"Poetry and cooking are much more closely related than we think", says Carlos Casillas (Ávila, 1999). This is why the youngest chef to be awarded a Michelin star preferred to 'cook' words, rather than cook some of the dishes he serves at his restaurant, Barro, during his presentation at Madrid Fusion Alimentos de España. Not for nothing did he call his talk 'Volver' (Return), and he spoke with the veterinarian, writer, and poet María Sánchez, about returning to his origins, and the roots of his cuisine.

On the counter in the auditorium were two unique products, symbols of the rootedness they spoke about: the only cheese made with goat's milk from Guadarrama, and the 61-year-old vintage wine, inherited from his grandfather, with which Casillas entertains his customers.

Risk, madness, and training are the elements with which the young chef creates Barro. "We started as a wine bar because we had no idea how to run a restaurant", admits the celebrated chef, who can't keep up with the workload at his restaurant, in Avila. "For the last year, we have been cooking with words, thinking a lot and cooking very little. It was year zero of the restaurant, and we had to contextualise this cuisine, which takes us back to the past", he said. "We want to cook the past from the present with an eye to the future", he added.

His menu includes castañas a la importancia, pepitorias, or pipirrana, "recipes that take us back to the memory with which we want to anchor ourselves and focus on the territory", he said. "Barro is a listening project, born from the importance of asking all the people in the area, those who make up our network of suppliers, around 75 people who have symbolically become a family", he added.

"Today without yesterday will get us nowhere", says Casillas, who refuses to debate whether cuisine is art. “Gastronomy is culture -he says- and we bring to the table an ideology, an imaginary that goes beyond the dish". He also believes that "the beauty of gastronomy is that it is ephemeral", and finds inspiration in moving away from the centre and off the beaten track. "There is no value in going down paths that have already been explored, but when we explored the margins, we realised that sometimes disruption is just listening", says the chef, who named one of his dishes 'Márgenes' (Margins).

Barro is a project of six people from very different backgrounds, "who share a sense of belonging to the territory where we have settled", says the chef, who returned to his homeland after training in the Basque Country. "My generation had the opportunity to leave, thanks to our parents and grandparents, and fortunately we were able to return. I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, but I realised that those who lived in a small town had a sense of rootedness that I lacked", which, he admits, he understood "in the Basque Country, in a town like Rentería".

In a speech that was more philosophical and poetic than culinary, he praised two products that are closely linked to the land: Montealijar cheese, made only three times a year with the milk of Guadarrama goats, and a very old wine, made for his grandfather's wedding 61 years ago, which he extracted tear by tear with a pipette from an old demijohn that was about to run out.

Casillas trained at the Basque Culinary Centre. He was the youngest chef to win a Michelin star for his fledgling restaurant, located in front of the walls of Ávila and staffed by young people also trained in the Basque Country.

He worked in restaurants such as La Tasquita de Enfrente, Miramar, and the star-rated Paco Pérez and Ambivium, before opening his own, where he works with local producers and is committed to the environment, reducing his carbon footprint through reforestation, investing in the recovery and planting of vineyards and ancestral crops, and the regeneration of organic waste. He has more than a thousand wine references, two hundred of which are local.