José Álvarez was born in El Ejido in 1971. Chef by tradition and by vocation, self-taught, he learned the basics of the trade with his father in the family restaurant, where he went into the kitchen at the age of 16 to turn around the business model, one of the oldest restaurants in the town of Almeria. His work began to bear fruit, transforming what had been a menu bar into a gastronomic restaurant, and in 2006 he was awarded a Michelin Star, which he has renewed every year since then. La Costa also has a Sol Repsol.  

The current La Costa restaurant is, therefore, an evolution of the business that was set up in the 1970s by Rogelio Álvarez and Iluminada Moreno. He was a transport and agricultural entrepreneur and she was a restaurateur. Together they decided to take over the bar La Costa, which served one of the first vegetable auctions to be founded in El Ejido, behind the bar and with which it communicated through a door. For this reason, La Costa has always had a very close relationship with agriculture.

An intuitive cook, Álvarez did not want to study at any hotel and catering school, as he considered that where he learned most was by working in the restaurant, also thanks to the cooks who passed through La Costa before he took over the controls of his kitchen. After years of experience, in 2002 La Costa reopened its doors with a José Álvarez already erected as a chef, and an aesthetic facelift.  

Since then, La Costa has not ceased to pursue the summit of taste of a cuisine that speaks of the product of the seas that bathe its kitchen: the Alboran Sea, from where he extracts the fish and seafood, and the 'green sea', as the chef calls the plastic sea (greenhouses) that shapes the landscape of Almeria. Álvarez has found a stronghold in all the innovation that has developed around vegetables, now focused on organic farming and recovering flavour. In fact, new varieties are coming into his hands every day, developed by the main seed companies, while at the same time he has small local suppliers who take great care of the most ancient and sought-after varieties.  

In 2017, Álvarez turned the business around by creating "Barra de José Álvarez", a new concept in the space where the old tavern used to be.