The award-winning chef at Aponiente demands the highest standards. That's why he uses the revolutionary Dekton surface for creating his innovative seafood cuisine.
Cádiz-born Ángel León, better known as “the Chef of the Sea”, is a member of that elite group of chefs whose work has been recognised with two Michelin stars and a number of other awards. The most recent of these is the Silestone Prize for European Chef of the Year, which he received at this year's Madrid Fusión international culinary event. Restless, innovative, hard to please…this prize-winning chef works tirelessly to reinvent seafood cuisine, introducing new ingredients that were previously considered unthinkable, such as plankton and microalgae with their polysaccharides. After processing, these foodstuffs provide the sugars he needs for his sweet dishes. And he's even launched a line of Iberian ham sausages that come with a seafood twist.
Being such a pioneering professional, he wanted a similarly groundbreaking solution when it came to fitting out his new Aponiente restaurant, housed in an old tide mill. The worktops, as well as some of the walls, now feature ultra-compact Dekton surfaces in our Zenith colour. Cutting-edge technology allows us to emulate in a few short hours what it takes nature thousand of years to achieve. The result is a material that stands up to the demands of everyday use while also retaining its enduring beauty.
Another parallel we can draw between Ángel León's restaurant and Dekton is the short time they've been around. Aponiente opened in 2007, while our ultra-compact surfaces first came onto the market in September 2013, the fruit of more than five years of research work.
And lastly, neither of them sets limits on what can be achieved. Ángel León started out with a small eatery, but his current establishment, which he's managed to turn into one of the best restaurants currently in Spain, is situated in an impressive 17th-century building, itself an architectural gem lying in the port of Santa María. And here at Dekton we continue to add to our collections, colours and finishes year after year. One example that highlights this commitment is our recently launched XGloss line of polished surfaces, which offer an extraordinary level of shine.
