Joan Roca has been holding out the olive tree for two hours now, his arm frozen like a yoga aesthete. His eyes plead for release but he is too polite to ask. The tree, decked with caramelised olives, is a signature dish at El Celler de Can Roca in Girona in north-east Catalonia. Still, the OFM photographer presses for more, and Roca obliges. When you are the No 1 chef in the world, this stuff happens.
He laughs when I ask if it's a tyranny he could do without. "I had already developed crocodile skin with Michelin," he says, "but I have been cooking for 27 years and intend to continue for a long time."
Roca's teachers had wanted him to go to university but he loved being in the kitchen: "From a very young child, I learned to cook by playing," he says. "At cookery school, I was allowed to develop my voice but it was not until I went to France that I knew it would be my life."
He worked at Georges Blanc in Vonnas, and with Ferran Adrià at el Bulli in 1989, though it was later, working with his two younger brothers in Girona, that things really gelled.
Each brother (Josep is a brilliant sommelier, Jordi a sublimely talented patissier) brings a collaborative skillset to the creative process. "We join all the pieces together," says Joan. Sitting in the kitchen, eating Palamós prawns with "head juice" (by which I'll judge all prawns for ever) and an ethereal white asparagus and truffle viennetta it is easy to see what each brother brings to the plate. Respect, even love, for each other and local produce, an emotional cooking rooted in tradition and elevated by supreme technique.
Food at this level is usually the result of monomania, but Joan Roca is a sensitive testament to the truth that nice guys also finish first.
