Great Chefs
cooking great fish

Ángel León
ÁNGEL LEÓN
Michelin-starred embrace of bycatch
Cooks at: Bay of Cádiz, Spain
MALEK LABIDI
MALEK LABIDI
Trailblazer with national following
Cooks at: Tunis, Tunisia
Megha Kohli
MEGHA KOHLI
Seasonal delights with millennial appeal
Cooks at: Gurgaon, India
RODIGO PACHECO
RODRIGO PACHECO
FAO Goodwill ambassador: local produce, global flair
Cooks at: Puerto Cayo, Ecuador
SANDRO SERVA - MAURIZIO SERVA
SANDRO SERVA
MAURIZIO SERVA
Renaissance of the family restaurant
Cooks at:

Rivodutri, Italy

Ángel León

ÁNGEL LEÓN Angel León is Spain’s Chef del Mar, the “Sea Chef” celebrated for fashioning wonders out of the Mediterranean’s humblest, most overlooked produce: here are sardines as you’ve never had them before, and plankton as you’ve never had it… well, ever. This frugality-themed inventiveness has earned León three Michelin stars and the Green Star for Aponiente, his restaurant at El Puerto de Santa María close to Cádiz, and a further star for his newer venture nearby, Alevante. Both menus evince a half-rigorous, half-playful quest for a form of marine autarky – a longing to substitute the sea for the land in all things, or almost. Why use butter to thicken a sauce, when you can use fish eyes? Why mess about with egg white to clarify a consommé, when micro-algae will do? And why, while we’re at it, throw out anything at all? If the sea made it, then you can eat it.

Ángel León’s fish mortadella
MALEK LABIDI

MALEK LABIDI For Malek Labidi, landing an economics degree in Paris was a concession to expectations, an academic baseline from which to follow her true path: that of professional kitchens. Having come up through the Institut Paul Bocuse (a period she describes as a gruelling but exhilarating three years), she cut her teeth with Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athénée hotel in Paris before returning home to Tunis to open Le Bô M. That restaurant broke new ground by offering a daily changing menu, in a conservative market hooked on tried-and-tested fixtures. Several years on, Labidi has acquired a national following through catering State occasions and fronting TV cookery programmes. An advocate of fresh produce and healthy diets, she updates her homeland’s versatile cuisine – looking both out, across the Mediterranean, and inland, towards sun-soaked gardens and orchards.

Malek Labidi’s Salt-baked seabass in sauce vierge
Malek Labidi’s Salt-baked seabass in sauce vierge
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Salt-baked seabass in sauce vierge
©Slim Bouguerra
MEGHA KOHLI

MEGHA KOHLI Megha Kohli’s dedication to food is no late conversion. Aged four, she recalls riding on her father’s shoulders through the spice markets of Old Delhi. At six, she was making cakes in her grandmother’s kitchen. A quarter of a century later, she admittedly cooks in a more gown-up manner, but with that early buoyancy intact. Kohli has now transferred to Café Mez and The Wine Company in the upscale Delhi suburb of Gurgaon. But her reputation was established at the more central Lavaash by Saby. At that Armenian-Indian eatery, she turned culinary heads by (among other things) baking coconut prawns inside blossoming onions. Her many online followers seem to lap up Kohli’s style: intimate yet crowd-pleasing, and – as seen here in her refusal to peel her mangoes and her doubling down on the fruit’s skins – infused with a witty millennial touch.

Megha Kohli’s Raw mango fish curry
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Raw mango fish curry
©Saumya Gupta/Shiva Kant Vyas
RODIGO PACHECO

RODRIGO PACHECO With its seaside location, Bocavaldivia might suggest a beach outpost of some temple of fine dining from Quito or Guayaquil. It is, in fact, one of a kind – the gastronomic wing of a comprehensive site-specific project. Here, Chef Rodrigo Pacheco and his team have regenerated a stretch of vacant land into an “edible forest” – a microcosmic food system of biodiverse farming and agro-ecological practices. In his wall-less kitchen, Pacheco marries Indigenous ingredients to seafood of fine character. Ostentation is off the menu: the edibles are near-abstract swirls of colour against unglazed black clay. But behind the spare aesthetic and short supply chain lurks great complexity of process. This is a coastal and urbane re-reading of Amazonian cuisine: local food as global discourse and sustainability template.

Rodrigo Pacheco’s Prawn nea piaraka soup with cassava crisp
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Prawn nea piaraka with cassava crisp
©Ángel Lucio C.
SANDRO SERVA - MAURIZIO SERVA

SANDRO SERVA
MAURIZIO SERVA
The phrase “family restaurant” in Italy will likely conjure a pleasant but predictably folksy experience. Nine times out of ten, the reality will be just that. At La Trota dal ‘63, the reality is anything but that. The sixty-year-old venue sits in a hamlet among wooded hills and crystal lakes. Here, brothers Sandro and Maurizio Serva and their respective sons, Michele and Amedeo, serve up food of inordinate audacity. La Trota offers nothing but freshwater fish – the only European restaurant at this level of excellence to do so. Sandro and Maurizio work the kitchen: self-taught, they have elevated what was a pit-stop trattoria to a two-Michelin star establishment. Michele and Amedeo are front-of-house: they contribute their wine knowledge and design nous. The fish served here hails from around the corner; the experience belongs somewhere altogether less homely.

The Serva Brothers’ Eel with a watercress infusion and kiwi
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Eel with a watercress infusion and kiwi
©Dario Coronetta