Gastrobotánica: The House Story of Rodrigo de la Calle

The word gastrobotánica belongs to this house. Rodrigo de la Calle coined it around the year 2000, alongside the botanist Santiago Orts at the Huerto del Cura nursery in Elche, to name a way of cooking in which the vegetable stops being a garnish and becomes the subject of the plate, studied variety by variety: citrus caviar, Buddha's hand, ice plant, samphire.

He is the chef owner and the author of everything served here, which is why the discipline cannot simply be borrowed by another kitchen: it is a body of work, not a trend to adopt.

His full career, year by year, is on the page for Rodrigo de la Calle. The company that owns El Invernadero carries the name of the discipline itself, GASTROBOTÁNICA, S.L.

The two menu lines come from that same idea and they are deliberately different. Vegetalia is plant cooking, and it is served 100% vegan or vegetarian as standard; animal protein can be added as seasoning if a guest prefers it.

Gastrobotánica, the line that carries the name of the discipline, is an omnivorous menu with meat, fish and shellfish, and it is not adapted under any circumstance. We keep both under one roof because vegetables need no dietary label to hold the centre of a menu.

Visitors from outside Spain often assume the MICHELIN Green Star is a second red star, or a level above it. It is neither. The MICHELIN Star recognises what happens on the plate; the Green Star is a separate distinction that looks at the sustainability of the work behind it.

We hold both, and in a kitchen built on plants the two are hard to separate: the choice of species and varieties, the way each one is used, and the decision that a vegetable can carry a fine dining menu on its own are all part of the same practice rather than a policy added afterwards.

The visual identity of the house follows the same logic. We call it the herbario de vidrio, a glass herbarium: paper, ink, deep green and the lighter green we call savia (sap), straight corners and hairline rules of one pixel.

Everything printed and everything on screen is meant to read like a botanical file, precise and unadorned, because that is how the cooking itself is put together.

Our English and Spanish sites are twin editions of the same house, and each page here links to its equivalent in Spanish. Most of the people who sit at our tables travel to Madrid from abroad, which is why the English edition is the one we look after first.