“As you know, we had been working on the new DiverXO for a long time with unlimited doses of enthusiasm and investing a huge amount of effort and resources. Today I wanted to share with you that after careful consideration I have decided not to go ahead with the project we had announced, a difficult but necessary decision.” With this message on his Instagram account, Dabiz Muñoz, the best chef in the world, according to The Best Chef Awards list, reverses the initial plan to move DiverXO, in fourth place in the classification of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants , to the exclusive urbanization of La Finca, in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid), where he planned to open what, according to him, will be the best restaurant in the world. The project had a global investment “between the works and the construction of the building of between 12 and 14 million euros.”
In the message on his social network, illustrated with a black and white photograph of the butterflies that are part of the decoration of the restaurant’s bathrooms, he adds that “the new DiverXO has to be iconic, unique, groundbreaking, dreamlike, transgressive and without ties, creatively free and without limits, and only then can it exist.” Far from launching a defeatist message, Muñoz adds that “from today we are already working on new options that make my dream come true, and although I know it is a difficult dream, I am confident that we will achieve it. Now, more than ever, the best is yet to come, we have not yet shown our best version!” With this statement, the Madrid chef also expresses his intention to leave the restaurant’s current location, in the NH Eurobuilding hotel in Madrid.
The project in which Muñoz, 44, had been involved for some time, as he announced in July 2022, was very ambitious. It was, according to what he said, a forest within La Finca, property of the García Cereceda family, whose opening was scheduled for the first quarter of 2025. The agreement between the parties, the chef detailed, states that La Finca is responsible for the continent, that is, everything that has to do with the conditioning and infrastructure of the land and the work, and UniverXO – the company that the chef founded with his wife, and chaired by Cristina Pedroche – of everything related to the content , the interior design, whose work was being handled by Lázaro Rosa-Violán’s studio, the spaces and management of the restaurant, which was going to occupy 1,900 square meters, compared to the 600 meters of the current DiverXO, and with capacity for 40 diners , two more than it currently has.
Initially it was going to have three terraces and a creative kitchen, “which can become a space like txoko where we feed”, next to the kitchen of the restaurant itself. “It is going to be the antithesis of the DiverXO of now, with a completely different staging. It is going to be groundbreaking, transgressive, with modern luxury, nothing ostentatious. It was born with the vocation and the dream of being the best restaurant in the world, the best restaurant in history. “It’s going to be wild,” Muñoz assured two years ago. Regarding the format of the gastronomic proposal, he announced that in principle there will be a tasting menu, but that this formula may change. “I don’t want it to have limits, it will be versatile, malleable. “It is the project of my life.”
Regarding the financing, between 12 and 14 million euros, Muñoz explained last January, during his participation in Madrid Fusión, that it would be his partners who would put up “a large part of the money”, while emphasizing the work of his financial team, so “we have also requested a loan from the bank, which we will pay.” In this sense, he highlighted that it was the good progress of the different business models that the group has, “which allows us to do well on an economic level.” He also pointed out that he did not have savings because “we reinvested everything,” while he admitted having no idea where to get the money, “but for that I surround myself with the best, I have a backoffice very good”.
In fact, one of Cristina Pedroche’s great contributions to the group, as Muñoz has recognized on occasion, has been to professionalize the company, hiring professionals, with the signing of a director of operations, production or marketing. “We have brought people from very diverse areas that have allowed us to build a company that today breathes modernity. We have much to do. But working at UniverXO today is very different from 10 years ago,” he explained, while emphasizing the need to professionalize the entire management of a restaurant, what happens outside the dining room and the kitchen.
Last May, the DiverXO restaurant had a significant loss of staff: the unexpected departure due to exhaustion of Miguel Ángel Millán, the manager of the winery for six years, who last year had been awarded the title of best sommelier. of the world at The World’s 50 Best Restaurants gala, held in Valencia. In his place, the chef has just hired Tomás Ucha, who until now served as director of sommeliers at Berria, in the Plaza de la Independencia in Madrid.
For now, the fourth move of the fourth best restaurant in the world remains up in the air.
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