Alicante hosts this Thursday the second semi-final of the “Chef and Waiter of the Year 2025-2026” competition on the occasion of its appointment as the Spanish Capital of Gastronomy and coinciding with World Mediterranean Diet Day in a day that will combine competition, training, debate and live gastronomy at the CdT between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.
The contest is held with the support of the Alicante City Council and the Generalitat Valenciana before the grand final to be held in Barcelona within the framework of the Alimentaria & Hostelco fair.
The Alicante semi-final of the Chef and Waiter of the Year Competition will be held on November 13 at the CdT of Alicante. The presenters of the event will be journalists Josep Salvat, Latice Chas and Ferran Cano.
During the morning, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., the official tests for the cooking and dining competitions will take place simultaneously. The program will begin at 10 a.m. with the discussion “Where are the women in gastronomy?”, moderated by Rocío Riquelme, in which Mara Baño, Pedro Juan Sánchez and Geni Perramon, all members of the MEG (Women in Gastronomy) association, will participate.
The program continues at 10:20 a.m. with a “hedonistic tasting” led by Yolanda Nieto, marketing director of Amarga y Pica, and then there will be a showcooking by Silvia Antón, culinary advisor at Florette. At 11:20 a.m. Erick Orjuela will give the gastronomic demonstration “Cocktails for Alicante aperitifs: The Negroni revolution” by the Alicante Restaurant Association (ARA).
The day will continue at 12:20 p.m. with a round table on the challenges of the hospitality industry organized by the Alicante City Council and the sector associations. The Councilor for Commerce, Hospitality, Consumer Affairs and Markets will participate in it, Lydia Lopez; the president of the Alicante Provincial Tourism and Tourist Accommodation Association (APHA), Luis Castillo; the president of the Provincial Association of Hospitality Entrepreneurs of Alicante APEHA, Maria del Mar Valera; the president of the Alicante Restaurant Association (ARA), Gabriela Cordoba; and the president of APROSABA, Association of Lounge and Bar Professionals of the Valencian Community, Manuel Vera.
At 1 p.m., the vice president of the Provincial Council of A Coruña, Xosé Regueira, will speak with the presentation “Province of A Coruña. A country that knows”, after the Galician city hosted the first semi-final of the contest. To close the morning there will be a tasting of giant rice and a gastronomic menu offered by the CdT students.
In the afternoon, the program will resume its activity at 3:40 p.m. with the presentation “The new era of juices in mixology” given by Mireia Riba, ambassador of Juver Zumos and winner of the Waiter of the Year Contest in 2022. At 4 p.m. the talk “How to implement more vegetables in your dishes” will take place, given by Ismael Rubio, demonstrator chef at Bonduelle.
At 4:20 p.m. there will be a round table dedicated to gastronomic tourism as a source of sustainability in which the Councilor for Tourism, Ana Poquetthe vice president of the Provincial Council of A Coruña, José Regueira and the regional secretary of Tourism of the Valencian Community, José Manuel Camarero. Between 5 and 7 p.m. the awards ceremony will take place, with the presence of the mayor of Alicante, Luis Barcalaand the Minister of Innovation, Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Marian Cano.
Contestants for Best Chef of the year:
Borja Moncalvillo (Origin, Castro Urdiales, Cantabria),
Daniel García Peinado (Bienfrito, Fuengirola, Málaga),
John Salgado (Dromo, Badajoz),
Paula Gutiérrez (Víctor Gutiérrez, Salamanca),
Peter
Roger Julián (Symposium, San Antonio de Benagéber, Valencia).
Contestants for Best Room Professional:
Paloma Sánchez (Santa Ana Restaurant, Murcia),
Ángela Rodríguez (Airen Winery & Restaurant, Alicante),
Diego de Obeso (Hotel del Oso, Cosgaya, Cantabria),
Javier Gil (Gaytán Restaurant *, Madrid),
Juan David Marco (Saddle Madrid *, Madrid) and
Juan Pedro López (DelARDE Restaurant, Navas de San Juan, Jaén).
The jury for the Alicante semi-final is co-chaired by Susi Díaz (La Finca *, Elche) and Joaquín Baeza Rufete (Restaurante Baeza Rufete *, Alicante). Other prominent chefs from the province who will evaluate the participants are Cristina Figueira (El The jury is completed by the prestigious gastronomic journalists José Carlos Capel and Julia Pérez and the chefs Raúl Resino (Raúl Resino Restaurante *, Benicarló) and Iván Domínguez (NaDo, A Coruña). The director of the technical jury is Sergi Martínez and, on this occasion, he will have the support of José Puentes and Luis Rodríguez, teachers of the CdT network (Network of Tourism Centers of the Valencian Community). It should be noted that Joaquín Baeza Rufete and Raúl Resino have been winners of the Chef of the Year contest.
For its part, the jury for the Alicante semi-final of the Waiter of the Year competition is made up of nationally recognized waitress professionals, among whom the maître Casto Copete and Elisabeth Gomes, both from Alicante, stand out. Casto Copete, Iratxe Miranda, Ángela Marulanda and David Seijas will judge the table tests while Elisabeth Gomes, Joan Francesc Gallego, David Mazón and Iván Talens will be bar judges. Mireia Riba will be the bar technical jury and the veteran Mariano Castellanos will be the table technical jury. The renowned Murcian maître and sommelier, Antonio Chacón, serves as president and coordinator of the jury of the Waiter of the Year contest.
10th Chef of the Year Competition and 6th Waiter of the Year
The “Chef and Waiter of the Year” competitions are two biennial sister events, organized by Grupo Caterdata that, in this 2025-2026 edition, consist of two semi-finals: the first took place in A Coruña on April 3 with the support of the Provincial Council of A Coruña and the second, in Alicante on November 13. The grand final will be in March 2026 within the framework of Alimentaria & Hostelco, a fair that takes place in Barcelona every two years.
On the one hand, this is the 10th edition of the Chef of the Year Contest, a contest that has discovered more than 70 Michelin stars in countries such as Spain, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The first winner of this contest, held in 2006, was the well-known chef Jordi Cruz, who heads the Àbac *** restaurant, located in Barcelona. The winner of the last edition was Toño Rodríguez from Huesca, from the restaurant La Era de Los Nogales * (Sardas, Huesca), who obtained his first Michelin star at the gala that took place last November in Murcia. Beatriz Sotelo, José Carlos Fuentes (Señor Pepe), Víctor Manuel Rodrigo (Samsha), Joaquín Baeza Rufete (Restaurante Baeza & Rufete*), Raúl Resino (Raúl Resino Restaurante*), Álvaro Salazar (Voro **) and Cristóbal Muñoz (Ambivium *) have also won this contest.
The development of the Chef of the Year Competition tests the skills of all the candidates as they have to demonstrate their worth live. In each semifinal, the six participating teams have five hours to prepare a complete menu, consisting of a starter, main course and dessert. A jury will evaluate the dishes and choose the three candidates who will advance to the Grand Final.
For its part, this is the VI edition of the Waiter of the Year Contest, an event that began in 2012 to highlight the work of front-of-house professionals. In each semi-final, six participants complete a circuit of indoor tests to demonstrate their skills and demonstrate their professionalism. The origin of the contest, linked to that of the Chef of the Year, is based on the need to value the work of these figures, whether as maître, bartender, sommelier, head of rank, assistant, among others, all of them essential in any hospitality business.
Collaborators
Alimentaria-Hostelco heads the list of institutions and companies that support the Chef and Waiter of the Year 2026 contest. Other institutions and companies in the sector such as the Alicante City Council, the Provincial Council of A Coruña, Mahou-San Miguel, Juver, Bonduelle, Cirio, Cola-Cao, Florette, Amarga y Pica, Nocilla, GGM Gastro, La Finca Jiménez Barbero, Solan de Cabras, Pascual, Mocay, Duni and Gary’s support this event, one of the most important in the national gastronomic sector.
