Authentic cuisine accessible to all: the new life of Eugeni de Diego, former chef in the world of haute cuisine.
The news
Like many of his colleagues, chef Eugeni de Diego has decided it's time to return to his roots. Having grown up in Michelin-starred kitchens and been Adrià's protégé for many years, De Diego has decided to devote his talent to more authentic and spontaneous cuisine. His career, he tells El País, began when, at the age of 14, he started working as a dishwasher at the Hotel Giverola in Tossa de Mar. “That's where I realized that I really liked cooking and thought that I would have to train if I wanted to pursue it, so I started contacting restaurants in Barcelona”. So, just one year later, he was hired as a waiter at Ca l'Isidre, a restaurant that is a symbol of the Raval district and Catalan cuisine: “I consider Isidre and Montserrat my parents in gastronomy,” he confides. From Barcelona, he took flight and at the age of 18 arrived in Bordeaux to join the famous Le Chapon Fin, a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
However, his true consecration came two years later when Adrià called him to take on the role of head chef at El Bulli. He formed a deep bond with the great Adrià, which did not dissolve even with the closure of the restaurant, a milestone in world gastronomy. Eugeni continues to be part of the El Bulli Foundation and has worked alongside Albert Adrià in the openings of Tiquets, Bodega 1900, Pacte, and in Ferran Adrià's events. Despite his commitment to the Adrià family, however, De Diego has always pursued his own personal projects focused on everyday cuisine; home cooking, where simplicity, conviviality, and affection are the “secret ingredients.” In 2018, he and his wife opened Apluma, a restaurant offering gourmet roast chicken, which was then acquired by an investment fund in 2022, giving him the opportunity to found Atico, a restaurant management, creation, and consulting company. De Diego, however, cannot stay away from the kitchen, so today he successfully runs Colmado Wilmot and Lombo, restaurants that celebrate a true and authentic recipe book with clear and decisive flavors. “I like everyday cooking where I feel comfortable and where I work to reach the general public. It makes me happy, I don't want to be too exclusive. I want to be a chef who makes excellent food at a good price,” he says.
The Lombo website states: “At Lombo, you will find unpretentious, high-quality cuisine where the product reigns supreme,” while the Colmado Wilmot website states: "...we are chefs who love gastronomy. Colmado Wilmot is a reflection of our pantries, our meals at home with family and friends, both everyday meals and those for special occasions." The prices? At Lombo, the famous burrata dish costs just €7, porchetta €8, and vitello tonnato €15. The first courses are served in generous portions, with gnocco burro e salvia at €17. However, offering the cuisine of his heart in his restaurants is not enough for De Diego, so he recently published Cocina como la mamma, a book dedicated to Italian cuisine, in which he travels throughout Italy through 85 recipes. It is easy to see why he chose Italian cuisine.
“For me, the essence of Italian cuisine is like ours, that of our mothers and grandmothers. Ultimately, it is Mediterranean cuisine, a popular cuisine whose values I share... the emblematic ingredients: cheese, tomatoes, and basil (yellow, red, and green), but in reality, what cannot be missing is the illusion of mom, those hands that patiently shape the gnocchi and pasta... the ingredient is time, patience, something we don't have today. There is no time, no love for cooking and for others, and this is also where the title of the book comes from," he explains. The authenticity of his culinary story is confirmed by the prologue by Paolo Casagrande, chef at the Lasarte restaurant in Barcelona, who writes: “Very few people manage to achieve what Eugeni de Diego has done, capturing the true essence of Italian cuisine and conveying it with the same passion as a chef from Veneto or Liguria, capturing the soul of Italian cuisine.”
