Succeeding far from home is doubly valuable. And there is no doubt that Aitor Zabala is doing just that. This Catalan chef of Basque descent achieved three Michelin stars in one fell swoop for his restaurant Somni*** in Los Angeles. Through his presentation “Cooking is deciding”, he sought to convey to the audience at Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España the work he is doing in the American Far West.

He began by recalling that he arrived in the United States ‘with many uncertainties, without a grand plan, but with a desire to cook and be free, which was what I was looking for’. That is why, because he did not set himself any barriers, he says he finds it difficult to find a label for Somni. However, he is convinced that ‘not having a label for my cuisine or cooking without a predetermined concept is not a negative thing’. That is why he understands that ‘cooking is deciding’.

He rebels against the idea that ‘everything has to have a name’ and that is why Somni had to be something else. It opened in 2018. At that time, he was only looking for ‘freedom, a place to cook and interact with customers’. Two years later, during the pandemic, he was forced to close ‘at our peak’. When reservations were sold out in a matter of hours.

The decision they made then was ‘not to reopen the restaurant’, to keep thinking, and they did not reopen until November 2024. ‘Four years, seven months and two days that are tattooed on my mind’. During that time, they asked themselves many questions and refined many details. One of the keys was that he was fortunate that ‘no one told me what Somni had to be’. It only reflected his intention. ‘And that intention always counts’. That intention, that decision, was ‘to be very small’. In fact, it only has room for 14 diners. And it has 22 employees. This creates ‘an interaction between the customer and the employee’ that makes Somni ‘a different place’.

When it reopened just a few months ago, ‘the service was chaotic’, and he gave a dish as an example of that initial imbalance: ‘It was a dish we loved in the studio. We thought it was a ten out of ten. It's an egg yolk ravioli with Japanese prawns, with ingredients sent from Oaxaca, and it reflects the California concept very well, but for one reason or another, it wasn't working. People were leaving it. One day we decided to change it. We reduced it from four or five bites to one and a half, and from that moment on, it became a star dish’. Another decision. Another success. That's why ‘it's not just about cooking, it's about making the decision to add or remove something that makes it more successful’.

Identity emerges

And so, based on these kinds of decisions, Aitor Zabala says he has found that place for Somni. He confesses that he never ‘sought to have an identity’. He made ‘small, consistent decisions based on how problems arose’, and those decisions are what have shaped his project. And that's when, in the end, ‘identity ends up emerging’. An identity based on trial and error, because he remembers that when he opened, ‘there were mistakes, but suddenly the restaurant clicked and started to buzz’. Those first four months were so chaotic that ‘I thought Michelin would never come here, but the irony is that we have three stars in seven months. To tell you the truth, I still think they've made a mistake and don't have the courage to say they're taking them away’, he joked.

More seriously, he said they are proud of what they have achieved, but ‘we wouldn't have done it without perseverance’. Zabala ended by showing some dishes, such as a pizza he created ‘out of irony, out of a way of implementing something we didn't like’. Or a monkfish kokotxa with pilpil and squid ink that pays homage to his Basque roots from Los Angeles. These are authentic works of art that shine in Los Angeles and are the result of those decisions, that persistence and that passion for their work, which is reflected in the fact that Aitor Zabala is always present at Somni. He is there every day, explaining the dishes and interacting with the 14 customers who, at most, visit his establishment every day, which is now among the world's elite.