As in previous editions, the Madrid Fusión team has scoured the culinary scene in our country on the trail of promising young chefs. Chefs with solid training whose work has caught our attention for their clarity of ideas, enthusiasm, technical preparation and ability to anticipate the future. 

They are part of the valuable human heritage on which our creative cuisine, one of the best in the world, is based. All in all, they are outstanding professionals, only one of whom will join the list of 21 winners of previous competitions.  

CARLOS CASILLAS
Restaurante Barro (San Segundo 6, Ávila)

The young Carlos Casillas and the small group of colleagues who make up his team prepare a cuisine conditioned by environmental awareness and the culinary roots of Ávila and the highlands of Castile. Each of the dishes that arrive at Barro's tables finds a response in the wines that accompany them from its monumental wine cellar. Responsible cuisine that connects with the aura of fermented foods, with the harvests of small farmers, with the work of some livestock farmers, the transhumance of the last ones.

SARA PERAL and JORGE MUÑOZ
Restaurante Osa (Ribera del Manzanares 123, Madrid)

Before opening Osa, Peral and Muñoz, former Mugaritz, invested more than two years in outlining a promising and challenging concept that is based on a line of thought that is not exempt from primitivism. A sort of enlightened neo-naturalism. Their dishes, the fruit of reflection, combine knowledge, culture, new techniques, devotion to nature, meticulous control of textures and temperatures, and an insatiable desire to track down unique products. In short, daring and hedonism in refined, contemporary proposals that break away from fashions and routines. 

ALEJANDRO VILLA
El Café de Pandora (San Bernardo, 6, Avilés)

Over the last few years, Villa has established himself as a specialist in the treatment of fish and seafood. With the support of his mother, Cristina Pérez, he has turned this family restaurant into a destination for fish lovers. He works with excellent pieces that he receives from the Avilés fish market, to which he applies imaginative or updated traditional recipes and with which he achieves precise cooking points. As a counterpoint, very fine sauces in which he brings out a veritable arsenal of technical resources. With the sirloin Wellington and other meats, he confirms his pulse on certain areas of classic cuisine.

MARCO ANTONIO INIESTA and MARÍA EGEA
Restaurant Frases (Soledad, 1, Murcia)

Without any help in the kitchen, with the only support in the dining room of María Egea, his partner in life and business, Marco Antonio runs an inconspicuous restaurant in the centre of Murcia where he serves no more than 15 diners per service. His contemporary recipes, solidly anchored in his roots, are based on the local larder of the sea and the countryside, and turn the popular into the modern. Their menu brings together memories, recollections and personal experiences. The work they both do with the small producers in the area is commendable.

BRAIS PICHEL
Terra (Paseo de la Ribeira, 65, Fisterra, A Coruña)

Brais Pichel, the new representative of young cuisine in Galicia, displays his talent in a restaurant near the port of Fisterra (A Coruña). In the confines of the world, he develops a gastronomic proposal subject to the limitations set by the territory, including the scarcity of fish when the fleets remain moored in winter. Pichel breaks with traditional Galician recipes to offer cosmopolitan dishes full of unexpected harmonies. The four tables in its dining room have become a place of pilgrimage for those who seek out different cuisines.

ALATZ BILBAO
Restaurant Bakea (Olalde Berezia 1, Mungia, Biscay)

Despite his youth, Alatz plays the dual role of cook and expert metallurgist. He is a master of fire and grilled meats, as well as a miller and lathe operator. At Bakea he cooks in a different style, almost exclusively with fire, without gas and electricity. All with the help of "The Machine", as he calls the set of ovens, grills and plates apart from his economical kitchen. She designs and forges her own cutlery, including the flambadou for fat dosing. A surprising family restaurant, where María Terán, Alatz's mother, is in charge of the dining room.

IRIS JORDAN MARTIN 
Restaurant Ansiles (Ansiles, Huesca)

The young Iris Jordán is head chef at the Ansils restaurant in the Benasque Valley (Huesca), where she took over from her grandmother. An open-minded and intuitive cook, she has a passion for game and poultry stews and bases part of her cuisine on the recovery and updating of traditional recipes from the valley. In her work, local and seasonal products are a kind of religion. Her knowledge of bakery and her mastery of various areas of the sweet world (pastries, ice cream and petits fours) give her a technical mastery that is evident in the way she resolves savoury recipes. 

AITOR LÓPEZ
Restaurant Citrus del Tancat (Alcanar, Tarragona)

In his dishes, according to his own words, Aitor López attaches great importance to the effect of his memories and other traditional family habits. His is a modern, creative cuisine that comes from the sea and the vegetable gardens that surround this restaurant in the Tancat de Codorniu hotel, with an eye on the products of the Ebro Delta and the fish and seafood he buys from the fish markets of Sant Carles de la Ràpita and Vinaròs. Technical and elaborate recipes that come from memory, whose main references evoke his place of origin in Xàtiva (Valencia) and the coast of Tarragona where he works.