Marco went from loving cooking with his mother and grandmother in León in the northwest of Spain to working in research and development at Mugaritz, a restaurant in the Basque country that annually makes it into the top ten restaurants in the world. He would spend 45 hours a week working on all the possible things you could do with asparagus, for example, and found joy in stretching his imagination and technique through the freedom of creativity. A desire to travel brought him to Melbourne three years ago where he started at Stokehouse and has now moved downstairs to Pontoon as sous chef. He has had a huge role to play in designing the new menu, which is now Basque in flavour, and has some quirky additions inspired by his time at Mugaritz.