Alexis García enters the world's sweet elite

The Tenerife pastry chef Alexis Garcia has been distinguished with the Price for the Pastry Chef 2026 of the International Academy of Gastronomy, one of the most relevant recognitions in the sector and an award that places their work among the outstanding references of contemporary pastry making..

The award recognizes a career built from the Canary Islands, with a way of understanding the trade based on technical rigor, creative sensitivity and respect for raw materials. The Academy has especially valued the balance between technique, creativity and product that defines your proposal, as well as his contribution to the evolution of haute pastry from a current perspective..

The news came while Alexis García and Marlene Hernandez, your partner and project partner, They were traveling in Valencia. Both received the communication with emotion and with that mixture of joy and disbelief that accompanies truly important recognitions..

“It is one of those recognitions that force you to stop and look at the entire path you have traveled.”. I share it with Marlene, with the team and with all the people who have been part of the project during these years”, says Alexis García.

For the pastry chef, The award also has a special value because it comes after having developed his entire career from the islands., far from the large traditional gastronomic centers. His story is not that of someone who joins a current, but that of someone who has been creating his own language from a workshop in Tenerife.

“Working from the islands has defined our way of doing things. The Canary Islands provide us with products, landscape, “memory and our own identity that we try to transfer to each elaboration”, duck.

A worker's life

Alexis García belongs to the third generation of a family of bakers. His relationship with the profession is born, therefore, from an early work culture, of the masses, of the ferments, of puff pastry and artisan bakery. Before the awards, the showcases and the recognitions, the workshop was there.

Together with Marlene Hernández he founded 2007 the project that is presented today under the brand 100% Alexis Garcia, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. From there they have developed a proposal that brings together bakery, pastries, chocolate and haute pastries, with an increasingly recognizable identity inside and outside the Canary Islands.

His professional evolution has been sustained by perseverance, research and a daily demand that begins long before the pieces reach the public. Behind every elaboration there is evidence, precision, technique and a permanent search for balance.

“This job takes time., precision and enormous learning capacity. The award encourages us to continue researching and maintaining an honest pastry shop, recognizable and connected to our territory”, states.

Canary Islands as pantry and identity

One of the differentiating features of Alexis García's work is the incorporation of the Canarian product into a pastry shop with an international language.. Tenerife almonds, Gran Canaria coffee, vanilla grown in the north of Tenerife, pineapple from El Hierro, Canary Islands banana, fleur de sel from Lanzarote or goat butter are part of a pantry that is not used as decoration, but as a root.

These ingredients integrate naturally into breads, fermented doughs, puff pastries, chocolates and haute pastry preparations. The territory appears in the flavor, in the texture and memory of the product, without the need to resort to obvious gestures or folkloric readings.

Its pastry has an Atlantic identity and contemporary technical execution.. In your pieces, Canary Islands does not appear as a postcard, but as a way of looking, of selecting ingredients and building flavor.

The rule of the masses

The puff pastry, pastries and fermented doughs occupy a central place in Alexis García's workshop. This domain has become one of his main hallmarks and explains a good part of the respect that his work has generated in the sector..

Each piece is based on a meticulous construction that involves the selection of raw materials., temperature control, fermentation times, laminating and firing. Nothing is left to chance in a job where the margin of error is minimal.

The technique, however, does not overpower the flavor. It is at your service. The showcase is presented as a gastronomic space where research coexists, job, territory and emotion.

A stage of recognition

He Price for the Pastry Chef 2026 culminates a particularly important stage in Alexis García's career. In 2024 He was proclaimed Best Master Pastry Artisan in Spain, becoming the first participant in the history of the competition to obtain the best score in all the competition tests: artistic piece, chocolate and fruit cake, sourdough, nougat, petit fours and restaurant post.

Added to this achievement are other recognitions such as Revelation Pastry Chef in Madrid Fusion 2018, Best Pastry Chef in the Canary Islands, he Manuel Iglesias Award of the National Gastronomy Awards of Diario de Avisos and The Golden Crumb, obtained in 2019.

“The awards help to make visible the craft and effort of an entire team, but they also increase responsibility. Our goal continues to be to improve every day and offer rigorously crafted pieces., sensitivity and respect”, concludes Alexis García.

An international recognition

Founded in 1983, the International Academy of Gastronomy brings together national academies from different countries and recognizes professionals every year, relevant projects and initiatives on the global gastronomic scene.

The candidacy of Alexis García was proposed from Spain by the Royal Academy of Gastronomy. In the Spanish record of 2026 also appear Oriol Castro, Eduard Xatruch and Mateu Casañas, from the restaurant Enjoy; Vicky Seville; Israel Ramirez; Rosa Tovar; y David Moncasi.

The presence of Alexis García in this selection reinforces the international projection of Spanish pastry and places the work developed in Tenerife among the most outstanding proposals in the sector..

For the Canary Islands, the prize has an added reading. Recognize a pastry chef, but also a way of working from the islands: with local product, patiently, with technique and with a clear idea of ​​identity. Alexis García has shown that a Tenerife workshop can dialogue with the world without stopping looking at its land.