Angel Zapata Martin joins Brindisa as chef director
The Barcelona-born chef spent seven years running Barrafina's kitchens for Harts Group. He now takes charge of food across Brindisa's restaurants.
Angel Zapata Martin has joined Brindisa Tapas as chef director, three years after leaving his post at Barrafina.
The Barcelona-born chef brings more than 20 years in kitchens across Spain, London and beyond. He was most recently executive chef at Grupo Mambo in Ibiza, and before that spent seven years as chef director of Barrafina and its sister restaurant Parrillan at Harts Group, where he helped Dean Street Barrafina keep its Michelin star. He left Harts Group in 2023.
His route to Brindisa goes back further. He first met founder Monika Linton in 2017, while still at Barrafina, and spent his Harts Group years sourcing ingredients from Brindisa's Spanish producers for the kitchen.
We want the next few years to be exciting, and Angel is an important part of that.
Angel Zapata Martin's role at Brindisa
At Brindisa, he will take a key role across food, kitchens and sites, with a brief to strengthen the link between the company's Spanish producers and what reaches the plate. The appointment follows two other recent hires: Kelly Richardson as managing director and Adrian Castro as beverage director.
"We want the next few years to be exciting, and Angel is an important part of that," Linton said. Zapata Martin called Brindisa "a brand I have admired," and said his Catalan background and international kitchen experience would shape the cooking that follows.
Beyond the tapas template
He plans to push the menu past the standard tapas repertoire, toward Spanish home cooking, regional dishes and produce led by the seasons rather than a fixed small-plates format. That builds on a Spanish dining scene in London that keeps widening, from Harts Group's own Los Primos cervecería in Borough, his former employer's latest Spanish opening.
Brindisa, founded by Linton in 1988 to import Spanish produce, grew into a chain of tapas restaurants and a wholesale business supplying the ingredients other London kitchens cook with. Zapata Martin's appointment ties that supply chain more directly to the restaurants it runs.
No start date or number of sites under his remit has been confirmed. Brindisa says more details on the new menu direction will follow.
