Pepe Solla*

As the son of a hospitality worker, from an early age he helped in the family restaurant on weekends and holidays, and when he finished high school, he moved to Santiago to study Business Administration. But this path did not end up attracting him, and he returned home to become more actively involved in the restaurant. He started working in the dining room where he was introduced to wine tasting and sommelier and began to study courses at the Spanish Tasters Union (UEC).  At that time, the wine sector in Galicia was emerging and Pepe wanted to go a step further to continue training in this field and to give other professionals in his region the opportunity to do so, and, together with other colleagues, he founded the Galician Association of Sommeliers in 1994. His dedication at that time was so great that in 1996 he won the Galician Sommelier Championship and came sixth in the National Championship.

A year earlier, in 1995, he had begun to take his first steps in the kitchen as an assistant, a task that he combined with his role as head waiter because he firmly believed that having an overview from all areas of the restaurant would help him to do his job better. He then began a period of training focused on cooking: in pâtisserie with Cristian Felder in Paris and at elBulli with Ferran Adrià, as well as taking other monographic courses in pastry, chocolate, or vacuum cooking. And then the kitchen became his passion and in 1999 he assumed the reins of the kitchen at Solla Restaurant and in 2001 he took over the general management of the establishment.

In 2003, he became the owner of the family restaurant Casa Solla, starting a new stage in which he undertook several renovations in the dining room and the kitchen with the aim of offering more quality for the customers and better working conditions for the team.

Since 2022, he has been directing the gastronomy of an exceptional and unique space in the center of Vigo, La Oliva Palace, a building dedicated entirely to gastronomic leisure. It is home to different concepts: the El Olivo restaurant, based on product and grilled cuisine, the Templario cocktail bar, with a careful selection of mixology and two floors dedicated to the most exclusive private events in the city, and the Monkey Bar, a space where you can enjoy a spectacular cocktail bar accompanied by sushi created to capture Pepe Solla's vision of Japanese cuisine.

Casa Solla holds one MICHELIN Star since 1980. From year to year since he took over the ownership of the restaurant, Pepe has continued to renew and reaffirm this star achieved by his parents, making it one of the oldest restaurants in Spain to keep this distinction for 44 years without interruption.

In 2014, the Repsol Guide awarded it 3 Repsol Suns, making it the first Galician restaurant in history to receive this distinction and maintaining it to date.

Over the years, Pepe has found his own style, a way of understanding cuisine that is born in the landscape of his beloved Galicia. Pepe's admiration for the work of the craftsmen working on the land and the sea has been transformed over time into alliances and synergies thanks to which the best ingredients are brought to the kitchen of Casa Solla every day. A product that is presented to the guest in its maximum expression, cooked with absolute respect, without decorations that mask it, only with other ingredients that enhance it and allow it to show itself for what it is.

Pepe's cuisine is a naked, pure, simple, honest, direct, and authentic cuisine that focuses on a tradition that is constantly changing, and on a history that is impossible to change, but which offers the opportunity for evolution. Pepe does an Atlantic cuisine, in which the best Galician raw ingredients are at his service, paying his own tribute to traditions, through modern, creative, and innovative recipes, but always keeping intact their essence and what makes each ingredient unique.