Manolo De La Osa

«Here customers eat what shepherds used to eat once. And we, XXI century gourmets, definitely trust them». This sentence, flashing on Las Rejas’ website, would be enough to explain the philosophy of Manolo De La Osa. In order to go deeper inside his character, we rely on what French-Catalan journalist Philippe Regol wrote on Identità Golose’s Guida ai Ristoranti d’Italia, Europa e Mondo, 2010 edition.
Manolo De La Osa is definitely the most beloved chef of all Spanish gastronomy movement. Affable and hospitable, he strolls his figure across the perfumed dining rooms of his restaurant, locate in Las Pedroñeras, one of the ugliest countries in Mancha region, 50 km away from Don Quixote’s native land (although he looks more like Sancho Panza, because of his weight and love for good food).

Brightly self-taught, he’s the great reformer of his land’s traditional cuisine. In his hands, local products preserve their tasty substance but earn refinement and lightness, more appropriate features to our times.
But Manolo doesn’t restrict himself to do a simple update of the past. He’s also skilled in ingeniously de-structuring the garlic soup, a cult recipe within his land. He masters herbs like nobody: thyme, lemon-thyme, summer savory, basil, mint, marjoram, anise, cumin, saffron… and he waved garlic, this humble bulb, often refused by avant-garde cuisine, as the flag of his culinary style.
Among his best recipes, we quote his Suckling pig confit with cinnamon and sage or his famous Milky lamb leg with potato, garlic and cumin. His cheese trolley is the best in the whole region.