Diego García

Chef at El Pintu (Pola de Laviana, Asturias, Spain)

As they say in Asturias. Eating and drinking will make you fat, in other words.

Diego García runs the kitchen at El Pintu (Pola de Laviana), an eatery that is Asturias through and through.

Diego had always been keen on cooking and earned a lot from his grandmother, with whom he spent a considerable amount of time. Studying was not for him, nor was he so sure of which direction to take, but a friend encouraged him to study cookery, and so it was that he ended up at the Gijón school of catering.

He worked at several restaurants in the community, and at one point he had to travel between Oviedo and Gijón by car twice a day. During the drive he occasionally stopped at El Pintu, an eatery that had been taken over by a friend of his, Zoraida Fernández, to turn it into a winery.

Diego, who had already been thinking about setting up a restaurant, finally "persuaded" Zoraida to turn El Pintu into a restaurant, as he remembered it from before as the place changed hands.