Founder

On the 22nd of May 1985, Antonio Martínez Belenguer founded El Gastrónomo Restaurant, but this project took shape much earlier and during a long career of sacrifice and learning.

Born in Valencia in 1949, in a humble family, welder since he was ten years old, it was when he was sixteen years old that he went into the world of catering industry as a learner at Los Madriles Restaurant (Valencia) along with Pablo Martínez. "With Pablo I learnt the illusion at work, the importance of doing things well and he inculcated me the fact that the guest always has to leave satisfied".

Since then an entire journey through the best restaurants in the Valencian Community started: Sol y Sombra Seafood Restaurant (67), El Montíboli Hotel (68), the first luxury hotel in the Costa Blanca. It was there where he had his great master, Pedro Pérez and where he lived what he called his golden age, either for what he learnt, or for what he lived, as well as for being seduced by those lands. "Pedro Pérez has been an excellent master, always searching for the overcoming with strong willpower and transmitting demands and illusions. He was my point of reference in the dining room.

After The Montiboli Hotel, he moved to Viveros (70), Sidi San Juan Hotel in Alicante (73), Bravísimo Restaurant in Benidorm (74), Sidi Saler Hotel in Valencia (75), Azafata Hotel (78) where he met José Antonio Balastegui, whom he would invite to join the project, are some of the examples. It is in 1979, at last, when he becomes independent shaped like Alicante Brewery, also in Primado Reig Avenue, while he keeps on maturing his project, which still would take six more years to be materialized.

And it is here, at El Gastrónomo Restaurant, where this admirer of catering industry, tenacious and constant at his work, achieves his dream and all what he had absorbed so far begins to emerge, elaborating with great illusion a supply of classic international cuisine combined with the best regional cuisine.

Antonio Martínez Belenguer died in November 2004; but nowadays that spirit that only the course of time gives to the best restaurants in a city is still breathed. Some things have changed during the last years, but with the respect of that who repairs antiques to make them still look like contemporary jewels.