Marga Coll prepares the day's dishes at La Barra de Miceli, inside the Mercat d'Inca, highly concentrated but with a smile on her face. Meanwhile, market regulars load their bags with fresh produce and some curious tourists glance at her board of tapas and sandwiches. The cook spends summer mornings at the market and evenings at her restaurant in Selva, Miceli, now in its tenth year.
"I always knew I wanted to be a cook and just when I finished high school, the hotel and catering school opened at the University of the Balearic Islands. So that's where I trained and, being completely honest, it changed my life. I finally felt that I was doing what really made me happy", she tells us, while we chat at the bar, surrounded by customers having a vermouth and tasting her dishes.
After finishing her studies, Coll worked in different restaurants and agritourisms, and then got a scholarship to research ancient Mallorcan cuisine at the university where she had been trained. She then went to work at Amadip Esment. "It was twelve very intense years of continuous learning. I had the opportunity to start different gastronomic projects from scratch and that teaches you a lot about how things work," she says. However, in the last few years at Esment, her main role in the company was mainly management, and the Selvatgina cook began to miss the kitchen. That's when she decided to open Miceli in 2012. "I'm not impulsive, but I do believe in action - reaction. I felt it was what I wanted at the time and I took the plunge," she says, her face lighting up.
Miceli was, for Marga Coll, a full-fledged return to her roots: she returned to the kitchen, to her village and, more specifically, to the house where she had grown up, because it was clear to her: if she was going to open a restaurant, her family home, faithful to Mediterranean architecture and with incredible views, was the ideal place. "The location was important for everything it symbolizes for me and because it is beautiful, but it also allowed me to spend more time with my children and less on the road."
The concept was also clear to her: Mallorcan cuisine, with market produce and always of high quality. "During the years I was managing other projects, I didn't specialize in the avant-garde techniques that were becoming fashionable at the time, so I went towards what I knew I was good at". It was the right decision. Miceli opened its doors with three workers: Marga Coll, her brother and her husband, who came to the restaurant on weekends to lend a hand. Now, the team is made up of fourteen people.
At Miceli she prepares a different five-course menu every day from what she finds in the Mercat d'Inca and in an organic garden in Caimari. She has her trusted suppliers, who already know which product she will like. "For me, the most limited in terms of Mallorcan produce is meat. You always find Porc Negre and lamb, but little else, so if I find quality Galician meat, I buy it. As for seafood and fish, it's better not to have fixed ideas because you never know what they will have caught that day," she says.
"The vegetables in the market are always in season, and I prepare the dishes with what each season gives us".
Three years after opening the doors of Miceli, Melià proposed her to open a restaurant in, surely, the best hotel of the group in Mallorca. "The proposal was totally unexpected for me, but I took it as a responsibility: I had the opportunity to bring Mallorcan cuisine closer to people from all over the world and I couldn't refuse." Said and done. Arrels by Marga Coll, at the Hotel de Mar Gran Melià, has been serving since then an exquisite tasting menu for dinner and, most surprisingly, a breakfast in five steps, unique on the island (and with a waiting list).
But the projects do not end here. A few years ago, during her daily visits to the market, Coll realized that the Mercat d'Inca was losing its essence. More and more of the traditional stalls were closing and no one was taking the plunge to reopen them.
"This market has given me a lot throughout my career and I felt I owed it something. I thought that opening a stall here would strengthen even more the bond that unites us and, at the same time, would contribute to give some life back to the Mercat".
Thus, in 2018, La Barra de Miceli was born, a concept faithful to those bars of always that prepare dishes from the products of the local stores. There is no menu: on blackboards they write daily the sandwiches, tapas and the dish of the day that they prepare from seasonal products.
The philosophy of La Barra de Miceli sums up very well, in fact, Marga Coll's way of understanding and practicing the cuisine: without rigidity, open to the harvest and the catch of the day; always on the move, but with respect for the culinary tradition of the island and, above all, without haste. "In summer a faster cooking is made because it's getting very hot and the recipes are lighter, but I enjoy it more in winter. I like slow cooking, which requires more presence, more time. In fact, it's something I've learned over the years and it has to do not only with cooking, but with life: we need more time for ourselves, for our families and also to work at a different pace. If we take our time with the people we love and in the kitchen, that has a direct impact on the outcome of absolutely everything we do."
No wonder, then, that when Marga Coll talks about the future, before saying goodbye, the word time is repeated several times. "My goal is to work for ten more years and then make room for the new generations and gain time". For what? "Time to live, that's all".
