Rafa Peña

Chef at Gresca (Barcelona, Spain)

Simple and accessible. His cooking is just like he is: unpretentious. He’s not looking to earn laurels. Laurels should be in just the right proportion on the plate. The formula really works.

Head chef of one of the first bistro-style restaurants in Barcelona, Rafa Peña still runs Gresca 25 years later. Before opening it, he proved his worth with Jó Baixas and Jean Louis Neichel, experiences that he made use of to display his qualities. An eternal candidate for a Michelin star (“If they didn’t give me one in the beginning, it doesn’t make any sense now”), he expanded Gresca with Gresca Bar en 2016 and opened Torpedo, a gourmet sandwich bar, in 2018.

Recently, Peña has worked together with Rilke, a restaurant in Barcelona that he has been a consultant for, and at Casa Leopoldo, where he has collaborated on restructuring its bar.