity of the team we began to move the project forward when a couple of years ago Rubén entered, the restaurant is already in a very interesting line and trying to give value to the island and raise the level. This is a work of many, not only of my parents, but of the team.
- Was it risky to create a project in such a remote area of Playa Blanca...?
Koldo: Yes, but risk is a part of his DNA and he is not afraid of anything. We have also been very clear that we want to do very different, special and unique things, that have the potential to have enough appeal to make people move to them. Both the villas and the restaurant become a destination in themselves and it is the original idea that year after year we continue to polish and improve.
- How do you handle taking over from your father?
Koldo: It is a total and absolute responsibility but it can only be done in one way and that is with a team that is good at their job, if not there is no other way to do it. We also have a winery in Rioja Alavesa and that is what I was doing but I continue to combine it with the restaurant part but I am not in the day to day of Kamezí, I give them tools and help in everything I can. My brother has also been working for two years in the more lodging part of the villas but it is all the people that allows you all this.
- When you decide to set up a restaurant like Kamezí, you need to take an economic pulse...
Koldo: There is a powerful investment in the space, which is the initial investment but you already assume that. The challenge was stability, that is, to assume that at the beginning it may be deficient but you see how quickly you manage to take it to black numbers and that it stops making me lose money. Then you see if you want to earn more, less or regular because in this profile of gastronomy requires many people and complicates it a lot.
If I am grateful for anything to my predecessors in the management of the restaurant is that they were able, in a post-pandemic context, to make the restaurant not lose money, but earn a little. With that base, my job has been to tighten the screws.
- What kind of menu can we find in the restaurant?
Koldo: There is only one menu because we want you to let yourself go, that you enter through our door and have enough confidence in us to believe that in the kitchen and in the dining room we are going to take care of you. In that sense we have limited the option to a single tasting menu.
Rubén: When I entered Kamezí I found a new team and I took over what I was doing in Gran Canaria and little by little we have been evolving it with the new team and settling everything and adapting to the product of Lanzarote. It is true that we use products from all the islands but above all we focus on those of Lanzarote.
- What can we find from Lanzarote in Kamezí?
Rubén: You have the scarlet shrimp, the shrimp from La Santa, the wreckfish, horse mackerel in summer, especially fish. Also meat such as goat and vegetables.
Koldo: In this menu there were things to be polished but this has been another of the emphases. We want that coherence and, being menu and night, having a number of people and food to serve you need a regularity in the suppliers. On the island we have a lot to do because there is that good product but we lack continuity in the supply. It is difficult for us to put producer like the tomato of Tinajo because then they leave you lying because there is no other way to say it, and I have to replace it with a tomato from outside.
- Was it clear when they opened the restaurant that the goal was to fight for a MICHELIN Star?
Koldo: The opening of the restaurant is marked by the circumstances of the pandemic but in our work the last two years is in mind. You do not work only to get a MICHELIN Star, but you work to get people to come to the restaurant and leave very happy but it helps a lot to have objectives that, in addition, are marking you. We travel a lot, you see many places and you write down things in your head and try to implement them.
- We talk about the work in the kitchen but the work in the dining room is also very important...
Koldo: We do not want to reveal too much so that people are encouraged and want to enjoy it for themselves because there are certain surprises but we have tried to take advantage of the space, which is very special as a whole. There is a certain route, that the dishes are well explained and finalized at the table itself but above all the treatment. Get that magic and that atmosphere for people to disconnect those three and a half hours that people are with us and enjoy.
- The bread served in Kamezí is made by yourselves...
Koldo: Yes, we come from the Basque Country and the reality is very different in many aspects. One of those aspects was the bread, we had a hard time finding a good bread and we bought it in Fuerteventura, so we decided to set up a workshop that opened last year, first with the idea of serving the restaurant and the villas and now we also have quite a few restaurant clients of medium-high level on the island.
- In the restaurant you are going to eat but you are also going to enjoy the after, what can people enjoy in regards to cocktails?
Koldo: We wanted to give the cocktail bar its own identity and the importance it has and we have created its own space for Ruth, our cocktail shaker. Both people who come to the restaurant before or after the experience and people who simply want to go see the sunset and enjoy a cocktail because we have a small cocktail bar right above the restaurant with spectacular views.
