Hofmann, Barcelona: the cooking school whose own restaurant holds a Michelin star

Hofmann is the smallest school on this site and the one with the most unusual claim: its own restaurant holds a Michelin star, and the students train in it. Institut Lyfe’s Saisons in Lyon holds a star as well, but Hofmann is a family cooking school rather than a university or a chamber of commerce institution, and the restaurant grew out of the school. This page covers what can be verified about the school and its founder, how the courses work, and what the chefs I interviewed say about learning in a working kitchen.

What the school is

The Escuela de Hostelería Hofmann was founded in 1983 in Barcelona by Mey Hofmann. The school’s own site could not be reached for this page, so the facts here come from the Michelin Guide, Catalan press and a Spanish education directory, and I flag what each supports. The directory Educaweb places the school at Carrer de l’Argenteria 74 to 78 in the Born district, gives the 1983 founding, and dates the restaurant to 1992 and the Pastelería Hofmann in El Born to 2008.

Mey Hofmann’s history, as far as it is verified. The Catalan daily Vilaweb, reporting her death on 3 May 2016 at 69, says she studied economics, interior architecture, gemology and jewelry design, trained at several European hospitality schools, founded the school in 1983 and saw the restaurant receive its Michelin star in 2004, and credits her with training several generations of cooks across three decades. A 2023 tribute in Ara, reporting a homage by the Catalan academy of gastronomy, gives her full name as María Remei Hofmann y Roldós, the daughter of a German engineer and an Ampurdanese concert pianist, says about 20,000 students have passed through the school, and says her daughter Silvia Hofmann continues the business and leads an early expansion into the Middle East. Her place and date of birth, and the detail of her own training, are not in the pages I could verify, so I leave them out.

The school’s position in the field is narrow and clear. It is not a degree school, it does not teach in English, and it does not publish the kind of accreditation a university does. It is a working Barcelona cooking school whose standard is set by the restaurant, and whose alumni have gone on to their own stars.

The restaurant and how students train

Restaurant Hofmann is at Carrer de la Granada del Penedès 14 to 16, in the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district, away from the school’s premises in the Born. The 2026 Michelin Guide España gives it one star, calls it an institution in the upper reaches of Barcelona, and describes the cooking as modern fusion with strong roots in tradition, brought up to date in ingredients, technique and presentation. Michelin says Mey Hofmann’s legacy has passed to her daughter Silvia “and her expert teaching staff,” notes the open view of the kitchen and that the dining room is staffed from the school, and says chefs who trained here have gone on to win their own stars. Lunch is à la carte with a midday gastronomic menu; evenings offer two tasting menus.

Michelin’s own 2019 feature on Spanish schools where stars are born, Escuelas de cocina donde nacen las estrellas, is the source for how students fit in. It says the restaurant, opened in 1992, is where students do their practical training, and calls Hofmann the only training center with a one star restaurant. Educaweb says the same: students do internships at the restaurant and learn how a real restaurant operates. The pages I read do not say what share of the brigade on a given night is students against teachers, so a prospective student should ask that question directly; the Michelin description of an expert teaching staff running the room suggests teachers lead and students work under them, which is how a training restaurant should be run.

Courses and who they are for

Educaweb lists five lines of teaching. The Curso de Hostelería Hofmann, for students aged 16 to 27 who hold at least the Spanish compulsory secondary education certificate, trains a cook from the ground up and is the course the restaurant placements belong to. The Cursos Profesionales are for adults who want to cook or make pastry professionally. The Cursos de Especialización are described as entirely practical, in three intakes a year, with specializations in world cuisines, restaurant marketing and management, and advanced kitchen techniques. The Cursos Monográficos are an annual program of short cooking and pastry workshops. The Curso Intensivo de Cocina is the most searched course on the directory. Course lengths are not given on the pages I could reach, and fees change yearly, so a student should take both from the school.

Teaching is in Spanish and Catalan. That rules the school out for a student who speaks neither, and it is one reason Hofmann does not appear on the English language lists of the world’s best schools. For a Spanish speaker it offers something those lists cannot: a small school where the final exam is service in a starred dining room.

The school is for the young Catalan or Spanish student who wants a trade rather than a degree, for the adult changing careers who wants to cook professionally, and for the working cook who wants a short specialization. It is not for the student who needs an official university title, which is what the Basque Culinary Center offers in San Sebastián.

Alumni and outcomes

Michelin says alumni have gone on to win their own stars without naming them in the restaurant entry. Its 2019 article named David Gil, who started in 2012 at Tickets and became creative pastry chef of the elBarri group, and Fran López of Xerta in Barcelona, which gained its first star that year. The 2023 Ara tribute named the Torres brothers and David Andrés, chef at Via Veneto and co owner of Somiatruites in Igualada, as Hofmann graduates. The independent evidence is thin but it exists: in the Chef’s Pencil study 61 percent of America’s Michelin starred chefs are culinary school alumni, published 16 March 2026, two of the 278 chefs leading starred restaurants in American Michelin cities had trained at Hofmann, a remarkable count for a school this size teaching in Spanish. Beyond that, the school publishes no outcome figures I could find.

What the chefs in my books say

None of the chefs in my books trained at Hofmann, so what I can offer is the view from the kitchens its graduates aim at, and in particular from the Spanish and Catalan chefs whose tradition the school teaches.

Joan Roca of El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, grew up in his parents’ restaurant and learned there before any school.

“I enjoyed being in my mother’s kitchen so much that as young as nine years old she had a chef jacket tailor made for me.” Joan Roca, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

Pedro Subijana of Akelarre in San Sebastián, who went to a hospitality school himself and helped found the Basque Culinary Center, gave the principle a school with a starred restaurant is built on.

“Only after school when you join the ranks of a kitchen, put your skills to work and learn from everyone around you will you begin to absorb true knowledge.” Pedro Subijana, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

David Kinch of Manresa in California described his own education after school as a sequence of stages in exactly such kitchens.

“Following that, I staged with Marc Meneau at a three Michelin-starred restaurant called L’Espérance, in Germany at a now-closed two Michelin-starred restaurant called Schweizer Stuben, and at Akelarre in San Sebastián, which had two Michelin stars at the time.” David Kinch, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

What Hofmann does is fold the stage into the school. The student does not have to write to a chef and hope for a reply; the starred kitchen is the classroom. Andoni Luis Aduriz of Mugaritz, whose own first kitchens at fourteen were cruel enough that he ran from the chef, told me what a kitchen should be instead.

“I came to the conclusion that we needed to create an ecosystem or an appropriate context in which all the skills and virtues of our team would blossom.” Andoni Luis Aduriz, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

A student visiting Hofmann should judge the restaurant by that standard as well as by its star: whether the teachers running the room are forming cooks or using them.

How to decide

Choose Hofmann if you speak Spanish or Catalan or will learn, if you want a trade school rather than a degree, and if cooking and serving in a starred restaurant during your course matters more to you than a credential on paper. Ask the school how many services a student on the Curso de Hostelería works at the restaurant and in which years, who leads the brigade on those nights, what the course lengths are, and where recent graduates are working. Book a table before you apply and watch the room; in a school this small, the restaurant is the whole argument.

Then read the second chapter of The Luxury of Attention, on the apprenticeship, because Hofmann is a school that has made the apprenticeship its method.

“Mastery is not self-taught. Every master in this book is the product of another master.” The Luxury of Attention (2026), Chapter 2

Sources

• Michelin Guide España 2026: Hofmann, Barcelona
• Michelin Guide: Escuelas de cocina donde nacen las estrellas (July 2019)
• Educaweb: Escuela de Hostelería Hofmann
• Vilaweb: S’ha mort Mey Hofmann, fundadora de l’escola d’hostaleria que porta el seu nom (May 2016)
• Ara: Homenaje a Mey Hofmann, una líder empática, firme y visionaria (November 2023)
• Chef’s Pencil: 61 percent of America’s Michelin starred chefs are culinary school alumni (16 March 2026)