Jordi Vilà has 75,000 hours hours of cooking under his belt. He started when he was 15, and to this day, hasn´t let up. He keeps on cooking, from Monday to Friday, in the Barcelona restaurant alkimia.

Jordi Vilà was born in 1973 to a family in which culinary culture is a fundamental ingredient. His mother was, and remains, an outstanding and experienced cook in a home that has brought together a large family under the same roof. This is in Papiol, a town surrounded by kitchen gardens. At the house, they canned tomatoes, bought ground beef for the botifarra, made panellets, brined the anchovies… But, even more than cooking, what excited Jordi when he was a little boy was eating. He has always been fascinated by the world of flavors.       

When he was 15 years old, after telling his parents he was interested in cooking, he started working at the pastry shop Baixas. His father got him this summer job in the hope that he would quit after seeing how harsh the sector was. Instead, Vilà witnessed an entire new world open up before his eyes.  

After studying at the Escola de Hoteleria Joviat in Manresa, he worked in several kitchens, including those of Casa Irene —where he met his wife Sònia Profitós— Neichel, Joan Piqué and Jean Luc Figueras. In 1998, he opened the restaurant Abrevadero on Avinguda del Paral.lel in Barcelona, where Sònia Profitós ran the dining room. It was a modest restaurant that served tasty food. There, in addition to being the chef, Jordi began acting as a restaurateur.    

In 2002, he opened, along with Sònia Profitós, the restaurant alkimia, and it was an instant success. In 2004, it received a Michelin star, which it has kept to this day, and, in 2006, the restaurant was also honored by the guide “Lo mejor de la gastronomía” (The Best in Cuisine) in the patisserie category.   

After 13 years of non-stop activity on Carrer de la Industria in Barcelona, alkimia closed its doors, opening them again in June of 2016, on the main floor of the Moritz factory, the brewery with which Vilà has collaborated since 2011 as culinary director of the group. 

The new restaurant has an open kitchen out of which the chef offers two proposals: alkimia, the more gourmet of the two, where Vilà expresses his vision of the direction in which Catalan and Barcelona cuisine should be heading, contributing to the evolution of his classic recipes; and al kostat, the more personal and intimate side of Jordi Vilà, where you’ll find a more day-to-day menu featuring excellent products that turn the act of eating into an everyday celebration. The food is fresh and prepared with attention to detail, designed to be shared and with bon vivants in mind. 

In 2021, he received the highest distinction granted by the Repsol Guide, three Suns, for a career in which, this “visionary and wizard remains at the vanguard of new Catalan cooking, shaping tomorrow with traditional values such as the veneration of good products and hands-on work in his personal shrine”. 

The Acadèmia de Gastronomia i Nutrició de Catalunya has awarded Jordi Vilà the National Gastronomy Award.