Fina Puidgevall & Martina Puigvert

Les Cols

The Mother

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. It is a light style, purified but generous. It conveys sincerity, balance, austerity, and naturalness, in an authentic and emotive way. She uses her imagination, intuition and sensitivity. It is a style of cooking which reflects her own way of being.

Les Cols

The culinary proposals that this restaurant offer is rooted in the land and the landscape surrounding it. Fina 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 ring-shaped cake or doughnut), pork and sausages, wild river trout, snails, wild boar, truffles, sweet chestnuts, turnips, wild mushrooms, herbs and even flower.

Fina considers her team family because of the good understanding that formed between them through the years. She believes that her restaurant aims to offer happiness. Therefore, she attaches 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.

The Daughter

Young chef Martina Puigvert is an upcoming star in Spain. Along with her older sister Clara, and younger sister Carlota, Martina now works at Les Cols, where she is Head Chef and Head of Culinary R&D.

Martina studied Gastronomy and Culinary Arts at the Basque Culinary Centre, and has worked at Lua in Madrid, Koy Shunka in Barcelona, and restaurants in the US and in Bolivia. The young chef explains what having local produce at the heart of the Les Cols experience means:

“By depending on local products, we’re completely connected to the weather, which can be an inconvenience when it comes to creating dishes, given we never know exactly when a product will arrive, let alone how long they will last.”

Martina Puigvert

She believes that not everything is in our hands. Nature plays a very important part in this project, supplying with one product or another. And it’s then that we do a good job.

Instagram: @lescols_finapuigdevall
Restaurant website: https://lescols.com/en/restaurant-2/
Restaurant address: Ctra. de la Canya, s/n | 17800 Olot (Girona), Spain