Oriol Ivern was born and raised in Barcelona, trained at Beau Rivage Palace and in France, England, and Catalonia, and is head chef of Hisop restaurant.
I was born and raised in Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia and the best city in the world. I have traveled a lot and worked in different places, and eventually I returned here, to my city.
When I was 13, in 1988, my parents and I moved to Begues, a small mountain village 40 km from Barcelona. That was when my passion for cooking began. I kept telling my parents that I would become one of the best chefs, and I carried that goal with me through the years.
After culinary school, I moved to Switzerland to work at Beau Rivage Palace. I wanted to understand how a professional kitchen worked, and I found myself in the perfect place to truly start learning. As they say, experience comes from doing, and studying alone is not enough.
After that, I traveled through France, England, and Catalonia, working and training in some of the best restaurants with the finest chefs. I absorbed every detail and every lesson my mentors taught me. It was an incredible time, and I have great memories of all the places where I worked and trained.
The journey of becoming a chef is reflected in my restaurant’s menu: in my dishes, in what I create and cook today, I have preserved the best of the places where I worked.
The ingredients I love to cook with most are wild products, untouched by human modification, just as they exist in nature. Game, mushrooms, and fish are nature’s greatest gifts to us.
I love the sea. In my free time, I often take my small boat out along the northern coast of Catalonia to a place called “Tropical Harbor,” where I fish, swim, and enjoy the fresh catch of the day along with ingredients from the local market. I also love reading, and, contrary to what you might expect, I read more than cookbooks.
My message to the readers of this project is to enjoy food everywhere, in every moment. Life is too short to waste on bad meals. Try seasonal, local food when you travel, seek out the best cafés and restaurants, and experiment with flavors.
My dish is Squid with fennel, gray chanterelle mushrooms, and black sausage. I chose it because in Catalan cuisine it is very traditional to mix meat and seafood: we call it mar i muntanya, which means “sea and mountain.” In this case, I aimed to bring out the best flavors of the squid while adding a few fresh ingredients to balance the rich taste of black sausage and fennel.
