The Michelin guide has awarded Marbella’s Calima, under the direction of the young local chef Dani Garcia, its first Michelin star. With this award, the province of Malaga now has five one-star restaurants.
In recognition of Dani Garcia’s cuisine, the Michelin Guide has awarded Calima, located in Marbella’s Don Pepe Hotel, its first star. The young, locally-born chef has received this coveted award only two years after opening Calima, which joins the select group of four restaurants in the province which already have a Michelin star: Café de Paris (Malaga), El Lago (Marbella), Mesana (Marbella), and Tragabuches (Ronda).
Six of one, half a dozen of the other
Only 134 out of the 2,090 restaurants selected in Spain have been awarded stars by this year’s edition of the Michelin Guide, which alleges that “regularity and more rigour are what Spanish cooking lacks”. The guide has never been overly generous with Spain, and this year is no exception to the rule, since the country has only obtained five more stars than last year, with 14 new stars and nine restaurants that have lost stars.
In addition, no Spanish restaurant has obtained its third star, which means that the number of restaurants with “exceptional cooking that is well worth trip” is still six: Akelarre, Arzak, Martín Berasategui, El Bulli, Can Fabes, and Sant Pau. However, France has 26 three-star restaurants and Germany nine, as well as doubling and even tripling Spain with respect to the overall number of stars obtained. Nevertheless, the clear winner in the 2008 edition of the guide is Tokyo, which with 150 restaurants with Michelin stars has more than in the whole of Spain.
