Chef, BCN Taste and Traditions; Houston, TX

Luis Roger is chef at BCN Taste and Traditions, a restaurant in Houston, Texas, where he brings nearly two decades of Spanish gastronomy to the menu. Growing up around the family kitchen in Barcelona, Roger’s modern Spanish cuisine and style is rooted in those family traditions. Roger began his career as a student of culinary arts at the esteemed Spanish academy, Escola d’Hostaleria Hofmann. While he gained valuable experience there, it was Roger’s post-graduate internship at the famed El Bulli that transformed the way he thought about and approached food. Roger says, “Working under Ferran Adrià changes your life forever. The way he thinks and his ability to bring out the very best in everyone who has the patience and the strength to stay with him. From him I learned the need to preserve the fundamentals of traditional cooking and ingredients as a base for new dishes.” Following his time at El Bulli, Roger was hired to travel the world on a private sailboat, where he combined his style of cooking with the local ingredients he found along the way. In 2000, Roger landed at a modern Spanish restaurant, Fragata, followed by a stint as head chef at Restaurante ElCafè de l’Acadèmia, located in the heart of Barcelona’s Gothic quarter. Roger honed his culinary skills while head of pastry at the five-star luxury resort Hotel Ra, where he completed the final step in formation: desserts! Prior to coming to Houston, Roger was most recently executive chef at the private resort, Mas Anglada, in the Emporda near  the Costa Brava, where he embraced the culinary richness of the area while focusing on the fantastic quality of the regional products from the farm, the sea, and the land. While at Mas Anglada, he did double duty as a professor at the local culinary school, Aula Gastronómica de l’Emporda. In 2013, Roger embarked on a new adventure with partner Ignacio Torras with the opening of BCN where the pair achieved a life-long dream of bringing the best of the taste and culinary traditions of Spain to Houston.