Carlos Del Portillo

Where It Started Madrid is the first inheritance in Del Portillo’s story. It is his birthplace and the place where his early kitchen path can be traced with precision. In 1990, he worked in the kitchen at Hotel Ritz in Madrid, Spain. That same year, he also worked in the kitchen at Casino de Madrid, another city address in the formation of his craft. The next essential point in the line is Velázquez 128, where he had already demonstrated his fondness for fish. That detail matters in the most practical way: it connects the younger cook to the chef now associated with deep-water species, mollusks, and a daily conversation with the sea.

Who Shaped Them The shaping forces around Del Portillo are kitchens and traditions of work rather than a single named mentor. Hotel Ritz, Casino de Madrid, and Velázquez 128 form the Madrid house line that precedes Bistronómika. His own language is elemental, almost old-fashioned in its respect for heat and time. "Fire is the beginning of everything. If I could, I would remove induction." The sentence points toward a cook who treats technique not as decoration, but as origin. Patience is part of the same inheritance. "A good cook has to know how to stew, has to know how to cook without rushing." In a lineage built from kitchens rather than public mythology, that may be the clearest lesson: a dish is not forced into being; it is watched, handled, and allowed to arrive. There is also a moral pressure in his view of seafood. "We are on the way to giving up 100% wild in order to be responsible." The remark places responsibility inside the craft itself, not beside it.

The Work Today

As chef at Bistronómika in Madrid, Del Portillo works in the territory his earlier career foreshadowed: fish, shellfish, and the changing condition of the sea. The restaurant has received a Sol Repsol from Guía Repsol, an honor attached to the Madrid address he now leads. His specialty is specific: dry-aging techniques for deep-water fish species and dishes based on seasonal mollusks. Those two notes give the cooking its rhythm, one governed by time and controlled maturation, the other by season and availability. The menu is not treated as fixed. "Every day we have to reorganize the menu according to the state of the sea." In that sentence, the lineage returns to its simplest source: the cook receives what the water gives, then responds with fire, patience, and restraint.