Pepa Munoz She was quite a character in the city of Madrid before the pandemic, but her role as a collaborator of the World Central Kitchen Foundation has catapulted her much further. For your restaurant Qüenco de Pepa politicians, businessmen and characters of the couché paper pass through. The discovery of some tomato seeds condemned as “unproductive” is part of their success.
Pepa arrives late because there has been an accident on the Cuesta de las Perdices. Your restaurant room El Qüenco de Pepa, where we spend time having a coffee, it is a coming and going of employees, among them Beatriz Andrino, the sommelier who unpacks boxes of wine: “I’ve been with Pepa for 18 years and I would work another 18,” he says. Pepa Munoz (Madrid, September 17, 1969), married to Mila Nieto, mothers of two twin daughters, has a life full of anecdotes, typical of someone who has served important diners. He learned to cook with his father in the catering that fed the film crews of many classic Spanish films, where he met film directors such as Mario Camus (The Holy Innocents), Pilar Miró (The Crime of Cuenca) or Carlos Saura (Mom turns 100). “Since I was 11 years old, I have had an enormous capacity for work, it is a talent that God has given me,” he says.
He ensures that he does not owe money to anyone and that he work for others, as he did during the worst months of the pandemic with World Central Kitchen, the foundation of the chef José Andrés, which has just received a millionaire donation from Jeff Bezos, “is not posturing.” He does not hesitate to call his clients with the gift or the lady in front of him, or refer to them as his gentlemen, without a hint of pejorative meanings, but quite the opposite: “Serving is the most beautiful thing in the world.” He says the secret to his success “is working 14 or 15 hours every day, and not believing it.”
For putting a “defect” on Pepa Muñoz, and this will be understood by my colleagues in the profession, it is her disorderly order in the conversation, since she finishes the answer to a question two questions later, and thus, she jumps from one to another, completing ideas. Behind the table where we are sitting there is a plaque dated 2012 in memory of the businessman Fernando Fernandez-Tapias, one of the few ornaments in the bright dining room.
Question. Why do you have it there?
It has been a key customer. My partner and I had sold our houses to build Qüenco and things were not going well. It was in 2007 when I met him and he told me: “I’m going to bring you to the entire Madrid society“I replied:” You will look very good. ”
Q. What a commitment … You make good friends with customers, right?
We have been in very important moments of their lives, such as communions or weddings …, and that unites. I never imagined that they would invite me to their homes, it is something for which I thank God. You know, because of the way I work, I see myself more in the generation of classics like Lucio or José Luis, than in the current generation of large gastronomic groups.
Q. How are they different?
In that this is a restaurant linked to the identity of a person, there is someone to call by name: Pepa exists.
Pepa Muñoz, owner of El Qüenco de Pepa, a trendy restaurant in Madrid for its tomatoes.
Q. Is it one of those that is always at the foot of the canyon?
I try not to miss it, but when I can’t I feel calm because I have a wonderful team of 35 people [ha mantenido a todos, pese al Covid], including the sommelier and the chef. But the reservation book I keep personally.
Q. What do you mean?
I mean to seat people in the dining room. It is very difficult to get it right. Because you can coincide here with your ex-wife, and we will have to put you apart, one upstairs and one on the terrace … Or a person who has worked in one company and is now in another, and coincides with someone from the first … . Or a minister comes and there is a former minister …
P. What a job of diplomacy.
Total. It is pure protocol. When everyone has confirmed, if I am not there they take a photo of the reservation book and send it to me to review.
Q. What was it like to collaborate with the World Central Kitchen Foundation, did you volunteer?
They called me telling me that José Andrés was starting to operate in Spain and wanted him to lead one of the kitchens in Madrid. Ten days after closing due to Covid, I opened a kitchen at the NH Eurobuilding Hotel. We started with 400 daily menus and ended with 3,000. I donated all the pantry I had.
P. Before this collaboration, did you know the ‘committed Pepa’ that you have inside?
You see, one day on the way from my house to Eurobuilding, in full confinement, I came to the conclusion that if God had given me the gift of working [“a los 11 años ya pelaba 25 kilos de calamares”] I had to share it, my country needed it. It was weeks from Sunday to Sunday, without rest, but the hardest thing was not that, but to spend three months without kissing my daughters and my wife.
Q. You talk a lot about her, what role does she have in Qüenco de Pepa?
Mila has her company, she is a coach. Everything that I have not studied, that I only did until the first year of BUP, she has done: two degrees, a master’s degree …
Q. Where is your family from?
They are from Córdoba and Seville. My father was from Hornachuelos and my mother from Las Navas de la Concepción. He was a driver for the Oriols, he worked with Don José María and Don Ignacio Oriol. It is nice that generations go by and I am feeding the grandchildren of those young men whom my father served.
P. “Señoritos”, is it politically correct?
Let’s see, I take care of all the clients from don and doña. When some are sitting and one is standing, each one has his place. Serving is very nice, let’s not see it derogatory, or classist, or anything like that.
Q. Are you a believer?
r. Yes, I believe, I pray, I go to Mass some Sundays, it helps me. I have priest friends. And I would have liked very much to be married in the Church. Our daughters are baptized, they have made Communion.
Q. I understand that the issue of your registration in the Civil Registry was a “move”.
There was a legal loophole. I went like seven times and they didn’t register them. They told me that the girls were unprotected. The poor officials were lost, they did not know what they had to do. It was crazy because I was married to my wife and on the other hand I had a book that said I was a single mother. I went through psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers to adopt them … Because despite being married, I had to complete the adoption. And they had been born into the family unit …
Q. Is it true that Joaquín Sabina dedicated a poem to you?
Yes, “Sevillanas to Lola and Candela”. In fact, one day I asked Joaquín why, being such an atheist, he wanted his daughters to have Communion, and he replied: “Pepa, I have tried to make my daughters as normal as possible …”.
Q. What is special about that tomato, the best in Madrid?
Bua … They are like my other children …, the seed, the earth, the water and the absence of pesticides. This tomato was stopped sowing because it is very large and has a lot of waste. Mila, who is from Ávila, took me to Martín Muñoz de las Posadas [cerca de Arévalo], to meet José, our gardener, who kept his grandfather’s seeds. And we got down to work.
Q. Do they make money?
Many have asked me when they saw that Madrid was early to open. But I answer them that one thing is that we are open, and another the benefits. I am lucky that my clientele is loyal, and local, so my recovery will be faster than downtown restaurants, without tourism.
P. Madrid was the first to open, but also to close, let’s not forget …
We were plagued, if we went out they would point us out. I remember that when the Mobile was canceled in Barcelona, here 200 reservations were canceled in one day, when in other places they did not suffer that problem … Two days before closing he ate at that table [la señala] Don Carlos Falcó, Marquis of Griñón [fallecido el 20 de marzo de 2020]. “Give me a hug,” he told me. “That you can’t,” I replied. “Come on,” he insisted. You don’t know about clients who have died and what I have cried.
Pepa Muñoz, from El Qüenco de Pepa, with her tomatoes.
Q. What has prompted you to publicly support the president of the Community of Madrid?
That Isabel Diaz Ayuso He will call you to ask you what you need, what problems do you have … I had never been asked that by a politician. They have gone out to see what happened. I have to confess that when he won the elections we had a special meal with my team, because we could continue working.
Q. On the street, next to the entrance door, you can see the suns that the Repsol Guide awarded you in 2019 and 2020. Do the guides stress you out?
The Repsol has changed a lot, and it was necessary. They do not cause me anxiety.
Q. What is your opinion about the work carried out by gastronomic criticism?
First: the best critic there is are the customers, day by day. I have it crystal clear. They tell me where to go. Second: the critics have to be there, because they have to demand, they must give the category that corresponds to each site. Our purpose is to be among the 50 best in the city.
Q. Tell me the last anecdote that happened here.
Not long ago the queen came Doña Sofía and the whole dining room got up to applaud her. Here in Qüenco very beautiful and particular things have happened. One day Felipe González and Aznar agreed.
Q. I would set them apart …
No, in your case it is not necessary.
Q. What do you owe Madrid?
Everything, I am who I am thanks to this city. Madrid is milk, I see it on track.
Q. I like that expression. You cooks are the new ‘Cristianorronaldos’, aren’t you a little overrated?
Ha ha, he’s right. But in Spain no, with our pantry there must be good cooks.
Q. Who is there more to thank in Spanish cuisine?
To Ferrán Adrià, without any doubt.
Q. Do you handle social networks?
Only Instagram, Twitter I have left because there is a lot of lack of respect. Silly, with the garden and others, I have 30,000 followers. By the way, I refuse to let anyone take them, only I tell about myself.
P. A summer place to retaliate for everything we have experienced.
I’m going to Cádiz, to Sancti Petri, because last year I couldn’t go. There I go to my usual chiringuito, to the Chiclana market, or to the Conil market, I buy my red mullet and I meet a few cooks that we all spend the summer there.
Q. Confess a mania.
The order, for example my shirts have to be placed in the same colors, and the rest of the clothes have their precise place.
Q. Are those tomatoes so well placed on the shelf in the hall due to this?
Not only that, but I like that those who are more mature are on the left side.
Q. Do you laugh at yourself?
Sometimes I even talk to myself.
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