Blossom: the Malaga restaurant that flourishes after being devoured by fire | Gastronomy: recipes, restaurants and drinks

It was four in the morning. A phone call woke up Emiliano Schobert (Buenos Aires, 1974) at an hour that did not bode well for good news. It was January 8, 2025. On the other side, a National Police. “Come about your business, there was a fire,” they told him. He found the devastated kitchenthe living room blackened by smoke, the furniture useless. a spark the wiring caught fire. “What a duel,” recalls the chef, who only a few weeks earlier had touched the sky by getting his first Michelin star for his work in Flowerrestaurant he managed in the center of Málaga with his partner, Lucia de Baggio.

They didn’t have time to show off the award because they were on vacation with their family in their country, Argentina, in December. Now, after a short stay in a hotel and a visit to the rebuilt headquarters, it’s time to truly enjoy the recognition on the fourth floor of the building. Malaga Museum. There, in a space of great elegance, it reopened a few days ago. “It’s where we always wanted to be,” they point out.

With eight tables and a maximum capacity of 30 guests, its new room has wood-panelled walls. Everything shines again: the open kitchen, the officethe flowers, the vases. They are more than 300 square meters and a unique detail. Framed are some half-melted knives and cutlery recovered from the embers of the disaster, now part of the memory of the house. Next to a glass window with terrace and views of the citadel, so close you can almost touch itSchobert and De Baggio talk for EL PAÍS about a year of dizziness from when the fire burned their newly realized dreams until their recent and laborious rebirth. The story allows us to travel to the origins of their arrival in Malaga, in 2019, as part of a family commitment – they moved with their three children – to live new experiences after almost two decades at the helm of El Obrador School of Culinary Artsin the city of Bariloche, formerly in Argentine Patagonia.

“We decided to take a six-month trip through Europe,” he begins. They tried to replicate their training project, but once they arrived in the capital Malaga, knowing its dynamism and tourist influx, they decided to open a café. They named it Blossom – which can be translated from English as flower or bud – because it symbolized the family’s rebirth in another place. They began with enthusiasm by preparing alfajores, trying their hand at tapas, discovering the craft, until they were three months old After the pandemic closed its doors. The reopening after the confinement caught them without regular customers or tourists, so it hasn’t started. Schobert wanted to change that and started cooking. “The kitchen was two square meters and we only had five dishes. They weren’t tapas, skewers, rations or menus, but I liked what was on the table,” recalls the chef, who once also worked as a waiter at the same time. Word of mouth helped them grow. As of August 2022, they have amassed 1,800 diners. The business grows, we hire staff and we opt for a tasting menu with an international vocation and dishes of surprising plastic beauty. THE Michelin Guide He noticed them. He recognized the effort and included them in the Bib Gourmand category.

The second important call

Then another call came, this time during office hours. On the other hand, those responsible for the stellar gala. They were invited to participate. Everything indicated that they had gotten theirs. “It was possible and probable,” he continues. “But we always had doubts,” he admits because, although the gastronomy was up to par, they always thought that the rest was not up to par. It was a small place, with four tables and a noisy terrace. During a meal, hundreds of people could pass in front of the diner, cruise passengers behind umbrellas, coupon sellers, a flautist, a flamenco singer, several groups of stag parties. “The local folklore is beautiful,” they underline. “But we always said: I hope that if an inspector comes it will be a day when it rains and everything will be calm.“adds the couple. Maybe it was like this, because they went on stage to collect their first star. They went on holiday. And before the reopening the fire arrived. They didn’t even have time to place the well-known figure of the tires.

Malaga’s hospitality industry sided with them and in just two weeks they managed to temporarily establish themselves on the terrace of the Molina Lario hotel while they cleared the trail of the fire to return home, which they achieved in April to continue billing. Meanwhile they presented the public tender to manage the restaurant of the Museum of Malaga, which was empty at the time. They got the contract in July this year. At that point they had already hired a design studio and had everything to start working on. Finally, on October 7 they inaugurated the new headquarters for fear that a further delay would cause them to lose their star. “Now we will finally be able to enjoy it,” underlines De Baggio, who hopes to maintain the recognition the next gala, which will be held in Malaga on November 25th.

In the new and exclusive location, Schobert and his team – around twenty people in the kitchen and dining room – offer a double tasting menu: Esencia, for 9 courses (140 euros) and Confluencia, for 15 courses (220 euros), with more than 600 references of paired wines. Gizzard alfajor, with pickled shallots and caramelized onion, is one of the snacks that has now become classics. Also the scallops with foie, sweet potatoes and almonds. It is a proposal far from claiming the territory, the local and the tradition, as in one way or another Malagasy haute cuisine does in places like Bardal, Jose Carlos Garcia, Kaleja OR Palodu. “What they do is incredible, but my cooking is freer,” says the chef, who developed his style by participating in numerous cooking competitions and through work at school, where they pay particular attention to technique. Furthermore, he is influenced by his European origins – a German grandfather and an Italian grandmother with Swedish and Italian ancestry – and his Argentine upbringing. “I have as many memories of a Creole empanada as I do of the sauerkraut my grandfather ate,” says someone who, for the moment, prefers to wait before embarking on Malaga dishes such as salmorejo. “It seems very daring to me. One day I will share the kitchen with the great chefs here, they will teach me and maybe they will appear on the menu,” he says.

The Bloom café joins the project

The tender won for the opening of Blossom at the Museum of Malaga envisaged the opening of a second space in the same building, a café that would serve both visitors to the cultural center and the general public who stroll next to the building, located a stone’s throw from the citadel and the Roman theatre. Bloom, the restaurant’s younger brother, opened its doors last Wednesday 30th, with a program that ranges from breakfast to snacks. It includes a menu with proposals based on the restaurant menu, but with other formats and a more accessible price. It will also have several desserts. In fact, it has a cook and two pastry chefs – including Julieta Cañavate, trained at the school of Schobert and De Baggio – who will make the desserts and will be at the forefront of gastronomic research and development.