27 votesSpanish Catalan chef Santiago Santamaria was born on July 26, 1957 in the Sant Celoni village in Catalan. In the 1980s, he opened his own restaurant El Racó de Can Fabes in his family’s farmhouse. It started out as a modest establishment, which he slowly developed and turned into one of the most renowned gastronomic destinations in Spain. In 1989, the restaurant was awarded its first Michelin Star and in 1994, received its third star, making Santi Santamaria the first chef and owner that received three stars from the Michelin Guide.
Santi Santamaria came late to the culinary profession and studied to be an industrial engineer. He never received any formal training as a chef but this didn’t stop him from opening his modest tavern in their Catalan farmhouse where he was born. Juan Mari Arzak's new Basque cooking and France's nouvelle cuisine were his inspiration for his cooking style.
After his success in his hometown, Santi Santamaria expanded his culinary enterprise and opened award-winning restaurants in Barcelona and Madrid, and later extended to Dubai and in Singapore. His second restaurant, Restaurante Santceloni in Madrid earned two Michelin stars.
Known for his use of fresh seasonal and natural ingredients for making Mediterranean-style dishes and his modern interpretation of the traditional Catalan cuisine, as well as a proponent of the slow food movement and a staunch critic of molecularly gastronomy, Chef Santamaria was awarded Spain’s National Gastronomy Prize in 2009. He also published several cookbooks that garnered international attention and acclaim.
In 2008, he made his controversial case against avant-garde culinary cooking that use laboratory techniques and chemical emulsifiers such as liquid nitrogen (used by some chefs for instant freezing) and methyl cellulose (used as a jelling agent) in his book called “La Cocina al Desnudo,” or “The Kitchen Laid Bare.” In his book, Chef Santamaria lamented the loss of traditional cuisine and the shifting focus from organic and local produce. On February 16, 2011, Chef Santamaria died of a heart attack in his restaurant in Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. He was 53.
