José Pizarro does Christmas Spanish style

In a Decanter exclusive, the celebrated chef offers up an alternative menu for the seasonal celebration

- FIONA SIMS

Celebrity chef José Pizarro carefully places his traditional Christmas centrepiece on the table at the Bermondsey home he shares with his psychotherapist husband Peter. You can forget about turkey, though - it's a whole roasted sea bass stuffed with lemon and bay leaves sitting on saffron-infused potatoes.

And it's not actually Christmas, of course, but a photoshoot held in October for Decanter's Christmas food and drink feature. Nor does Pizarro spend Christmas in London, but in the beautiful village of Talaván in Cáceres, Extremadura - in Spain's rural far west - where he grew up, and to where he returns every year.

It seems we can't get enough of Pizarro's cooking - he has just opened his seventh restaurant, Lolo in Bermondsey Street, south of the river near Tower Bridge (his third on the same street), and his cookbooks continue to fly off the shelves six titles since 2009's Seasonal Spanish Food (Kyle Books), including three available currently via his josepizarro.​com website: Basque: Spanish recipes from San Sebastian & beyond (£18 Hardie Grant, 2016); Recipes from Andalusia (£18.99 Hardie Grant, 2019; reprint 2023); and The Spanish Home Kitchen (£33 Hardie Grant, June 2022). So who can blame us for wanting a sneaky peek into the Pizarro family Christmas?

RAPID ASCENT

Often described as the Godfather of Spanish cooking, Pizarro has lived in London for more than 25 years, working in some of the capital's most prestigious Spanish restaurants before opening his first solo venture in 2011: José Tapas Bar on Bermondsey Street. A Barcelona home from home, it went down a storm, enabling him to open his more ambitious Pizarro away restaurant further up the same street later that year, which won a slew of awards.