Sergi Arola's Chilean restaurant Austral is due to open on Calle Velázquez

Sergi Arola is coming back to Madrid. His new restaurant, Austral, is due to open on Calle Velázquez 61, in the Salamanca district, in the first week of November, with Chilean cooking and a pisco bar. It's a planned opening, so the date could still move.

The project comes from the Chilean group Los Lirios. Its head, José Luis Ansoleaga, also owns the grill La Cabrera in the capital. Arola, who's from Barcelona and is 58, will cook what El País describes as a South Pacific menu built on traditional Chilean recipes.

Two Michelin stars, then a closure

Arola first made his name in Madrid in 1997. He won two Michelin stars, first at La Broche, which opened that same year, and later at Sergi Arola Gastro, which opened in 2008. The second restaurant closed in 2016. He then worked as a food consultant in several countries.

He's now based in Chile. El País says he's lived there for seven years, while El Mundo says six. In Chile he's a television presence, with a segment called El menú de Chile on the Chilevisión show Sabingo, and he runs a restaurant called Lola Tapas Bar in San Francisco de Mostazal.

Ceviches, conger eel and bread from the grill

El Mundo lists ceviches, Pacific golden conger eel (congrio dorado), a quinoto, which it describes as a kind of risotto, and a nogada-style tongue (lengua nogada). The bread is baked on the grill, and the kitchen has three grills plus a Josper oven. The drinks list will cover Chile and Argentina, with a good number of European wineries too.

Arola says he's learned traditional techniques in Chile, among them curanto, a method of cooking underground with hot stones. He also says he's learned what lamb really tastes like there, and that not everything had to be about foams and spherifications.

Hurlé & Martín designed the room

The studio Hurlé & Martín did the interior. Felipe Farías is head chef of the Los Lirios group, which owns Austral.

Why come back now

Arola says his two daughters live in Madrid and he visits often. According to El Mundo, Ansoleaga asked him whether he'd like to return, and his first answer was an almost flat no. He took time to work out whether he had something different to offer. What he settled on was a portrait of the country he's been living in, which he says is still largely unknown in Spain. He also says the old chapters of La Broche and Arola Gastro are closed.

His own verdict on the past is blunt. He told El Mundo he'd have liked to make fewer headlines, and he told El País that as businessmen he and his generation were very bad. He names Joan Roca, Quique Dacosta and Andoni Luis Aduriz as the three chefs he's stayed in touch with.