Juanjo López took the reins at La Tasquita de Enfrente (Madrid) 20 years ago. Since then, he has earned the utmost respect for his honesty, essentiality and timeless luxury understood through his own particular prism. Hailed by the most brilliant chefs and the most demanding gourmets as a great guardian of flavour, he reveals in first person and in the key of gastronomic literature the ins and outs of a unique restaurant and the product that is served in it.

One fine day, Juanjo López decided to put aside a career that had led him to manage a major insurance company to dedicate himself body and soul to the hotel and catering business. Two decades later, his restaurant is unique in Spain, as well as a reference point for the most brilliant chefs and the most demanding gourmets. All of them sit at his tables to taste something as simple and as complicated as the best raw material treated with the utmost respect. "In the right hands, a quality product can become memorable," corroborates José Carlos Capel, food critic for El País. "It's not easy to come away from a meal without finding a single fault. But that's how it was", says Carlos Maribona, head of Gastronomy for the ABC newspaper for more than 25 years.

La Sencilla Desnudez is the book in which Juanjo López dissects, in the first person and in the key of gastronomic literature, the ins and outs of a unique restaurant. He also analyses the keys to a changing sector, a victim of the vortex of modern times, and reflects on a magical profession that requires honesty, common sense and love. All this, through 11 chapters that, like pillars, support everything that is cooked in La Tasquita de Enfrente.

Thus, the author reveals his particular way of understanding and officiating Luxury in the first chapter of his book; to go deeper as the pages go on about an Honesty towards his clients and his suppliers that becomes essential. He reflects on the importance of Making people think in the kitchen, while explaining how the magic of proximity is a primary objective in the daily life of his restaurant. He also stops to talk about his Team, and his way of living the Wine, to end up revealing one of his best kept secrets. This is none other than an Essentiality that has led him, step by step and almost without realising it, to earn the utmost respect in the sector and to be acclaimed as a great guardian of flavour. "The years have taught me that the important thing is to walk lightly in order to give what is inside you its deserved weight", says Juanjo López as an aperitif in the chapter.

Luxury is, likewise, the central axis of the text with which the publicist and writer Risto Mejide prefaces the book. "It is something closer to an attitude than a material condition", he states. "That you are always treated well, whoever you are and whoever you are". Juanjo López knows better than anyone how to be the best of hosts: he had already sat at many tables before tying his apron.

Creations full of knowledge.

La Sencilla Desnudez includes 30 emblematic creations from La Tasquita de Enfrente. With absolute fidelity to those pillars described in first person by Juanjo López, they are presented with an extensive commentary by the author, who reveals important details of their preparation. They are accompanied, in the same way, by a profuse explanation of the product or the preparation of which they are the protagonists. The images, like those in the rest of the book, bear the signature of Mikel Ponce. Some of them are part of detailed step by step processes.

Montagud Publisher

Binding: Hardcover

Number of pages: 256