From the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium to La Puntilla, Las Canteras is the true showcase of the life of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, everything passes through it and everyone passes through it. Locals, tourists or joggers enjoy the four kilometers of lively promenade along which hotels and apartments that emerged with the tourist boom and countless terraces and terraces of bars and restaurants overlooking the sea. If bathers are spread over the more than 2 kilometers of sandy beach, La Puntilla is the place for fishermen, and surfing enthusiasts have found their space in the area of La Cícer, where the Barra – the reef that runs along much of the beach – disappears and the waves reach 5 meters high.
You don’t have to go far from this great urban park that the people of Gran Canaria enjoy 365 days a year to see that there are many other things going on in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, some of which have been making people talk a lot in recent months as proof that something is moving in the city.
Tabaiba is the first, which, in addition to being a native flower, is the restaurant of chef Abraham Ortega (tabaibarestaurante.com), and has just won its first Michelin star for its evolutionary and transgressive Canarian cuisine. And just a 10-minute walk away, at number 10 Fernando Guanarteme street, is the minimalist restaurant Nákar, with its proposals of signature cuisine with Basque-Navarran influences.
Taking Luis Morote street from the beach, one quickly arrives at the central Santa Catalina park, where Catalina Plaza (hotelcatalinaplaza.com) opens its doors, presenting itself as “the first sustainable hotel” in the city. Its commitment to being eco-efficient and environmentally responsible translates into vertical gardens that are irrigated with rainwater, rooms with home automation, virtual reception 24 hours a day from the cell phone, LED lighting sensors, photovoltaic energy or guest participation to help the carbon footprint and reduce emissions from their stay.
Without leaving the hotel, on the rooftop, with the ocean in the background, there is a relaxation and leisure area with jacuzzi, fitness, terrace and Muxgo, Borja Marrero’s restaurant that is revolutionizing the city for its rigorous one hundred percent zero kilometer cuisine in a “closed circle”. The recognition has come with the Green Michelin 2023 star, the first in the Canary Islands, an award he received only 10 months after its inauguration and that, he says, has been “a shot of motivation”.
When you arrive at Muxgo the first thing that strikes you are the two vegetable gardens on the terrace, one horizontal and the other vertical, where Borja Marrero grows red onion from Gáldar, beet, carrots, aromatic herbs, watercress…, all depending on the season. These are the raw materials with which he decorates some of his contemporary dishes, because the rest comes from his “own pantry”, the organic farms, the farms, the cheese factory or the workshop he owns in his native Tejeda, in the center of the island, surrounded by the peaks of Gran Canaria and in the middle of an environment that Unesco has declared a World Heritage Site.
It is the landscape of these volcanic peaks that the chef brings directly to the table to create a “cuisine of the territory”. And he does it with an unquestionable mastery and an amazing technical and creative display, to which he has contributed his training with great chefs such as Adrià, Arzak and Ramón Freixa or his travels in the United States and Mexico. His personal project began 7 years ago in his village -where he still lives-, and after this adventure in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, he already plans to return to it to “make a more radical concept: to open a restaurant for only ten people in the middle of the farm, with the kitchen in the center and the goats around. A seasonal place, only open 7 months a year, where people can sit at home and enjoy eating and watching the winter sunset with the sacred mountain of Bentayga in front and the roque Nublo on the left”.
Borja Marrero is a restless chef, he is the one who receives and personally attends to the customers of his restaurant as if they were guests in his home. Only about twenty, because his purpose is to make them enjoy “a real and honest experience”. He is happy to move around his elegant dining room, personally explaining the menus, giving guidelines to his team in the open kitchen, talking about his “respect for the land, culture and Canarian gastronomy” and his project “the result of reflection and a strong commitment to the sustainability of the environment”.
An ear of millet (corn), a pineapple and a prickly pear leaf on the table give clues as to what one will taste on their menu, which is actually two to choose from, one short (55 €) and one long (90 €). Los Orígenes and Lo más profundo de Tejeda share appetizers: wild herb tartar bathed in sheep’s milk, Canary pine bark, crispy millet and goat and bitter strawberry escabeche. But it is in the second where all Borja’s creativity and his communion with nature explodes, with dishes such as warm cheese soup bound with bienmesabe, potato confit in sheep’s milk, seared sea bass with alfalfa and citrus hay sauce and smoked with olive charcoal or Canarian sheep quartering.
Muxgo, baptized, of course, alluding to the Tejeda environment, also offers a menu based exclusively on that wild and massive plant in the Canary Islands that is the tunera, and with which the Green Star explores all the possibilities, elaborations and textures to create recipes as delicious as surprising: creamy ingot of tunera, shot of tunera soup, tartar of tunera with citric milk of tunera with a spicy touch, jelly beans or chocolates of tunera… “An experiential menu that is having very good acceptance” and that can be tasted for 50 € and booking 24 hours in advance. This is the bet of Marrero, a chef focused on continuing to create the Canary Islands brand, Tejeda brand.
Text taken from: https://www.hola.com
