Dubai: Santi Santamaria, the three-star Michelin chef who runs an upmarket restaurant in Dubai’s Atlantis, The Palm, died on Wednesday.
A staff member at the chic Ossiano restaurant confirmed to XPRESS the death of the Spanish celebrity chef but said the restaurant remains open for business as usual on Thursday.
Santamaria, 53, died of heart attack in Singapore, reports from the city-state said.
Santamaria, also dubbed as the 'Architect of Food', opened his first restaurant outside Europe in Dubai in 2008 in time for the opening of the resort hotel on top of the crescent of the palm-shaped islands.
Gloria, a restaurant staff, confirmed to XPRESS: “It’s a sad day for us. We learned about it only on Wednesday itself.”
Gloria confirmed the Santamaria, a self-taught chef, owned the restaurant.
Luca Gagliardi, the restaurant manager, said: “We will issue an official statement about this tomorrow (Thursday) from the hotel, Atlantis. We’re open tomorrow (Thursday), as usual,” he said, but declined to give further comments.
Ossiano, Latin for ocean, is hemmed in by the eye-catching underwater world for which Atlantis is known.
Spanish media reported Santamaria had massive heart attack at Santi, a restaurant run by his daughter in Singapore.
His restaurants are known their intensity of flavours and his Catalan cuisine and known for his unflattering critique of rival Spanish chef Ferran Adria how is known for “molecular gastronomy.”
Santamaria wrote a number of books on cooking, ran a restaurant in Sant Celoni, the town where he was born, for 30 years.
He had three Michelin stars since 1994. He earned two more for a gourmet outlet in Madrid, called Sant Celoni, and one star each for the Evo restaurant in Barcelona and Tierra in Valdepalacios near Madrid.
