Jaén olive oil cooking prize goes to Marta Oti of Fontané
Eight cooks, eight oils from the province and 75 minutes each in San Sebastián. The provincial government that pays the €8,000 also chairs the jury, and it has not said what was on the winning plate.
The Jaén olive oil cooking prize, which the provincial government of Jaén has awarded since 2003, went on 7 October to Marta Oti of the restaurant Fontané, in Girona. She cooked a dish called Ciclos del olivo live at the San Sebastián Gastronomika congress and takes home €8,000.
The Diputación de Jaén's note on the 23rd Premio Internacional de Cocina con Aceite de Oliva Virgen Extra "Jaén, paraíso interior" says two things about the winner: she cooks at Fontané and she is of Jaén origin. It does not describe the dish, whose name means "cycles of the olive tree", or say which oils went into it. Fontané is the Roca brothers' restaurant in Sant Julià de Ramis, in the province of Girona, and holds one Repsol Sol.
There is no second or third place. The rules provide for a single prize and a trophy. The other seven finalists were Nauzet Betancort (Arrope, Valladolid), Carmen Bretón (Azurmendi, Biscay), Ariel Adonay Múgica (Canfranc Express, Huesca), Kevin Díaz (Casa Lucita, Cantabria), Piero Rodrigo Aponte (El Molino de Urdániz, Navarre), Rafael Arroyo (Inizio Andalusian Cuisine, Granada) and Sergio Darío (Fields Concord, Shanghai).
A province that presses a third of Spain's olive oil pays cooks to explain what to do with it.
How the Jaén olive oil cooking prize works
Forty recipes were entered this year, one more than in 2025, and a jury picked eight. Each had to use at least one of the eight oils carrying the Jaén Selección 2026 label, which the Diputación awards after a blind tasting: Campos de Biatia, Jabalcuz Gran Selección, Oro Bailén, Oro de Cánava, Sierra Santo Tomé, Tierras de Canena, Balcón del Guadalquivir and Puerta de Las Villas. Seven of the eight come from cooperatives.
In the final, held in the Kursaal congress centre, each cook had 75 minutes: 45 in the central kitchen and 30 to finish and plate in front of the jury. The jury was chaired by Pilar Parra, first vice-president of the Diputación, the body that pays for the prize. With her sat the chefs Francis Paniego, Paco Roncero and Ferrán Polls, last year's winner, and the journalists Mitxel Ezquiaga and Alberto Granados.
Why an olive province pays for a chefs' contest
Jaén is forecast to produce 575,000 tonnes of olive oil in 2026/27, 36% of Spain's output, according to the first official estimate for the new olive harvest. The contest belongs to the Diputación's annual plan to promote that oil, which also sends the eight labels to the World's 50 Best Restaurants gala in Lima in November.
The first edition, in 2003, was shared by Jordi Cruz and the Italian Andrea Menichetti; Massimo Bottura won in 2005. The organisers count more than a thousand recipes over the 22 earlier editions, from a dozen countries. This year the international part of the name rested on one finalist, Sergio Darío, a cook from Madrid working in Shanghai.
The oils used in San Sebastián were pressed from last season's olives. The fruit for the next selection is on the trees now.
