Un Grain de Sel started as a small market stall project and grew into a bistronomic restaurant and cooking workshop. We are the team behind the counter, the suppliers we meet each morning, and the regulars who return for the weekly changing menu.
Updated March 2025
Un Grain de Sel began as a small market stall project and grew into a bistronomic restaurant and cooking workshop in the heart of the city. We work with a short weekly menu shaped by what local producers bring to the market, and we run Saturday morning workshops on choosing, preparing, and seasoning seasonal vegetables without waste. This page introduces the people, principles, and history behind the kitchen.
We are a team of cooks, greengrocers, and hosts who believe that good food starts with honest ingredients and careful technique. Our kitchen is led by Diego Romero Martinez, whose background in classical French technique meets a deep respect for Malaysian produce. Maria Aguilar Aguilar oversees the market relationships, visiting suppliers early each morning to select the day's vegetables, fish, and herbs. Gabriela Gonzalez Castro runs the Saturday workshops and develops the zero-waste recipes that have become a signature of the house.
Our cooking follows a simple rule: the menu changes when the market changes. We do not chase trends or keep a fixed list of dishes. Instead, we build each week's carte around what is ripe, affordable, and worth cooking. This approach keeps the kitchen honest and the plates lively.
The kitchen opens at 7:00 to receive deliveries and sort produce. By 10:00, the menu board is written by hand and the prep list is set. Lunch service runs quietly for business meetings, while evenings welcome small groups in the vaulted room. On Saturdays, the tables are cleared and the space becomes a workshop floor where participants cook alongside our team.
We opened Un Grain de Sel in 2019 after years of watching good produce go to waste in commercial kitchens. The idea was simple: build a restaurant small enough to stay flexible, close enough to the market to buy daily, and open enough to teach what we know. The vaulted room, the terracotta tones, and the olive-green chairs are not decoration — they are the atmosphere we wanted for long lunches and slow dinners.
Our kitchen depends on a small circle of growers, foragers, and suppliers who deliver what is ripe and ready each week. These are the people behind the market board, the Saturday workshops, and the private dinners in the vaulted room.
Olive oil, table olives, and preserved lemons from a family grove outside the city. Their cold-pressed oil is the base of most of our dressings and marinades.
Seasonal vegetables grown on a small terraced plot. We adjust the menu around their weekly harvest, so the board changes with the weather and the soil.
Daily sourdough loaves and rye bread baked in a wood-fired oven. They also supply the flour for our Saturday pastry workshops.
Line-caught fish and shellfish landed each morning at the small harbor. We buy whole fish and break them down in-house, using every part for stocks and sauces.
Wildflower honey and beeswax from hives set along the acacia rows. The honey appears in desserts and in the glaze for our roasted root vegetables.
Un Grain de Sel started in 2016 as a small counter at the Saturday market, where the chef tested a short menu of three dishes written on a chalkboard. The idea was simple: cook whatever the nearby farms delivered that morning, and change the board as soon as the crates emptied. That first season taught us how to build a menu around what actually arrives, not what we wish would arrive.
2016
2018
2020
2022
2024