Meet the Chef with Fer Villanueva
Strolling through the Poblenou neighborhood is always a pleasure. It may be its history, it may be its life or it may be that it preserves the essence of the most modernist and authentic Barcelona - increasingly difficult to find - but, whatever it is, Fer has managed to make this area even more special.
Today we invite you to have a coffee (and a matcha) with Fer Villanueva, who we recently met thanks to her new project, Bricks. With her we start a new season of Meet the Chef in which we want to give visibility to people with stories and projects that we are passionate about and with whom we connect.
Fer was born and raised in Mexico City, although she has been living in Barcelona for many years. Her background is totally different from pastry, although she has discovered that it is a sector that she is passionate about and inspires her. She studied product design and marketing and all this knowledge and work methodologies helped her to start designing incredible pastry elaborations and above all, different from the ordinary.
This prompted him to open Bricks, a space with a super nice atmosphere, where simplicity merges with exploration. It is a café born from Brenda's passion for healthy food and Fer's dedication to creating unique dishes. Together they have combined Asian culinary tradition with minimalist design elements to create a very special atmosphere.
Entering Bricks means going through its glass door to access a design space, where the light is studied and the furniture is made by themselves - from the welcoming counter to the seating tables, one of them, larger, shared and made with bricks 🧱 (bricks). Everything is taken care of here: the food preparation, the specialty coffee and even the playlist.
Their menu is a festival of exquisite homemade sweets. Fer's goal is to balance high quality ingredients with subtle design, staying true to his roots and always encouraging creativity. He has the ability to play with flavors of all kinds, from the most neutral to more authentic and daring ones that come from other cultures such as Sichuan pepper, yuzu or Shiso leaf.
They make everything delicious, but if there is one preparation that has captivated us is their Banana Bread, with a light touch of cardamom and vanilla cream. We only have one word to describe it: perfect, and vegan too!
The community surrounding Bricks shares his appreciation for authenticity and attention to detail. That's why Fer values personalized customer service , as well as product innovation and experimentation to create a different gastronomic proposal. This makes it a place to be, a place to connect, a place to relax and a perfect place to explore new flavors.
At Bricks they are continuously exploring new, more conscious and nutritious ingredients, such as inulin, or even alternatives to refined sugar, such as sucrose or honey. So far, Fer has always worked with the trial-and-error method in the creation of new products, and has invested a lot of time to achieve a final result that is excellent.
Although her previous studies have been in a completely different branch, she has also taken several pastry courses in schools where she has learned the most important and basic pastry skills, among them, the Hofmann school.
Having gained a solid foundation in pastry, her next goal is to take our online and extendedB·Concept pastry course. She considers it essential to learn how to formulate her own recipes, know the chemistry behind each ingredient and thus add value to her project.
"You can watch tutorials, but no one explains a method, a trick and how to formulate recipes from scratch. It's something that only you do, and that's what really interests me," Fer says.
We are happy to have met Bricks thanks to our friends and colleagues Kass and Ramón. We hope you enjoy this report recorded by Ramón Pampín.
We really enjoyed talking with Fer and meeting Brenda. We want to thank them for their collaboration in this new installment of Meet the Chef and wish them all the luck with this new project.
We invite you to visit Bricks, a relaxed, warm and familiar place, where you can enjoy a quiet and sensory experience, take a moment to read, meet with friends or loved ones, or simply enjoy your palate.
If you want to know more about the recipe formulation training we offer at our pastry School, here are all the details:
