Born in Madrid and trained by Ferran Adria at El Bulli, Omar Allibhoy has four Tapas Revolution restaurants to his name at the age of 29. Here we chat to Omar about his love for tapas food and his plans to grow his restaurant group even more.
It’s no wonder Omar has been so successful at such a young age, considering he first realised his passion for cooking when he was just three years old, watching his mother cook.
He said: “Ever since then I wanted to help her out, whisking eggs and doing really simple things, and I’ve never changed my mind. I’ve been cooking ever since and I’ve never been as passionate about anything else.”
A natural entrepreneur, at eight years old Omar started selling cakes in the back garden of his parent’s garden.
He later enrolled in evening cookery classes while still in school, and his career really took off when he trained at El Bulli.
On his early career Omar said: “It really drove me forward and taught me a lot about how to do things well.”
Omar made the decision to move to London in 2005. He explained: “I wanted to learn English, which was my main goal, so that I could then travel around the world. But when I came to London I fell in love, and the rest is history.
"London is a very exciting city, it’s very developed, I find it incredibly competitive and that is the type of environment I excel at. I want to be a part of it, this bunch of people who do exciting things that are then replicated around the world. It’s a challenging city.”
After he fell in love with London, Omar worked at restaurants including Maze before becoming executive chef of El Pirata Detapas, where he and the team almost made it to the semi-final of Ramsay’s Best Restaurant after being contacted by the show.
Omar said: “We believed we were good and we wanted people to see it. It was entertaining, doing something different for a few days, I’m the type of person who likes to have variety in what I do.”
In 2010, Omar decided it was time to branch out on his own and opened his first Tapas Revolution in Westfield Shepherd’s Bush, Kent.
He explained: “I wanted to do something informal, affordable and good quality, like tapas bars in Spain. Lots of people here were doing Spanish restaurants, but in Spain what is really authentic and traditional is the tapas bars. I wanted to focus on the cultural side of things, how we enjoy everything.”
The restaurant has been a big success and from this Omar decided to open more Tapas Revolutions, choosing Bluewater, Kent and Shoreditch for the next two ventures. 
He said: “I wanted to bring great Spanish food into the environment
