Tradition and Regeneration, from October 6 to 8, at the XXVII Gastronomika Edition

San Sebastian Gastronomika - Euskadi Basque Country is set to take place from October 6 to 8 at the Kursaal Palace under the theme 'Tradition and Regeneration'. This will be the 27th edition of the prestigious gastronomy congress, during which four awards will be presented: the Tribute Award will go to British chef Heston Blumenthal; the Golden Gueridón will be awarded jointly to Master of Wine Almudena Alberca and winemaker Sara Pérez; the Pau Albornà i Torras Award for Gastronomic Journalism will be given to food critic José Carlos Capel, and the Tabernero Mayor will be awarded to Mariano García from the renowned Restaurante Donald in Seville. Gastronomika will also host the second edition of the Congress of Taverns and Taverners, the World Tripe Championship, and the National Championships of Russian Salad, Txuleta, and Fish Soup.

Additionally, San Sebastian Gastronomika - Euskadi Basque Country will continue to feature a dedicated professional fair. Companies interested in showcasing their products and innovations at the congress can now send their requests and inquiries to info@sansebastiangastronomika.com. Furthermore, those wishing to become congress participants in this new edition can now register on the website.

San Sebastian Gastronomika - Euskadi Basque Country 2025 will focus on the two most powerful trends in gastronomy today: revisiting tradition and embracing regeneration to move beyond the concept of sustainability, which has become clichéd and insufficient. It is time to advance towards a bolder vision that not only sustains the current system but transforms it radically. Sustainability has often been adopted as a marketing slogan without real commitment to structural changes. This has led to the term being used without genuine backing in concrete actions. Sustainability has been about meeting present needs without compromising future generations. However, in a world where climate, economic, and social crises have intensified, maintaining the status quo is no longer enough. Hence, the discussion is shifting towards more advanced concepts like regeneration, which seeks not only to avoid harm but to repair ecosystems and embrace true circularity, going far beyond simple recycling. Therefore, San Sebastian Gastronomika - Euskadi Basque Country will address regeneration as the most cutting-edge approach right now, a trend that advocates not just maintaining the current state to prevent deterioration, but restoring it to its previous state before human actions led to a critical situation.

The director of San Sebastian Gastronomika - Euskadi Basque Country, Benjamín Lana, explains that "when we talk about regeneration, we are proposing an active improvement model for those damaged ecosystems, communities, and also gastronomic cultures. We move from how to avoid causing harm to how we can contribute positively. The idea is to see how we can all commit to a model of positive impact."

In the latest Basque cuisine, which has dominated in recent years, the current generation of chefs has built their philosophy and discourse on product and tradition. In contrast to the more avant-garde approach of their revolutionary predecessors, most of the establishments taking the baton today are moving away from the traditional concept of haute cuisine and revisiting everything from the grill to farmhouse cooking. On the concept of tradition, Benjamín Lana clarifies that "a regenerative restaurant not only buys local products but actively supports farmers, helps restore degraded soils, collaborates with local communities to strengthen culinary traditions, revalues forgotten ingredients, and reinterprets or rethinks this concept of tradition. I would like to think of it as innovation without disconnection. We have a serious problem of scarcity and disappearance of authentic products. We must work to give it a new spin so that the entire concept of tradition can have a deeper meaning beyond the cultural."

Another important theme in this edition of San Sebastian Gastronomika - Euskadi Basque Country will be the sea. In recent years, gastronomy has seen how overexploitation of species has led chefs and suppliers to seek more sustainable alternatives and increased the use of short-life cycle fish. Additionally, collaboration between chefs and artisanal fishermen is becoming more intense to obtain responsibly sourced products, and consumer interest in trying new flavors and knowing the origin of seafood has grown. The congress director announces that "we will talk about the history and narrative of the sea, about exchanges and loans between Cantabrian cultures, about seaweed, about super blue foods, and also about sustainable aquaculture. Here, all restaurants, chefs, and producers have a place. We will focus heavily on the world of producers."

British chef Heston Blumenthal will receive the Tribute Award at San Sebastian Gastronomika Euskadi Basque Country 2025. Heston Blumenthal is one of the most important and revolutionary chefs in contemporary culinary history and has come to lead a gastronomic empire with over 700 employees. He is the chef who challenged Ferran Adrià's global leadership in the early 21st century and was named number 1 in the world in 2005 by The 50 Best Restaurants list after taking his restaurant The Fat Duck to the pinnacle of world gastronomy.

Blumenthal has achieved great things in the kitchen, but his main contribution is not so much a specific technique or dish as the understanding of the culinary experience as a set of perceptions linked to memory. He has made us understand that cooking is much more than a dish: it is a sound that guides our emotion, an aroma that digs into our memories, a moment of happy nostalgia at a flavor that leaps from a recognizable moment in the past to a future of cooking that we can barely conceive.

Without formal culinary training, Heston Blumenthal opened a small bistro in the town of Bray in 1996. His culinary education until then was limited to the many French restaurants he had visited with his earnings from selling photocopiers, three weeks of learning in a couple of English restaurants, and reading countless French cookbooks in his mother's kitchen, which he translated with difficulty using a dictionary. His establishment, located in an old pub, grew with him. In 2000, amidst the challenges his overflowing modernity faced in facilities designed for something else, he received his first Michelin star. That propelled him to change everything. He completely renovated the place. He had begun seeking help from scientists at the University of Bristol to solve problems no other chef had faced before. Blumenthal would gain worldwide fame as a pioneer of liquid nitrogen. Six years after his first star, he had the three that consecrate a chef. Then came the alternation in the top spot of the international ranking with Ferran Adrià.

Queen Elizabeth II awarded him the Order of the British Empire for his contributions to UK gastronomy. The British Heraldic Office granted him the right to bear his own coat of arms: he chose a duck with three sprigs of lavender in its beak. Additionally, he is the only chef to have been named an honorary member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the UK's professional association of chemists.

The Golden Gueridón of Gastronomika, which recognizes a brilliant career in the wine world, will this time be shared by two of the most important women in the sector, winemakers Almudena Alberca and Sara Pérez. Almudena Alberca MW became Spain's first female Master of Wine in August 2018, the only female representative among the four MWs in Spain. The Master of Wine is the title representing the highest knowledge and excellence in the wine sector, with just over 400 worldwide. With a career spanning over 20 years in the wine industry, the winemaker from Zamora has developed her career in Spain and combined it with international experiences in remote places like New Zealand. She has worked in boutique wineries such as Viñas del Cenit (D.O. Tierra del Vino de Zamora) and Dominio de Atauta (D.O. Ribera del Duero). She has also worked in the family wineries of the Entrecanales Domecq Group, creating wines with great recognition from specialized critics.

Sara Pérez is the daughter of a generation that redefined Priorat viticulture. A defender of organic farming and the role of women in the wine world, Pérez is the winemaker behind Mas Martinet and Venus La Universal wineries. For her, making wine is a cultural and personal act, where one must listen to the land and be willing to take risks. A distinguished winemaker, she is recognized for her commitment to organic and sustainable viticulture. Daughter of Josep Lluís Pérez, a pioneer in the revitalization of Priorat, she took over the direction of Mas Martinet in 2000, betting on the recovery of native varieties and techniques respectful of the environment. Together with René Barbier, she founded Venus La Universal in the DO Montsant, where they have produced wines like Venus and Dido. With a background in Biology and Philosophy, her innovative and artisanal approach has been awarded multiple times, establishing her as a key figure in contemporary winemaking.

Food critic José Carlos Capel will be recognized with the Pau Albornà i Torras Award for Gastronomic Journalism. José Carlos Capel is one of the most respected figures in Spanish cuisine and one of the most knowledgeable, a member of the Royal Academy of Gastronomy and several Spanish and European gastronomic brotherhoods. Capel founded the Madrid Fusión Gastronomic Summit in 2003, of which he remains president, and has published 45 books on gastronomic literature. He possesses one of the world's most important collections of gastronomy books, with over 5,000 different volumes.

He has been the food critic for the newspaper El País for over 35 years, publishing his impressions of the restaurants he visits worldwide. Every day of the year, he has at least one meal outside his home, sometimes two, trying to discover unknown young chefs or visiting the establishments of already established chefs.

Of the 50 years that Restaurante Donald (Seville) has been in existence, Mariano García has been part of it for 48. He joined as a waiter just shy of adulthood after stopping his motorcycle at the door to ask for a job. Manuel Ávila (his boss and owner of the business) told him that if he had a white shirt, he was hired. It took him 20 minutes to start working there. In 1987, when his boss retired, he decided to take over the business with two other colleagues, although in recent years he has been piloting this well-known establishment on Calle Canalejas in Seville alone. Over the decades, Mariano has strived to keep everything unchanged at Donald, always offering the same recipes and betting on attentive service that maintains the traditional Sevillian manners.