Basque Country
Speaker
Pedro Subijana
Chef at Akelarre*** (San Sebastián, Spain)
The father of New Basque Cuisine, Pedro Subijana is the chef at the Akelarre restaurant, which has had three Michelin stars for 13 years.
Trained like many other Basque chefs at Luis Irizar’s catering school –where he would became a teacher-, he started work in 1975 as a chef at Akelarre and years later became its owner. In 1976, after the first Gourmet Club round table on gastronomy, together with Juan Mariz Arzak and a group of chefs from Guipuzcoa he launched what would be the biggest leap forward ever experienced in Spanish cooking. In 2017, Akelarre completed its refurbishment to house a boutique hotel and another restaurant, the Oteiza, on its premises. Subijana founded Euro-toques International in 1986 and was its president from 2003 to 2007. In 2015, he received the Golden Drum (he was made a freeman of the city) of San Sebastian.
