"Alicante Province as a Fundamental National Pantry Yet to Be Discovered"

From Elda to the world and back to Alicante. The biography of Chef Pablo Montoro mirrors his cuisine, deeply rooted in provincial traditions expressed through numerous references thanks to his life journey. As a young man, he delighted in visiting the Basque Country to learn from great masters like Arzak and Berasategui. This was the starting point for a chef who has travelled the world as a private chef and has expressed all that knowledge for years at his Espacio Montoro, a must-visit in Alicante and the Mediterranean. This is why he has earned the first 'Historias con Delantal' award for innovation.

Espacio Montoro is a gastronomic experience across four spaces where the cuisine and the team are fundamental to this experience. We use Mediterranean-rooted cuisine with local products from the province of Alicante and incorporate techniques or options from France, Italy, Japan, and especially Spain.

We love to define it as artisan cooking because, in the end, we employ all kinds of techniques that are much more ancient than modern, although we also enjoy using modern methods, hence innovation is something that excites us. It is a very different project, let's say, where the customer identifies it as such and appreciates it by filling every service.

Espacio Montoro differs from a traditional restaurant for various reasons. Especially because each of the spaces uses different techniques: some audiovisual; others in sound. We try to use all those senses with which we always like to be told that the experience is very sensory.

From making our own crockery, baking our own bread, to entering the 'Black Tech' where something truly magical happens in a completely dark and opaque room where the sound is neutral.

Through each and every course we prepare in the tasting menu, including the drinks, we try to engage all five senses, not just touch, sight, taste, but also the olfactory part, the sensory aspect around sound; when something crunches, when something is sparkling, we tell customers to listen because it is truly emitting a sound.

We interact with fire through a flambé of Japanese whisky on a tuna belly skewer. With temperature changes, as happens in the 'Black Tech', where we finally have smoke inside that completely opaque room.

And well, above all, we enjoy that interaction with the customer, not only through the food but also through each drink, each moment enjoyed with the team. Not just with the waiter, the sommelier, but also with the chef. I believe it is essential that the experience is lived in a very interactive way.

In our evolution from traditional dishes, we try to rely on a series of instruments or machinery that is of a new generation. That is, we can make a flan, but using onion from Vega Baja, a variety called yellow onion, in this case, a steam oven. We can use a Bloody Mary, but using tomatoes from Mutxamel. And what we do with that Bloody Mary is put it in an 'oco', which is a Japanese pressure cooker, with which we make a distillate and from there generate a dish with traditional flavour but with new textures.

I believe it is essential that new technologies are used in favour of the product and traditional flavour.

For us, hoteliers, it is a privilege that Alicante is the gastronomic capital of Spain. I always say that it is not just of Spain, but really, as the mayor said at Fitur, it is worldwide, because Spain is where you eat best.

This capital status I summarise in three parts: the first and fundamental is the tradition in each of the localities of our province, inland, on the coast, in Vega Baja or Marina Alta. I believe that in each of our regions there is a spectacular culinary tradition. The second, and no less important, is the pantry; we have a spectacular pantry. A pantry not only in the sea with fish and seafood but also in the mountains: cheeses, wines, we have all kinds of vegetables, even meats and many more ingredients. Many people think they come from outside, but in reality, they come from here.

And then the last of these three parts is the quality we have in terms of catering and hospitality. In Alicante, you breathe quality, human quality of the teams, of the hospitality professionals, but above all quality of the businesses in general with emblematic restaurants in the city centre, hotels that have been operating for many years and filling up with the amount of tourism we have. I believe we are very good ambassadors when we have been chosen for something and we can be very, very proud of the beautiful city we have.

I think there is still much to discover about our province that sometimes we source from outside, we buy from outside and we have here. We have very local products that sometimes we don't know are there, but they do exist and you just need to go to the Central Market and see how the products pass in front of us and if you ask the greengrocer, where does this come from? where does that come from?

And they will immediately tell you it comes from a small garden here; to the butcher, well, we have a suckling lamb from Vega Baja. Sometimes we buy the lambs from outside and it turns out we have them here. We have in Polop a ternasco, a young animal that comes from here and sometimes you say: "No, the Galician blonde beef, you know? and we really have it here." I think the province of Alicante as a fundamental national pantry is yet to be discovered.

For us, the greatest compliment a customer can give who visits any of our establishments, at Espacio Montoro, at Montoro Catering or any of the others we have, the most beautiful compliment is "I already want to come back and I haven't even left yet."