He began his career as a chef in 1986. At the age of 14 he started working in the kitchen and immersing himself in books, almost all of them by French chefs with very different culinary trajectories from the one he was working on at that time. This sparked an interest in food that went beyond sustenance alone. At 18, he began visiting Spain’s best gourmet restaurants of the day. In 1988 he started working at the restaurant he now owns, El Poblet (now Quique Dacosta Restaurante), which initially offered Castilian food and later began to serve a selection of local seafood. An innovative new cuisine of Alicante, Valencia and Spain itself began to take shape and acquire context. Throughout the late 80s and early 90s, different culinary styles were combined under Quique Dacosta’s leadership to create a new Valencian cuisine. Cooking brought up to date using new techniques: he wanted to lighten cooking as a central concept and adjust the cooking points of the products and preparations. To create using local products as a leitmotif of his work, and always with a window open to the world, to the cultures of other countries, their cuisines and produce as a way of enriching his expertise and what he offered. In 2020 Quique Dacosta was awarded with the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts from Spanish Government. The 2012/2013 Michelin Guide awarded three stars to Quique Dacosta Restaurante.