Behind the Scenes at a 3 Michelin Star Restaurant: My Insider Experience

At the end of September in 2024, I headed to Spain’s southern province of Andalucía to begin a three month culinary internship at one of the world’s best restaurants. Headed by Chef Ángel León, known in Spanish as ‘El Chef de Mar’, Aponiente has held three Michelin stars since 2017. Having quit my job in marketing two years earlier to follow my passion and retrain as a chef, the internship at Aponiente represented my final and greatest challenge in my training.

The world of top level fine dining is filled with unique restaurants and personalities. No one kitchen is the same, particularly at a three Michelin star level where idiosyncrasy and creativity are so important, and no two people will have exactly the same experience in a kitchen. In this article, I’ll share what it was really like working at Aponiente, the highs and lows, and the most valuable lessons I learned from the experience.

The year before my internship at Aponiente, I spent one month interning in Bo.TiC, a two Michelin star restaurant in Catalonia, near Girona. That was my very first time working in any kind of kitchen whatsoever, and while it was a valuable experience in my training, it was also a gruelling baptism of fire for someone who was accustomed to working a steady nine to five behind my laptop. Before Aponiente, I also completed another three-month internship at Annwn, a green Michelin restaurant in Pembrokeshire, West Wales.

Any restaurant with Michelin stars is outstanding, but from my experience there are some notable differences between green star, two star and three star restaurants. I worked around 11 hours daily at the green star, nearer 13 hours daily at the two star, while days at Aponiente were rarely under 14 hours. Additionally, the pressure increases with each star: I had some freedom to work unsupervized and learn at my own pace at the green star, while everything was done at breakneck speed at the three star, with little patience for slow learners or imperfections. 

A one star could use the best local, seasonal produce, a two star does this, but could include more premium ingredients like caviar, A5 wagyu or fresh truffle. Aponiente, meanwhile features ingredients served nowhere else on earth, like plankton and candied tuna medulla. Consistency and the commitment to sheer culinary perfection, no matter what it takes, also set three stars apart.

True to his ‘Chef of the Sea’ moniker, Ángel León’s Aponiente asks its customers to imagine a world without land, where everything you consume comes from the sea. It opened in 2007 in a relatively unassuming restaurant space in El Puerto de Santa Maria, just outside Cadiz, before moving to an enormous renovated tidal mill on the salt marshes of the same town. (The original site of Aponiente is now occupied by another of León’s restaurants, La Taberna del Chef del Mar.) The tidal mill was reformed to look like an imposing temple to water, and sets the scene perfectly for an immersive marine culinary experience.

Ángel León and his team’s reputation has made him a living legend in Spain and beyond. They have devised many cutting-edge culinary techniques and introduced customers to marine ingredients like plankton, which is as tasty as it is interesting, and is used to add color and rich sea flavor to butter, pastries, risottos, and even hollandaise. Aponiente also has a green Michelin star, awarded for sustainability, thanks to its innovative use of discarded or unused sea products to create wild dishes like fish eye popcorn, crispy fish skin cigars filled with jalapeño emulsion, and bluefin tuna tendons. Typically discarded fish, referred to as moralla, are used in preparing a range of stocks. Though some dishes sound weird, the magic of Aponiente is that every dish produced there is beautiful, harmonious, and utterly delicious.

On the face of it, working as an culinary intern in a three Michelin star kitchen seems like a tough deal. For restaurants like Aponiente, with a reputation that justified an episode of “Chef’s Table” dedicated to Ángel León, interns are unpaid. On top of this, the time commitment is all-consuming. A typical day would begin around 6:30 a.m. and end around 11 p.m., with a short break for a coffee and toast to start the day, 30 minutes for lunch at 11 a.m., as well as a longer break in the afternoon for an hour or two. All in all, an average day would be about 15 hours of intense, focused work. Aside from your days off, there’s little you have time for apart from cooking, sleeping and eating.

However, I knew what I was heading into. The reputation of three star restaurants is not unearned, and opportunities for learning and ‘leveling up’ your cooking are endless. In essence, the compensation for your commitment are the new skills you leave the restaurant with (and, for the best interns, a job offer after the internship), rather than anything financial. While the industry-wide practice of taking on unpaid interns has attracted criticism, it’s undeniable that these environments are conducive to rapid learning — as long as you can tolerate the sustained pressure. And the abundance of young chefs eager to enter Aponiente’s doors demonstrates that there’s still plenty of belief in the value of completing an internship at the restaurant.

Unpaid internships, or stages, are a curiosity in fine dining culture. Despite controversy, they’re still the norm in the world’s best kitchens. The subject is complex. With unpaid internships, restaurants get free labor and can asses interns as potential candidates for paid roles, while interns gain experience at a top level kitchens, exposure to new techniques, and an opportunity to prove themselves to a potential employer. However, the work usually involves high pressure and long hours. Not everyone can afford to work for free. Questions of elitism within the industry are valid. For restaurants, it can be difficult to hold unpaid interns equally accountable as paid workers; interns can leave at any time, with no obligation to the restaurant.

Making all culinary internships paid would have big impacts on the industry: Some fine dining restaurants simply couldn’t function without this model. If they did, it would substantially alter prices and stripping-back experimentation, complexity, and what makes that restaurant unique.

It would also make internships in the world’s best kitchens aggressively competitive, with those who look best on paper getting opportunities — not necessarily the most motivated. No one works unpaid for many hours each week unless they’re enormously driven by passion. Unpaid internships also allow a flow of young chefs to disseminate knowledge across kitchens. It can be argued that this benefits the entire industry. Grant Achatz would not be the chef he is without his internship at el Bulli; non-profits like Ment’or champion this dissemination, while funding young chefs undertaking unpaid internships. 

For me, culinary internships shouldn’t be a cash-for-knowledge value exchange where you leave with a bunch of new recipes. These internships are about diving headfirst into a top kitchen’s river of work, and finding out whether you sink or swim in the rapids.

True to its status as one of the world’s top restaurants, Aponiente’s kitchen team was large, made up of around 20 full time employees, and around 20 interns at any one time, divided into six sections. Cubos was the team responsible for three amuse bouche courses, served to guests in two glass cube-like annexes (hence the name cubos) in the restaurant’s entrance courtyard. Cold and hot sections were based in the open central kitchen, while pastry was located upstairs in a separate room, decorated with illuminated jars of marine life in formaldehyde and alchemical symbols on the walls. 

The production team worked in glass-box rooms which guests walk past on their way to the dining room, referred to as peceras, or ‘fish bowls’. The R&D team, working closely with the executive chef, were constantly searching for the next big thing in marine sustainability or culinary creativity. On top of this are the dishwashers, and the second chef, head chef, executive chef and, finally, Ángel León himself. Despite the large team, the complex recipe elaborations and impeccable standards meant the entire team was always busy. 

For each section, tasks are delegated by the section leader. Interns tended to be assigned more menial tasks, or work supporting contracted employees. However, all interns would pool together for kitchen-wide tasks like cleaning and returning clean utensils to the storeroom. With perfection being the objective, rigid obedience was expected: Something which wasn’t pressed quite so hard in my previous internships. 

I spent some time in production, the cold section and in cubos while at Aponiente. Every team’s work was different, but in cubos, I’d arrive around 7 a.m. and have 45 minutes before breakfast to prepare an oyster vinegar (and a vegan alternative), blanche tiny prawns called camarones in salted water, then cool, label, and store everything for service.

After 15 minutes for breakfast, I’d gather equipment and measure ingredients for a range of emulsions and sauces: Oyster cream, jalapeño emulsion, plankton hollandaise, and parsley emulsion. Then, I’d head out into the salt marsh around the restaurant to gather wild marsh plants used for decorating dishes. These get washed, dried, and carefully arranged to form natural beds on which we’d serve the amuse bouches. 

Next, I’d set the cubes for lunch service, before helping with tasks like breaking down sea bass by the crate load, or scraping sea bass skins to remove any flesh before they’re cured, dehydrated, then fried and rolled into ‘cigars’. After lunch, I’d change to my uniform for service (mandatory giant chef’s hat included), and do mise en place: portioning tiny flowers, plants, and camarones. 

There comes a full kitchen clean before service, where I’d place the camarones and perfect balls of parsley emulsion onto tortillitas in front of customers. After service we’d continue with some group tasks before cleaning again, then take a break before evening service with a similar flow: mise en place, clean, service, additional tasks, clean.

At three Michelin star level, there’s a lot of pressure to work rapidly, effectively, and cleanly. Not everyone entering the kitchen has a wealth of experience, but it’s expected that everyone is totally committed to working, learning and improving rapidly. A mistake can happen once, but there’s less wiggle room for repeat errors. This environment, combined with the breakneck pace and long hours, can take its toll: From every new intake of interns, a few would quit within weeks. Resources for coping with the stress were limited; I got a sense that I could speak to senior staff if needed, but most support was provided intern-to-intern.

However, from my experience the environment at Aponiente was constructive: If you tackle the (sometimes very direct) feedback head-on, learn quickly, and push harder after a setback, you’d be embraced by the team. The work becomes less a burden, and more a personal challenge to constantly improve. 

At the same time, the adrenaline rush of service was truly intoxicating. It’s an addictive feeling, and sometimes on my days off I longed to be back in the kitchen just for those emotional payoffs. The team understood that the high performance environment is challenging, but the pressure achieved the necessary results for the restaurant, and for the interns looking to improve. From my experience this pressure is still standard in top European kitchens, although some chefs have recently taken steps towards a less ‘grin and bear it’ culture. 

Given Ángel León’s fame, I wasn’t sure how much I could expect to see him in the kitchen on a day-to-day basis. After all, Gordon Ramsay spends more time behind cameras than the stove these days. I was pleasantly surprised to find that León was a visible presence in the restaurant on most days. He took the time to meet every new intern soon after they started, shaking their hand and asking them about their background and home country. One time while working in production, he emerged seemingly out of nowhere with a platter of plankton nougat, insisting that everyone present try a piece (it was indescribably delicious).

Another time, he appeared in the middle of service excitedly bearing a new version of Aponiente’s baby squid with garlic sauce, which he fed to anyone lucky enough to be in arm’s reach. After a private event in the restaurant one evening, León brought out platters of leftover dishes: Cubes of raw bluefin tuna with a fried egg, juicy fried chunks of aged beef, and plump clams covered in sauce.

He was mercurial, appearing and disappearing as if by magic, and his charisma and enthusiasm seemed to give the team a boost. However, the day-to-day leader of the kitchen was chef Alan Iglesias. Idiosyncratic, talented and somewhat intimidating, the head chef was hugely respected by everyone, and his leadership and presence visibly drove the team to strive even harder for perfection.

Three Michelin star kitchens are obsessive about perfection. Every dish would contain a number of different elaborations, some of which could take days to prepare and involve multiple teams. Every Thursday morning, large plastic boxes of sea bass would be delivered to production, and we’d dive into them as a team, furiously scaling, washing and breaking them down into skins, filet (divided into top loin and lower loin), belly, and the head and bones.

Everything would be used for different dishes; the loins were minced, mixed with spices and piped into sausage casing for various marine sausages. The bellies were arranged in perfect layers, glued together with transglutaminase, and later sliced into portions of ‘bacon’, both smoked and unsmoked. The skin was used to form crispy cigars filled with jalapeño emulsion, while the bones were used for stock. Sometimes, R&D would ask us to reserve entrails or certain organs for tests.

Meanwhile, each team had their own elaborations, almost all prepared fresh daily, including sauces and stocks. In the cold section, a potent stew was mixed with a gelling agent and injected into spaghetti-like tubes in ice water to set, before being pushed out and sliced into fideua (a bit like chopped spaghetti) made of solid stew. There were hundreds of different elaborations in total; in pastry I’d see a baby octopus being pressed into a sweet aniseed cracker, or I’d open to walk-in to find total darkness, with an intern carefully sorting and cleaning bioluminescent crab meat.

One major difference with three Michelin star kitchens is cleanliness. While it should be common practice to clean after service in all professional kitchens, at Aponiente we cleaned everything before and after service. By everything, I mean the extractors to the drains. On top of this, there were additional small cleans every time a phase of food prep had come to an end, or before mealtimes, and on Sundays there would be a deep clean.

The kitchen was virtually always spotless, but I feel this wasn’t just about cleanliness. Rigorous cleaning is a group activity in which everyone bar the head chefs are fully in it together, and cleaning to the highest standard emphasizes to the whole team that every detail matters. This message translates to everything you do in the kitchen: It just begins with cleaning, the most basic of tasks.

Culinary work was also, unsurprisingly, expected to be carried out in a methodical way. You’d be more likely to be chastised for making a little mess (even if you’re about to clean it up!) than for poor technique which can quickly be corrected. Even preparing paper towels to absorb excess oil from fried tortillitas needed to be done neatly: The towels needed to be folded at perfect right angles, filling the base of a tray exactly, otherwise they must be redone. The message sunk in. I went from silently tolerating the cleaning, to seeing it as a challenge, before finally it became instinctive.

I’m still processing everything I learned from my time at Aponiente. It has surprised me that my biggest learnings aren’t recipes or cooking techniques (though I picked up plenty of those). Working in a three Michelin star kitchen isn’t for everyone: I completely understand how some people would hate the hours, or the constant pressure for perfection. My internship at Aponiente was one of the greatest challenges of my life, and I have only awe and respect for the employees who could handle that intensity for eight years or more, in some cases.

I left with an immense sense of achievement. Working in a three Michelin star kitchen is something I’d always fantasized about, but the reality is brutally tough. It gave me a much thicker skin than I entered with. Hopefully, this is something I’ll carry with me forever, to help me through future challenges, both inside and outside of kitchens.

I also learned the importance of continuous self-improvement. The Japanese have a term for this: kaizen. In a high performance environment, there isn’t time or patience for gentle encouragement. You must learn, and to do this quick enough, you need to push yourself to improve every day, in every task. I found that Aponiente created an environment where I was continuously pushing myself to be better, for myself. Finally, Aponiente’s ingredients and creativity taught me that in the words of Marco Pierre White, “Mother nature is the true artist.”