His hours of sleep, already scarce due to the pace set by the trade, have been further reduced with Leo, about to turn three months old.
If you add to that a 7,000-kilometre flight and a schedule full of conferences, recognition from colleagues or visits to relatives, there are plenty of fingers on one hand to calculate what you sleep per day.
The same ones with which Marcos Campos rubs his eyes as he narrates how he got to this maelstrom: at 29 years old, this Valencian chef is the youngest to get a Michelin star.
They awarded it to him in April 2021 for his creations at the Porto restaurant in Chicago.
It is in this American city of almost three million population that he has lived for a decade, although he thought that the American adventure would last a few weeks.
"I was just going to try it," admits Campos during the celebration of Gourmet Mediterranean at the Valencia Fair.
The jump to the other side of the ocean was preceded by a hobby that he developed since he was little: his father was a butcher, his mother a baker and his aunt a fishmonger.
“They had their stalls in the Alaquàs market.
He was wrapped up in the product,” he smiles.
Raised in the town of Torrent, a few minutes from the capital, he regularly helped in business.
Even when he got into a cooking course at the Universidad Laboral de Cheste.
"I have photos preparing dishes as a child, and I knew I liked it, but in my life I hoped to be where I am now,"
From school he went to the kitchen.
He made the practices compatible with the study and when he finished he left the province.
"I wanted to see what was outside my area," Campos justifies.
The chef moved to Las Pedroñeras, in Cuenca.
Under the tutelage of Manolo de la Osa at Las Rejas restaurant, he completed his training in signature culinary art, focused on the Manchego tradition.
"I learned the base, the technique," he says.
Looking for another job break, he left for Denmark.
“A friend of mine told me that they needed people.
I took the backpack and left, ”he sums up.
This northern European country is where he established his first ties with Daniel Alonso, owner of Porto and partner of the Bonhomme Hospitality Group company, with a dozen stores and some 450 people on staff.
“He offered me to go to Chicago and I accepted, thinking it would be two months.
He had bought the return ticket ”, he comments next to him, seasoning that decision with an anecdote:“ We always say that I arrived as a baby in a basket, that they rang the bell and left me at the door ”.
They clicked from the beginning, they stick together, despite the fact that Campos resisted American culture.
“It was a shock.
In this sector there is a lot of movement, a lot of creativity, but it is very clear that business is business”, he points out.
In this city where winters freeze to the pituitary, his first investment was a coat.
“I had to get a hat, gloves, socks, heaters… I had never been in those temperatures”, he declares.
One of the things he misses the most is the heat, he confesses.
And that he travels often.
To see the family, to enjoy a terrace in the sun almost in any season or to soak up its gastronomy.
The influence of the Mediterranean is still evident in its dishes.
Now that he handles "different concepts" in his menus, where the Galician roots of the owner or his partner and wife, Paloma Martínez, predominate, he does not neglect what she learned with her parents.
“The style of the young chef Marcos Campos is linked to his Spanish heritage.
In Porto, he explores a cuisine specialized in preserves, seafood and rice dishes typical of the Iberian Peninsula ”, they highlighted in the Michelin guide.
"I don't like to set limits.
I wink at my land, but I don't want to limit myself ”, he expresses, convinced that “without a doubt ”nostalgia is perceived in his recipes.
That homesickness that keeps him awake, active, despite his lack of rest: “I want to observe, learn.
And he takes energy to squeeze the time ”.