The answer, for Óscar Velasco, is not rupture or reinvention. It is consistency – a way of working that remains intact across time, place, and reputation.
Before anything else, before Michelin stars or professional kitchens, there is a memory he returns to without hesitation. “In my home, my mother cooked often and beautifully – simple home cooking made with a great deal of love, filled with those flavours and aromas that will always remain in my memory.”
It is not nostalgia in a decorative sense. It is origin – the first framework through which food becomes more than sustenance.
Today, Velasco works in a different landscape entirely. At Finca La Bobadilla, his cooking is expressed across three restaurants – La Jara, El Mirador, and El Cortijo. Each operates with its own flow, yet all are shaped by the same way of thinking about ingredients, place, and execution. Together, they form a connected culinary world defined by a clear through-line rather than contrast.
But his story is anchored elsewhere first: Santceloni in Madrid – one of the defining restaurants of its era, where he reached two Michelin stars and helped shape a language of fine dining that influenced a generation.
“I would change many things. In 20 years, there is enough time for both good and bad things to happen, but all of those experiences have shaped us into who we are today.”
The closure of Santceloni marked a rupture in practice, but not in direction. “Something very hard and deeply sad.” What followed was not departure, but restructuring: the creation of VelascoAbellá with his wife, pastry chef Montse Abellá, and later collaborations that eventually led him to Andalusia.
Even now, he rejects the idea of stepping away from what defined him. “I don’t believe I have stepped away from fine dining. We are intense people and very demanding of ourselves; we do not like to stop doing things to the best of our ability every single day.”
What changes is not the work itself, but its setting.
In Andalusia, that setting becomes visible across three kitchens with distinct identities but shared intent and passion. At La Jara, the focus is on local produce and estate ingredients: cod with chickpeas and spinach, Málaga kid goat with black garlic and hazelnut, olive oil produced on site. El Mirador leans towards fire, seasonality, El Cortijo moves closer to regional memory, with dishes such as rice with squid and prawns and mollete bread with slow-cooked pork pringá.
What connects them is not style, but consistency – a shared approach to sourcing, technique, and repetition across different expressions. The driving force behind it all is doing something he loves, and refusing to settle for anything less than what he knows he can deliver. In his case, that standard is exceptionally high.
For Velasco, excellence is not a fixed point. “I believe excellence is never truly reached. As in every aspect of life or any profession, you may have special qualities that help you develop your craft, but without hard work, consistency, enthusiasm, and passion, you achieve nothing truly special.”
Recognition, similarly, sits outside the centre of his thinking. “One of the first lessons I was taught when I arrived in Madrid was that recognition is the result of daily hard work and should never be the ultimate goal. That is why, when guests appreciate your work and acknowledge it, it is incredibly rewarding but it should only serve as a positive motivation to keep working consistently, always striving to do better every single day.”
There is a discipline in this that extends beyond kitchens. Even authorship is framed in proximity rather than separation. “I have always cooked the kind of food that I personally enjoy eating – the kind of dish I would hope to find on the table if I were the guest. That is why I believe it is essential to truly enjoy food to cook well. I believe the guest should feel that each dish, each recipe, has been cooked especially for them.”
The structure behind his work is built on that closeness – to product, to guest, to real intention.
Working across multiple kitchens also requires a wider logic. “It is clear that each space has a different menu, with dishes that may involve more elaborate or complex preparations depending on the restaurant, but they all share the same philosophy when it comes to work and product, creating synergies between kitchens that help improve the final result. We are in a hotel, and we must offer a dining experience capable of meeting the guests’ needs at every moment of the day.”
If there is a defining aesthetic principle, it is knowing when to stop adding and altering. “In general, I have never created dishes overloaded with ingredients or with too many different techniques within the same plate. I develop a cuisine closely linked to seasonal produce, always trying to bring out the very best in each ingredient and truly give it value. As time goes by, I become more convinced every day that less is more.”
Even in new surroundings, he avoids the language of reinvention. “The first thing we do when we arrive in a new place or begin a new project is immerse ourselves in its culture, its traditions, and its products, learning as much as possible from all the people around us. To all of this, we add our own experiences and personal vision, with the aim of creating a project that is deeply connected to the land and its culture, while still reflecting our own perspective.”
That balance – between absorption and identity – defines his present more than any single restaurant or accolade.
Asked about sacrifice, he pushes back on the premise. “I truly love my profession. In general, I do not feel that I have had to give up anything truly important in my life because of my dedication to cooking. In fact, cooking has given me the opportunity to experience things that, when I was younger, I could never even have imagined. Although it is true that, at times, the amount of time invested in our projects means I have less time to dedicate to the people I love most.”
He does not frame his career in terms of sacrifice. “I truly love my profession. In general, I do not feel that I have had to give up anything truly important in my life because of my dedication to cooking. In fact, cooking has given me the opportunity to experience things that, when I was younger, I could never even have imagined. Although it is true that, at times, the amount of time invested in our projects means I have less time to dedicate to the people I love most.”
So what do you do after two Michelin stars?
You don’t move away from the work. You don’t redefine it. You don’t leave it behind.
A new chapter doesn’t require reinvention – only the willingness to carry everything that came before, good and bad, and let it shape what comes next.
