Pablo Diaz Martin
Chef, sommelier and photographer born in Madrid, Spain
Since I was very young, I knew I wanted to become a chef. My passion for cooking comes from the hours spent with my grandma cooking and helping her buy the best ingredients from her local markets. At the age of 15 I started culinary school and became an apprentice at Arzak San Sebastian at the age of 17. I finished culinary school and decided to continue my studies taking the sommelier course at the Camara de Comercio de Madrid sponsored by Ribera del Duero denomination of origin.
After a year working as a sommelier, I went back to the kitchen working as a chef for a couple of years at Semon Madrid.
As a growing young chef, I read a lot of books and most of the chefs that I liked were French, so I decided to move to France to give it a chance. Two years later I was chef de partie at Fouquet’s Champs Elysée’s.
On my return to Spain, I worked in Guadalajara as a Sous chef and then as a head chef for 7 years in a Catering company in Madrid.
After that time, I knew I wanted to go back to a proper restaurant, and I’ve got an offer to move to Barcelona and work as an executive chef for a restaurant group located all around Spain. They offered me the opportunity to be a traveler chef and after many trips between a few Spanish cities, they decided to send me to Buenos Aires Argentina to manage their hotel/restaurant in San Telmo BA. That is where I met my Australian future wife and it’s what brings me to Eat Spanish.
When I arrived in Melbourne I traveled and started learning about bread baking at home. I was always moved by the incredible mysticism of bread making. So I baked and read and fail and eventually after I’ve got my visa I went back to the kitchen to do the opening of the Melbourne-based restaurant Tinto in Hawthorn as their head chef. Then I had a baby girl and decided I wanted to spend time with my daughter, so I become a private chef for a Family in Melbourne.
Then I opened a restaurant in Melbourne with a few partners and after a year of hard work and lots of complications I decided to close and had another daughter.
Nowadays I have decided to continue with my food and wine passion in another direction, so I started a couple of years ago a diploma in photography.
