Juan Carlos García, manufacturer and growing without stopping

Miriam Triay/Images: La Fábrica de Farry - Born from a memory, from a purpose, Juan Carlos García’s adventure with confectionery/pastry goes back a long time. From when his father prepared his first homemade ice cream for them, “with a special taste that has been kept in my memory. And for me it has always been the best cream ice cream I have ever eaten”. A memory with taste, with smell, and, even, with sight and touch, which García wanted to combine with his future projects. Thus was born La Fábrica de Farry, in honor of his father’s nickname. And with the pleasure of making, growing and learning in confectionery and pastry.
After years of growth and evolution, the Balearic Association of Journalists and Gastronomic Writers has awarded him the award for the confectioner/pastry chef of the year. For this, and for everything that García has achieved, from Foodies on Menorca we wanted to talk to him.

How does it feel after receiving this award?
I move solely and exclusively out of passion, and the truth is that I never tire of learning, building and training. I still have the same curiosity as at the beginning, and I still respect the profession. Therefore, for this trajectory and this profession to be recognized, I receive it with great pride, the truth. For me it is extraordinary that an association of journalists and gastronomic writers thinks about my career and my professional trajectory.

How would you define this trajectory, this evolution, of your profession?
I would say that I have evolved a lot in the world of pastry and confectionery. I have gone from knowing this traditional profession very intrinsically, which was the one my mother worked in; with the ingrained warmth, that sensation and methodology that did not require a written recipe, which was transmitted in a very pragmatic way, generation after generation. To starting to know the profession in a much more theoretical and technological way, taking many courses, to create or to understand how physics and chemistry work in pastry and confectionery. It has been a very interesting path to travel. And in no case have I lost the essence of tradition, of what my mother, father or grandmother did. And, in fact, I think that I would not have arrived where we are without contact with the origins, with the root profession.

And as for your company, how has this evolution been?
Well, we could say that we have been growing little by little. Recently and as you already announced in this same magazine [n 15, March 2024], we opened an ice cream parlor in Ciutadella. Expanding beyond Es Mercadal, our base camp. And now, we are cooking up a fairly ambitious project, which we hope will bear the expected fruits. At the end of the year we want to open an ice cream parlor in Barcelona. And we want to set up a new, larger workshop, with more flexibility when it comes to having more variety, in Ferreries. Facilities, those in the municipality of Ferreries, which we also want to use to create a demonstration classroom, if all goes well, and organize workshops and courses, dedicated more to the sweet part -what does sweet mean, how should we treat and serve it...-, to the research part of cooking.

Both new developments are part of the final stretch of my professional journey, that is, we could say that once I have achieved it, I will have fulfilled almost everything I had set out to do when I started, everything that was part of my future dream. All of this linked to the idea of ??opening corners of La fábrica de Farry in various places, as points of sale for both pastries and confectionery. Which is what we are already doing.

From the very beginning, my idea was to acquire knowledge in the world of sweets, pastries and confectionery. Both theoretical, technological, and practical and empirical, gained through years of experience, of dealing with different flavors, and of getting to know different customers and tastes. And now, the time has come when we can continue moving forward and growing towards other frontiers. As we had already planned.

The dream that was born when I realized the passion that sweets aroused in me, when the first homemade ice cream that my father made left its mark on me; it is being fulfilled little by little, and I will continue working on it so that it remains that way.