Diego Schattenhofer at Madrid Fusión 2026: judge of "Cocinando el Mar" and the Dreams panel on matured fish

Madrid Fusión 2026: Canarian vieja in the contest and matured fish on the Dreams stage

From 26 to 28 January 2026, IFEMA Madrid hosted in its Pavilion 14 the XXIV International Gastronomy Summit, Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España, under a motto that gave dining rooms plenty to talk about: “The customer takes charge”. We went back to Madrid with two different assignments, and this time neither one involved cooking in front of an audience: one called for palate and judgement, the other for conversation.

This is how we put it on Instagram on 27 January, with the congress already under way: “Madrid Fusión 2026 is becoming a great meeting point for sharing, learning and championing the culinary world. We are taking an active part in the congress through presentations, judging panels, contests and gatherings, sharing our outlook and connecting with industry professionals in an atmosphere of learning, exchange and passion for cooking.”

Judge at the V National “Cocinando el Mar” Contest

The first of the two assignments was the more demanding one for the palate. Mercamadrid and Madrid Fusión held the final of the V National “Cocinando el Mar” Contest on 27 January, and Diego was called on to judge it from the jury table alongside Rafa Zafra (Estimar), Rubén Sánchez Camacho (Epílogo), journalist Cristina Hernández (president of Gastrocanarias), Julia Gonzalo (president of the AEMPM) and Gonzalo Reguera, director of Markets and Services at Mercamadrid.

This edition’s produce hit close to home: the six finalists cooked the vieja (a Canarian parrotfish), which Mercasa describes as “an emblematic species of the Canary coast that lives in the temperate subtropical waters of the Mediterranean and the north-eastern Atlantic”. Watching half of Spain compete over a fish that is part of everyday Canarian gastronomy back home was, quite simply, a pleasure.

The winner was Luis Callealta, of Cooking Almadraba (Conil de la Frontera, Cádiz), with a “Vieja al mojo verde en sopa yódica cítrica” (vieja in mojo verde in a citrus iodine broth) that brought together mojo from here and iodine from the southern Atlantic. The contest had been announced on 10 December 2025, with the final scheduled for “26, 27 and 28 January” as part of Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España.

The Dreams panel: why mature a fish

The second assignment was a conversation, and perhaps that is why it felt too short. The Madrid Fusión Dreams #SpainFoodTechNation space, in its third edition, scheduled among its panels the sessions devoted to matured fish, and its stage saw, according to 7 Caníbales, “more than 60 participants at Madrid Fusión from 26 to 28 January”. The trio on maturation was made up of Diego Schattenhofer, for Taste 1973; Carlos del Portillo, chef at Bistronómika (Madrid), and Gerónimo Athuel, chef at Ocyá (Rio de Janeiro).

Diego summed it up on Instagram on his return: “A pleasure to have taken part in a round table at the Dreams space @madridfusion together with Jerónimo [sic] Athuel and Carlos del Portillo, where we talked about fish maturation, a key process for bringing out its flavour and texture. Learning, and above all sharing about our craft, always enriches us.”

That line — “a key process for bringing out its flavour and texture” — is the short version of something we have spent years working on in Arona. Fish maturation in Tenerife is not a shop-window trend: it is time, controlled cold, judgement and a good number of failed trials before the right one, the same discipline we applied when we looked into the science behind meat maturation. Sharing a panel with two chefs who arrive at the same technique from a Madrid fish market and from the Brazilian Atlantic forces you to explain yourself better, which is exactly what one goes looking for at a congress.

Tenerife, in its biggest edition yet

The island set the scene. Tenerife brought a historic presence to Madrid Fusión 2026: a 400-square-metre stand spread across four spaces, a full house at every one of its activities — 1,100 attendees — and a presence on the congress’s main stages.

We come away with the usual thing: a home-grown ingredient placed at the centre of a national contest and a long conversation about a technique that still has a long way to go. Not bad for three days in January.

Read the contest report on Mercasa: Luis Callealta, winner of the V National “Cocinando el Mar” Contest.

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