At the helm of El Poblet since 2018, chef Luis Valls has reaffirmed the restaurant’s two Michelin stars with a cuisine that interprets rice, coastal vegetables and more than 500 citrus varieties, weaving refined technique with the Valencian landscape
Raised among kitchen gardens, the family fishing boat and the Albufera rice fields, Valls recalls a “productive” childhood: at ten he helped his grandparents stuff sausages and by twenty he was cooking for the local scout troop. At seventeen he first enrolled in front‑of‑house studies, then switched to cooking, gaining a complete grasp of restaurant dynamics.
In 2011 he joined the Quique Dacosta group to open Vuelve Carolina; seven years later Dacosta handed him the keys of El Poblet. With his team he created menus where marinated rabbit, eels baked inside giant citrons and “allipebrat” rice with preserved lemons earned the second Michelin star in 2019 and two Repsol “Soles”.
His philosophy exalts “time, territory and season”: dishes are born from explorations of dunes, lagoons and city markets, then refined in the lab with peanut ferments or long cures in bomba rice. Citrus fruits from the Fundación Todolí Citrus, boasting more than 500 cultivars, form the backbone of the menu; Valls uses them in sauces, infusions and even for smoking, convinced that “every acid tells a micro‑climate.”
Attention to place also shapes the brigade, made up of young cooks trained in‑house and encouraged to explore the Valencian countryside to understand raw‑material value. In 2023 he received the Premio a la Trayectoria Profesional and was named Cocinero del Año by 7Caníbales, honours that highlight his role as an ambassador of the Mediterranean coast.
Valls describes his cooking as “rich in flavour and memory”, capable of evoking in the same bite childhood memories of homemade sausages and contemporary insights into textures and neutral smokes—a project that continues Dacosta’s vision while moving with creative autonomy inside one of Valencia’s most celebrated restaurants.
