Osvaldo Sejas

IGCAT Regional Chef Ambassador from
Catalonia, World Region of Gastronomy awarded 2025 and European Region of Gastronomy 2016

“I have reinterpreted the original recipe, keeping its traditional ingredients, but drawing from Modernism and its main features, such as the predominance of colours; the light intensity; the application of transgressive forms; the use of vegetables and flowers; and the Art Nouveau influence.”

Osvaldo Sejas is the finalist who represented Catalonia, European Region of Gastronomy 2016 (and recently awarded World Region of Gastronomy awarded 2025) at the European Young Chef Award 2023.

Osvaldo is a 19-year-old cook student originally from Bolivia. He grew up in his native country until the age of 12, when he moved to Barcelona with his family to study. There he welcomed the possibility of learning more about the history, art and gastronomy of Catalonia.

His interest in cooking began when he was 9 and used to help his grandmother in her small restaurant. At the age of 16, after finishing high school, he enrolled at the Escola Superior d’Hostaleria Vedruna Gracia to study cooking and gastronomy. Every day on his way to school, he would pass by Casa Vicens, considered Gaudí’s first major work, from where he took the inspiration to create his dish Gaudí Red Mullet Mosaic for the European Young Chef Award 2023: an innovation on Molls Gaudí (Gaudí’s style mullets).

Created by chef Ferran Adrià for elBulli restaurant in 1993, Molls Gaudí is an iconic dish that revolutionised Catalan cuisine, where the mullet comes coated with a mosaic of multi-coloured vegetables. Drawn from a very traditional and humble recipe, Adrià’s version was inspired by Gaudí and the famous trencadís (broken tile mosaics) of the modernist movement, by which surfaces are covered with irregular pieces of bright and colourful ceramic, glass or marble tiles. Considered a pioneer in environmentally-friendly construction, Gaudí usually got his tiles from waste materials including broken culinary utensils, such as plates, cups, or glasses.