Gastroville

A fantastic spiny lobster and some other dishes including sea dates made up an excellent meal. The Catalan cream on the other hand was more ordinary in its execution.

Can Roca

Vedat wrote a negative report from his meal at Can Roca a couple of months ago. I can only agree with him. My meal at Can Roca, featuring many of the courses that Vedat had, was simply not an acceptable performance of such a highly regarded restaurant. I would even say that very little showed real culinary interest. Flavors were throughout the meal not very good expressions of the used raw material and many dishes had flavour profiles that came across as artificial or “industrial”. A smoked asparagus soufflé had asparagus flavors masked by a fire smoke-like taste that lacked the complex flavors of properly done smoking when the complex smoky flavors enhances the produce rather than kills it. The lingering flavor of fire smoke went on for much too long giving the impression of having licked an ashtray. I failed to see any culinary point with the mussels prepared on the Riesling theme. Except for maybe the final dessert, there was not even one single dish that offered interest beyond the first bit and not one single item served is something that I would desire to eat again.

Indeed this is often the problem with many of the Spanish “modernistas”. Beyond a first bite, the food is rarely particularly appealing and personally I rarely want to eat something more than one time. It comes down to different reasons such as the rare use of truly exceptional ingredients, flavors come across as muted or artificial and very often there is a lingering after taste that effectively kills the next dish or in some of the most worse cases the next couple of dishes. There is rarely any clarity or definition in the tastes at these places. On top of this, the multi-course menus offers many dishes based on inexpensive and pedestrian ingredients of not particularly good quality morphed beyond recognition and beyond culinary interest. The portion sizes of more noble produce are often too tiny to offer any gustatory highlights. At Can Roca, as meat course a rack of kid was served but only two ribs!! It was okay I suppose since the kid was of good rather than exceptional quality but was ruined by long sous vide cooking.

Can Roca is often cited as an example of an inexpensive 2-star Michelin restaurant and while it is true that prices are low in absolute terms, people thinking it offers more value for money than others will be fooled. Food costs – in relative terms - are likely on par with other restaurants. You get what you pay for. For food that is. With respect to wines, Can Roca remains one of the great bargains.

The bread at Can Roca does not even get my vote as being mediocre.

I would say that Vedat’s 14/20 rating was a quite a bit generous.

L’Esguard

I really looked forward to trying l’Esguard. It is easy to be intrigued by a restaurant whose owner is a part time neurosurgeon and who devotes much of his free time to his big passion.

The restaurant space is fantastic with a unique ambiance and there are many details that other gastronomic restaurants should take after such as the innovative lighting of tables.

The food was on the one hand visually very impressive and beautiful, in fact I would go so far and say that it was some of the most beautiful food I have ever seen. On the other hand the preparations where mainly unpalatable and those that were not, lacked with literally no exceptions any gustatory interest. A few dishes were so awful as a result from using unacceptable ingredients (old scallops, shellfish and shrimps e t c) that they have to be tasted to be believed. Ingredients that were not “off” were with only few exceptions of good quality. The scallop dish and the plate of “mixed cuts” were two examples of unpalatable preparations with the shrimps having actively nasty off-flavors.

Then there was a salmon wrapped in microfilm which must count as one of the poorest pieces of salmon I have had in a gastronomic restaurant. There was also a pigeon that was of little interest as far as produce quality and dish-conception was concerned.

The micri-film-crepe with chocolate mousse somewhat illustrated many dishes. A beautiful preparation but one cannot help thinking if the dish would not have tasted better with a normal crepe rather than the tasteless rubbery micri-film as a wrapping. Anyway, I suppose that it illustrates why micri-film has not become a great success with gastronomic restaurants.

Perhaps the meal at l’Esguard was partly tainted by abnormally poor ingredients, but even so, many of the items served were on such level that they should have never left the kitchen. It is difficult to rate a restaurant performing like this. Any rating in Gastroville terms of l’Esguard would fall well below 9/20.

Abac

Abac was perhaps a pleasant meal from some points of view but several courses were tainted by many too long lingering tastes that masked subsequent dishes. Some preparations were simply bizarre. Only the salted cod belly with peas pil-pil sauce was really enjoyable.

Paying high prices for food on this level always leaves me with a lingering sour after taste. Gastroville rating 9/20.

El Poblet

As already stated, it was El Poblet that delivered cooking on the highest level. Indeed, El Poblet delivered two exceptional meals that are possibly the best meals I have had in Spain. The first night we had the tasting menu mostly focusing on modern dishes and it was so good we had to go back a second time to sample more “traditional dishes” and it was perhaps an even better meal.

I have not been particularly impressed by the food served in the restaurants of the Spanish modernistas. On the contrary, I have often found the quality of the produce served in these restaurants to be well below what is acceptable and coupled with the often complicated technique stunts used by these restaurants a result is achieved that has a gustatory interest that is at best only a pale shadow of the produce in its original form and shape. At El Poblet, Quique Dacosta managed to pull off something exceptional because in many instances he was pairing extraordinary produce with intelligent use of modern techniques and the achieved results were interesting and sometimes new expressions of the used raw material. For instance his preparations with cephalopods such as The Other Moon of Valencia, a soufflé-like concoction served the first night was a stunning masterpiece that, while extremely rich, perfectly captured the essence of sepia in different layers of textures. It is a dish that just has to be tried.

The second night we had a another dish, this time with squids, prepared with sperification technique and it is one of the best renditions I have had of this technique that when used often makes you wonder what the point is. Dacosta's "squid's eggs" with a squid bouillon was a masterpiece.

An interesting dish was his The Living Forest, a plate with various items on that when eating gives the impression of being in a damp forest perfectly capturing the true flavors and smells. Perhaps a bit too sweet for the point at which it was served in the meal but a very impressive dish although admittedly nothing I longing to experience again.

Dishes that I on the other hand long to try again included his lobster salad, featuring top-notch lobster and a perfectly balanced salad with crisp, clear and refreshing flavours.

The raw material used was with almost no exception of highest quality such as fantastic red mullets and hake.

There were weak spots such as a lamb dish that was not on the same level as the rest and IMO prepared with lamb of only average quality.

Also Dacosta’s desserts fall below the standards of the rest he is serving. However all in all, Dacosta’s cooking often shows master class techniques and craftsmanship on the highest level and I was mostly impressed with the high clarity and flavors of most dishes especially during the second meal. I would rate the two meals, inparticular the second meal, the best I have had in Spain. The second meal at El Poblet would rank among the dozen best restaurant meals I have had so far this year.

Gastroville rating of El Poblet: 18/20
/Mikael J.