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to London. What prompted a move to a

country that most of the world still thought

of as serving some of the worst food in

Europe? 'I just wanted to see something else,'

Pizarro says. 'The great thing about being a

chef is that, if you have the technique, you

can work anywhere in the world. A friend told

me there weren't many Spanish chefs in the

UK and that there was a gap in the market. So

I said, "I'll be with you in a month".'

Pizarro took a job as a sous chef at Gaudi in

Clerkenwell, at that time the most innovative

Spanish restaurant in London. But while

innovation may have been the name of the

game in Spain, in the UK, attitudes to Spanish

food were still shaped by holidays on the

Costas. Pizarro has been on a mission to

change that perception ever since.

J

osé Pizarro talks about the

importance of other people more

than any chef I have ever met. He has

open kitchens because he thinks it's

important that his customers can see

their food being prepared by people

who enjoy their work. And he's about to open

a new restaurant in the City so he can allow

his trusted team of chefs to take on new

challenges - 'otherwise I will lose them'.

This emphasis on the human aspect of

cooking is Œtting for a chef most famous for

the shareable nature of his food. 'The most

important thing in life is to spend quality time

together,' Pizarro says, 'and there is nothing

better for that than being around food.'

Pizarro was born in 1971 in Talaván, a small

village in Extremadura in western Spain, a

region the chef makes sound like some sort of

earthly paradise. 'We have almost everything

in Extremadura. There is so much land,

and the vegetables are incredible. We have

amazing lamb and game. There are very good

restaurants and this year the city of Cáceres

has been named Spain's gastronomy capital.'

But this isn't the usual story of a chef who

started cooking because he was inspired by

the abundance of produce growing around

him. True, Pizarro's dad was a farmer and it

was young José's job to help him on the farm,

but the kitchen was the undisputed domain

of his mother and grandmother.

It was not until he was training to become

a dental technician that he began to cook. 'I

did very well in my studies and while I was

looking for a job, I started doing a cookery

course - and I loved it. A chef from Fonda San

Juan restaurant in Cáceres asked if I'd like to

do some work for him. I never went back to

being a dental technician.'

Moving to London

It was a move to Madrid that gave Pizarro

his big break, working for Julio Reoyo at

Mesón Doña Filo. 'I went to a hotel restaurant

because I needed to know big numbers -

how to serve 1,000 people in one day. And

Julio Reoyo was a very good mentor. He

taught me so much and introduced me to so

many people, people like Ferran Adrià and

Juan Mari Arzak.'

Spain in the late 1990s was emerging as a

gastronomic force to be reckoned with - and

yet in 1998, Pizarro upped sticks and moved

'THE GREAT THING ABOUT BEING A CHEF IS THAT, IF YOU HAVE

THE TECHNIQUE, YOU CAN WORK ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD'

Clockwise from left: a dish of milk-fed leg of Castilian lamb; woodpanelled

Pizarro on Bermondsey Street; José prepares tapas

PORTRAITS: LAURIE FLECTCHER