Omar Allibhoy winner of Acorn’s “Young Star of the Future” awards for 2012. The 28 yr old chef trained by the legendary Ferran Adria of El Bulli Fame, arrived 8 years ago to take over the reins at El Pirata DeTapas in West London and quickly establishing it as one of London’s best Tapas restaurants and winning rave
Omar has a burgeoning reputation as one of the UK’s brightest young chefs. He was shortlisted for the 2010 OFM young chef of the year awards and has been steadily appearing on our UK TV screens, most recently on Ramsay’s Best Restaurant for channel 4.
Since arriving in the UK Omar has been surprised and frustrated by the lack of Spanish restaurants compared to other notable cuisines such as Chinese or Thai for example. He also could not understand why more people were not cooking his beloved food in their homes. He decided it was up to him to do something about this and the idea of the Tapas Revolution was born.
Omar wanted to put Tapas on the map in the UK so he literally daubed a giant T for Tapas on the map of England and then set out on his motorbike for 2 weeks travelling along this T, cooking for anyone that he met along the way.
The trip was a great success, causing nothing short of a sensation back in Spain where they called him a ‘crusader for Spanish food and culture’ and likened him to a Spanish version of Jamie Oliver.
In the UK, the trip showed Omar that people around the country loved his simple and easy style of Spanish cooking and he came back with a new determination to keep taking Tapas to the people of the UK. His first act was to open up a Tapas Revolution restaurant in the Westfield shopping centre in West London, a great chance to bring all that is great about the Spanish culture to the people of London.
– See more at: www.tapasrevolution.com