18 MICHELIN stars on the jury of Chef Balfegó 2024

While judging the work of chefs from restaurants with a total of eight MICHELIN Stars in a haute cuisine competition is by no means easy, this is the task facing the Chef Balfegó 2024 jury to select the first, second and third best chefs from five countries, Spain, Portugal, Benelux, Italy, and Germany.

The jury is headed by chef Martín Berasategui as president of the jury, international gastronomic ambassador of Balfegó, and undisputed authority on Spanish haute cuisine. With half a century of experience under his belt, he is the chef with the most MICHELIN Stars in Spain. A total of eleven stars have been awarded to his restaurants in Lasarte, Barcelona, Tenerife, Vizcaya, the Balearic Islands, Valladolid, and Dubai. He has also recently announced the opening of a new restaurant in Japan in 2027 housed in what will be the tallest skyscraper in Tokyo.

Alongside him will be Fina Puigdevall from Les Cols in Olot, who has two MICHELIN stars and a Green Star. She has been running the restaurant since May 1990 in the country house where she was born and has successfully created it into a contemporary space. As a chef, her creativity is rooted in sustainability, elaborating dishes with her characteristic sense of personal simplicity and celebrating fresh produce grown locally and in her own garden with a profound respect for the seasons.

Toño Pérez, from the restaurant Atrio in Cáceres, will be a member of the jury for the first time this year. He possesses three MICHELIN Stars at a Relais & Chateaux hotel, the result of thirty years of work alongside José Polo, with the recent opening of another exclusive hotel, also with a restaurant. His vision includes promoting cultural, social, and educational activities related primarily to music and gastronomy. His cutting-edge cuisine pays homage to Extremadura through the use of regional products.

Ricard Camarena, with two MICHELIN Stars and a Green Star, is considered the seventh-best vegetable restaurant in the world. He was named the “Best Foreign Chef” by the Italian guide Identità Golose and ranked eleventh in the world in the Smart Green Guide for his approach and prominent use of vegetables. The Valencian chef also runs the restaurants Habitual, Canalla Bistró, Central Bar, and Bar X.

Erwan Poudolec, the technical director of the Le Cordon Bleu Madrid School, traveled across France, passing through Brittany, the Alps, and Andorra. He arrived in Spain in January 2005, where he started working at the 5-star Hyatt Regency La Manga Club hotel as sous-chef, followed by stints at the Castle Dargan hotel in Ireland, the Royal Island resort in the Bahamas, and the Montpelier Plantation & Beach hotel on the island of Nevis, part of the Relais & Châteaux chain.

Also on the jury are two industry professionals, the first of which is José Carlos Capel, a Spanish gastronome, food critic, president of Madrid Fusión, and member of the Royal Academy of Gastronomy and the International Wine Academy. An economist by profession, he has written several books on gastronomy, travel guides, and other publications on food. His work as a food critic has been published for several years in the newspaper El País.

For the first time, the 7th edition of Chef Balfegó will welcome journalist and editor Javier Antoja, who has directed the haute cuisine journal Cuaderno de Alta Gastronomía Apicius for the past 20 years, a bilingual publication (Spanish and English) described by Ferran Adrià as “the notary of contemporary cuisine.” Javier is the creator of the projects of Montagud Editores, a leading national and international authority on gastronomic literature.