Ultramarinos Quintín

Section discipline at the pass

At the pass, José Antonio Olave Candia works as Chef at Ultramarinos Quintín in Salamanca, Madrid, keeping a room built for small plates in motion. His career frames the station through ground-level kitchen service, line cooking, section leadership, teaching, and executive responsibility, showing time on the tools rather than sudden ascent. He trained at ThePowerMBA, then entered service through Cook Training at hotel jose antonio and Sonesta Posadas del Inca Yucay in 2005. From 2005 to 2009, he worked as cook at Drunken Duck Restaurant, a stretch that teaches pace through repeated pressure.

His brigade work tightened from there. He cooked at La Meridiana de Alabardero Restaurant in 2010, held Chef De Partie posts at Tapadaki Restaurant from 2010 to 2011 and Taberna Uvedoble from 2011 to 2012, then taught at Basque Culinary Center from 2013 to 2014. That teaching role matters here because Quintín asks for food that reads easily at the table while still needing control at the bench. Later executive posts, including ENBOCCA Restaurant, Acurio Restaurantes, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, YAKUMANKA by Gaston Acurio, Grupo Paraguas, and now Ultramarinos Quintín, place him in a line of kitchens where organization is a craft, not a management abstraction.

Market cooking in small plates

The method at Quintín begins with the old ultramarinos idea: produce, preserves, ham, seafood, vegetables, and pantry goods visible in the room, then translated into a modern Spanish small-plate format. The cooking is à la carte rather than tasting-menu driven, which changes the discipline. A kitchen cannot hide behind sequence when a table orders crab cannelloni, artichokes with egg and ham, pheasant fried rice, pan con tomate, jamón, anchovies in olive oil, tuna tartare, ceviche, pizza, pasta, stews, and salad in shifting combinations.

Olave Candia’s background suits that spread. The menu favors direct gestures, frying, folding, saucing, slicing, dressing, and holding texture under volume. Crab cannelloni needs structure as much as generosity; artichokes with egg and ham ask the cook to respect softness without letting the plate slacken; pheasant fried rice belongs to the part of the pass where heat, timing, and seasoning have to land together. The wine program is curated, with Spanish bottles carrying much of the work beside seafood, ham, and preserved goods. No sommelier is named publicly for the program, so the craft reads through pairing logic rather than personality.

A grocery room that stayed visible

The room keeps the memory of a shop without turning it into scenery. Fresh produce sits close to the dining floor, delicatessen shelves remain part of the atmosphere, and the counter carries the old grammar of a market even as plates move from the pass. Calle Jorge Juan gives the restaurant its social pace: lively, polished, and crowded enough that the kitchen has to cook cleanly without asking the room to slow down.

That tension is part of the place. Ultramarinos Quintín is cozy in its materials and quick in its pulse, with a warm room, a lively noise level, and the kind of upscale casual service that depends on timing more than ceremony. The grocery-store origin still matters because it fixes attention on ingredients before composition. Preserves are not decorative here; they belong to the same world as the ham station, the produce displays, and the plates leaving Olave Candia’s pass.

The work holds in repetition

Quintín carries award recognition, and its format asks the kitchen to repeat varied work without flattening it. Morning café con leche and pan con tomate, midday jamón with Albariño, and evening small plates belong to the same address, so the craft is continuity across different appetites. If the next chapter stays inside that discipline, it will be found in the same familiar gestures: a folded cannelloni, a clean pass, and José Antonio Olave Candia watching the pheasant fried rice.