Chefs

Since May 1990 Fina Puigdevall has been managing the Restaurant Les Cols d’Olot, as well as being both the owner and chef of this establishment situated in the mountain range by which it is known and her own birthplace.
Fina Puigdevall’s cooking conveys much with few elements. When creating the dishes she likes to remove everything that she considers is not essential, while not losing the essential poetry. It is a light and essential style, purified but generous. It conveys sincerity, balance, austerity and naturalness, in an authentic and emotive way, with imagination, intuition and sensitivity. It is a style of cooking which reflects her own way of being.

The culinary proposals which this restaurant offer are rooted in the land and the landscape surrounding it. For this reason Puigdevall has initiated a process of research and recuperation from the area’s traditional vegetable growing. She works with a very particular vision of products which we can find in the Garrotxa area: buckwheat, the Vall d’en Bas potato, sweetcorn, poultry (chicken and duck), “fesols de Santa Pau” (a small white bean), ratafia, the Olot “tortell” (a kind of ringshaped cake or doughnut), pork and sausages, wild river trout, snails, wild boar, truffles, sweet chestnuts, turnips, wild mushrooms, herbs and even flower.

She likes to offer the most intimate and familiar but with an up-to-date language. She emphasizes on the most modest products; the nature and the landscape are her source of inspiration, she likes to adapt the products of the land and her environment and give them a different meaning; the presentation of her dishes plays with the emptiness of the dish: the tradition/avant-garde contrast. The philosophy that has inspired the architectural refurbishment of the restaurant is the same philosophy that inspires her cuisine. Fina considers her team as a part of her family because of the good understanding created between them through the years. She believes that the aim of her restaurant is to offer happiness. Therefore, she attaches a great importance to the ritual and wants her guests to enjoy each one of the pleasures that surround a table: the luxury of the light and the silence; the importance of the gesture and the look; the serenity of the atmosphere; the hospitality.