The masterchef may have inherited lemons, but he’s turned his inheritance into the most delicious lemonade
Carles Gaig doesn’t look his age. Despite spending almost his entire working life in the pressurised cauldron of a commercial kitchen—from which few emerge without scars—he appears to be unscathed. The twinkle in his eye when talking about life, love and food is as jaunty as his gait, and even in his eighth decade of life he still exudes a passion for his craft.
Had the now 75-year-old not evolved to become a global ambassador for Catalan cuisine and one of Spain’s great chefs, he says he “would have been a mechanic.” He enjoyed stripping down car engines and attempting to put the bits and pieces back together. In his own words, he “sometimes got it right.” The cooking analogy is irresistible.
At a crucial moment in his life, however, the automotive world’s loss turned into the food world’s gain, as he donned the chef’s whites to continue a family tradition that was already more than a century in the making.
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The Gaigs started cooking for others back in the 1850s. His mother (part of the Gaig’s third generation) cheered people up with comfort food and sustenance during and after the Spanish Civil War. When she lost her vision, Carles took over at the family restaurant just outside Barcelona.
He didn’t ask for it. He may not even have wanted the role. But he was to the manner/manor born, and as with his mother, compulsion was the key.
“It started as being something that she felt she had to do,” says Carles as we sit across a table at Gaig in Singapore—the family’s first overseas venture. It’s a restaurant that’s won plaudits for its modern, often very creative take on traditional Catalan cuisine (very much in Carles’ own culinary image) with a tincture of Asiana thrown into the melting pot for very good measure.