Entrance:

A very fancy Michelin starred restaurant in the Eixample. Come here if you want to splurge on a quiet dinner with very simple but high quality Mediterranean fare. At this time of year, I made reservations 2 days in advance and had no problems.

Interior:

Founded in 1869, this restaurant was passed down through the generations and was finally relocated to a very modern looking space in 2004.

Another shot of the interior:

Very dark with black walls, floors, and ceilings, with red accents, bright white table cloths, and spotlight lighting. We were seated on the 2nd floor which seemed to only have about 15 tables, each of which were occupied by the same party throughout the entire dinner hours. I am not sure if this was the only dining room, but the downstairs is a spacious bar.

To start off, tiny appetizers were brought to the table.

Clockwise from top left:
Soft crispy edged balls that were probably fish and potato croquettes. Tasted like a yummy creamy asian (not sure why) fish ball.
The next one was a bunch of small lightly fried things that resembled chips. Very crispy and tasted like popcorn: a thin sheet of popcorn!
Next, 2 types of crunchy bread sticks. The bumpy looking ones to the right were crunchy, sugary, and honey flavored, kind of like a pocky stick.
In the center, 2 sweet cheese biscuits/butter cookies. Really buttery and crumbly with a strong stinky(but yummy!) cheese flavor.
Lastly, 2 little rounded cakes that tasted like a salty corn muffin with perhaps a date in the middle? I’m not sure what the dark thing in the center is, but it was flavorless. Service was quick, so we barely made it through this set of fun finger foods before the next dish arrived!

Bread.

The round “milk” bread on the left was a buttery and sweet fluffy pastry bread.

Almond garlic soup with lobster.

Another little starter. They serve the bowl with all the seasonings on the bottom and pour in the almond milk like soup. Garlic flavors, but mostly tastes like almond milk. Lukewarm/coldish temperature and a grainy texture makes me think even more of almond milk! On top, a very chewy lobster piece with a nice crispy burnt edge, and 2 small sheets of salty and sweet caramelized sugar.

At first glance, the menu was a little scary for me. The first thing I saw was “warm salad of brains” in the appetizers section. Thankfully, there was much more than that for me to choose from! As a first course, I decided on one of the daily specials:

Poached eggs with potato parmentier and perretxico mushrooms €26.10

The waitress was very kind and explained many menu items to me, including this dish which features 2 types of less commonly found mushrooms. Being a big fan of eggs benedict and mushrooms, I chose this for my appetizer. The moment the plate was presented before me, pungent cracked open boiled egg smells filled my nose (in short, it smelled like fart!). The neat poached egg was cooked just right with the perfect soft texture and slightly watery yolk. Underneath was a soft patty of, I’m guessing, mushrooms, which had a beany, pea taste. All of this was rested in a sweet pumpkin like cream, I really don’t know what it was, but it was yummy. The cutest, tiniest, baby mushrooms shown floating in the cream and on top of the egg, as I was told, are only in season 3 months of the year. I just couldn’t get over how cute and tiny they were!

Sautéed Artichokes, Sea Scallop and Squid Roll €27.50

Another appetizer, consisting of really soft, barely cooked fresh translucent scallops in a sweet and sticky sauce. The artichokes were just as sweet, and the little bag of roe in the top left corner, I assumed, was the squid roll. The roe pops in your mouth and fills it with salmon flavored water. Is it really squid? I also have not found out what this sweet and sticky sauce is. I’ve had it many restaurants and it always reminds me of sweet soy sauce or maybe a caramelized balsamic vinaigrette from the color.?

Salt-coated gilthead in “cocotte”, chervil salad and oven-roasted pumpkin €33.10

A substantial piece of white fish underneath a crunchy salt crust. I had no idea how to eat this, and was a bit embarrassed to ask, so I just ate it like any normal fish. Definitely cannot eat the crust! It was pure salt, a thick cake of pure salt, which made the fish too too too too salty to eat. My mouth puckered and hurt from the salt, and I bet the waiters were secretly laughing at my foolish mistake. I still do not know how to eat this salt-coated fish, I just ate the fish part and left the salt alone. The orange thing at the bottom was a super sweet candied yam, I guess, the pumpkin. The fish was complimented with that same sweet caramelized dark sauce that I need to look up. In the top left corner was a small pile of salty burnt crumbs of some familiar vegetable that I couldn’t name at the time. I still want to know how to eat this fish. It was so salty, I had no idea how to approach eating it.

Pan Seared Sea-Bass with Seasonal Baby Vegetables €37.90

A pretty basic plate of normal sea bass with baby vegetables. The thing on the right resembling mashed potatoes, we both agreed, tasted like a mashed chef boyardee canned pasta. I feel bad comparing something from a high class restaurant to a can of pasta, but that’s what it tasted like! Not necessarily a bad thing…

Café con Leche €3.50


Sweet Dust and 5 Varieties of Chocolate 72% Cocoa €10.15

From left to right: a really thick chocolate mousse, dark chocolate ice cream, creamy thick chocolate flan, a plain and dry fried donut ball and a powder mixture of cinammon, nutmeg, chocolate and sugar dust. The donut ball would have done better if it was filled with cream or ice cream.

Complimentary desserts:

From top clockwise: Salty sugar coated chocolate sticks, like the sticks in the starters. Sweet butter cookies with extra buttery chocolate cream centers. Dry chocolate powder covered caramelized sugar coated crunchy walnuts, really nice to munch on. Dense muffin textured cake topped with crunchy sugar, with an eggy taste, maybe a slight pistacio flavor or I’m imagining it from the green color.

Pretty good restaurant overall; afterall, they did get a Michelin star.
However, the atmosphere was a little too sleepy and silent for me (it seemed that everyone spoke quietly or whispered, and there was no background music or anything). Also, the high contrast lighting and bloated feeling from slowly nibbling on salt and salty fish added to my sleepiness. I think I will take a break from these fancy restaurants for now, and maybe return in 15 years when I am older and more sophisticated…
The service was good and felt quick, as we always had food on the table, but the dinner surprisingly ended up being about 3 hours long.

Receipt:
2 Pa i entreteniments 7.80
1 Saltat carxofes amb vieires 27.50
1 Ou “Poche” Permentier Patates i Moixerons 26.10
1 Llobarro a la paella i v erduretes 37.90
1 Orada en cocotte a la sal 33.10
1 Pulsim dolc, i 5 xocolates 10.15
1 Café amb llet 3.50
2 Servei D’Aigua 6.00
total+tax= €162.69 (dinner for 2)

This entry was posted by chicken on Monday, June 5th, 2006 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Barcelona, Eixample Esquerra, Mediterranean, Catalan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.