Leticia Landa Wins the 2025 Basque Culinary World Prize

Often described as the “Nobel Prize of gastronomy,” the Basque Culinary World Prize is awarded annually to a chef who is using their craft to drive social change. This year, the €100,000 award went to a California-based woman who’s working to empower entrepreneurs. 

The 2025 winner of the Basque Culinary World Prize, Leticia Landa, is the co-executive director of La Cocina in San Francisco, a nonprofit kitchen incubator that has helped women, immigrants, and people of color launch more than 150 food-focused businesses.

The jury that awarded the prize — chaired by acclaimed chef and co-owner of El Celler de Can Roca, Joan Roca — praised Landa’s leadership skills and efforts to make the food industry more equitable.

“Through her leadership, Leticia has helped transform kitchens into spaces of opportunity where talent, perseverance, and community come together to change lives,” Roca explains via email. “What moves us most about her work is its humanity: the quiet, consistent effort to lift others and to make sure that talent finds a place to grow.”

Born in Texas to Mexican immigrant parents, Landa studied anthropology at Harvard before joining La Cocina in 2008. Over nearly two decades, she has helped shape the organization into a nationally recognized model for culinary entrepreneurship. “It’s been such a warm glow to be recognized in this way and to see more people discovering La Cocina,” she notes.

For Landa, this recognition is less about a personal accomplishment than it is about the community she represents. As she details, “This achievement represents the work of many people over 20 years dedicated to advancing La Cocina’s mission.”

La Cocina’s work has long-lasting impacts

La Cocina’s impact is visible across the Bay Area. More than 40 restaurants, cafés, and food stalls have emerged from its program, and 70% of participants remain in business a decade after graduation — a remarkable survival rate in the restaurant industry.

This success has broader impacts on the surrounding community. As Landa explains, “Any small business has an outsized economic effect. There’s the human capital, the employees, the wages, the farmers, the suppliers. All of the different ways in which the economy is affected by having local food businesses are really important.”

Supporting small, independent businesses is also vital to San Francisco’s cultural and culinary diversity. “Imagine a city without locally owned restaurants — just chains and ghost kitchens. What an awful, sad place that would be,” the award winner emphasizes. 

La Cocina’s mission isn’t easy. Its vision of resilience and a thriving community must coexist alongside harsh realities, like the many immigrant-run kitchens that are currently operating under the shadow of political uncertainty and fear. 

Chef Heena Patel, who opened her restaurant Besharam after completing the program, describes the toll this climate takes on her team. “Half of my staff is scared. Every weekend, I ask them, ‘What are you doing on your day off?’ and they say, ‘We’re going to stay home.’ It makes me sad. My current goal is to make them feel safe,” the chef recounts. 

Her words underscore that La Cocina’s work is not only about creating economic opportunity but also building a sense of security and dignity in uncertain times.

Landa’s work manifests the mission of the Basque Culinary World Prize in action. Per Roca, “Leticia embodies the essence of what we celebrate with this prize: a belief that gastronomy can be a force for good, capable of shaping fairer societies.”

At home, her influence is felt deeply by La Cocina’s graduates. “Leticia has such grounded energy. She makes you want to be your best self,” Patel says. 

The chef remembers asking Landa early on how long she would wait for her to succeed. Landa’s response, “as long as it takes,” became a guiding reassurance.

The nonprofit is creating a new model for other food incubators

The Basque Culinary World Prize has previously honored chefs including José Andrés, Leonor Espinosa, and Anthony Myint for redefining gastronomy’s role in society. Landa’s win signals a continued shift toward valuing social entrepreneurship in addition to innovation in fine dining.

“I hope it says that people really care about there being locally owned, culturally specific restaurants, and that that’s something worth investing in,” Landa notes.

In a city known for quick-turnaround tech startups, La Cocina incubates businesses for six years to help ensure they don’t just get off the ground but that they can continue thriving long term.

That philosophy has yielded results: La Cocina’s graduates include Veronica Salazar of El Huarache Loco, Reem Assil of Reem’s California and the author of the cookbook Arabiyya, and Nite Yun of Lunette, who was featured on Chef’s Table and recently published her cookbook, My Cambodia.

Through her work and La Cocina, Landa hopes to shift perceptions about immigrant-led food businesses. “If I could wave a magic wand, it would be to change the idea that immigrant food should be cheap,” she details. “Our foods are still undervalued relative to how long they have to simmer and how many spices and flavors go into them.”

Beyond San Francisco, La Cocina has become a template for similar initiatives worldwide. Incubators like The Kitchen Project in Auckland, New Zealand, and Spice Kitchen in Utah, which works with refugees, both drew on La Cocina’s business model when developing their own.

The Basque Culinary World Prize recognizes positive change in the food industry

The Basque Culinary World Prize has always been about more than its individual award winners. It reflects a desire to leverage the power of food for good and create more opportunities for everyone in the culinary world.

“More than just an award, the Basque Culinary World Prize represents a global network of inspiring people who embody values deeply linked to Basque culture: hard work, collaboration, equality, sustainability, and the constant pursuit of excellence,” Amaia Barredo, Basque Government Minister for Food, Rural Development, Agriculture, and Fisheries, explains in the prize announcement.

For Landa, the recognition is a chance to amplify La Cocina’s mission and to remind diners everywhere that their choices matter. 

“Where you eat matters,” she emphasizes. “If you want awesome little local coffee shops and restaurants and bars, you’ve got to go to them, and you have to be their customer.”

With this award, Landa joins a roster of culinary leaders who have redefined what it means to be a chef. Her work at La Cocina demonstrates that the future of gastronomy is not only about delicious innovation on the plate but also calls for building communities where food businesses can be sustainable, economically independent, showcase cultural pride, and effect lasting change.