On a Wednesday morning in October 2021, Chef Aitor Zabala put on his kitchen jacket and felt something he had not expected.

It felt heavier than it should have.

That week, his sous-chef resigned. The same day, he learned the restaurant space he had chosen to reopen Somni in was gone, taken by another bidder. Sitting alone with his coffee, Zabala considered whether it was time to stop.

At TEDxBeverlyGrove 2026, under the theme “Reimagining the Possible,” Zabala told the TEDxBeverlyGrove audience what happened instead. A single sentence arrived, quiet and unremarkable, and became the rule that carried him through the years that followed.

Not today.

Wait one more day.

Zabala’s talk traced the years leading up to that moment. Somni first opened in Beverly Hills in 2018 after years of preparation. Two years later, the restaurant closed along with so many others during the pandemic. What followed was nearly four years without a dining room, without guests, spent largely alone in a small test kitchen, uncertain whether he would ever cook for anyone again.

Eventually, Zabala made the decision to leave the company that had brought him to the United States, choosing to start over from nothing rather than continue inside a structure that no longer fit who he was becoming.

“Reimagining the possible doesn’t start with inspiration,” Zabala told the audience. “It starts with endurance.”

Zabala described rebuilding Somni not as an attempt at perfection, but as an attempt at honesty: a smaller, closer restaurant built to reflect who he actually was rather than a monument to what a three-Michelin-star kitchen was supposed to look like.

Seven months after Somni reopened in West Hollywood, the Michelin Guide awarded the restaurant Three Michelin Stars. Somni entered the Michelin Guide California selection directly at the highest level, and the recognition made Zabala, according to Spanish and Catalan press reports, the first Spanish chef to earn three Michelin stars outside Spain.

Zabala closed his talk by returning to the discipline at the center of it, a practice built not on confidence or certainty, but on the willingness to ask for one more day, repeated for as long as it took.

For Zabala, “one more day” was not optimism.

It was a discipline small enough to survive doubt.

Aitor Zabala is Owner and Executive Chef of Somni, a three-Michelin-star restaurant in West Hollywood. Born in Barcelona, he trained at three-Michelin-star Akelarre before joining El Bulli, where he spent four years in the kitchen and elite test kitchen. After a decade as Creative Director at José Andrés’ ThinkFoodGroup, Zabala opened Somni in Beverly Hills in 2018, earning two Michelin stars before the pandemic forced its closure. He reopened Somni in West Hollywood in 2024 and, seven months later, earned Three Michelin Stars.

Aitor Zabala’s talk will be released online in the coming months as part of the TEDxBeverlyGrove 2026 speaker series.

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