From a purely gastronomic standpoint, the experience at Disfrutar is one that changes perspective and cuisine. Despite astronomical technical rates, it has the characteristic of never being an end in itself and keeping the flavor clear at the center. Our story, from the dining room to the dishes.
Chefs and restaurant photos: @Joan Valera
Dishes photos: @Francesc Guillamet
The restaurant
How could a complete synthesis of the future for fine cuisine be configured? In reality, first of all, one should understand that behind the complex machinery of a large (in this case, very large) restaurant, there is a sequence of combined thoughts, a vision, a clear strategy that makes up a path that is in itself a goal. The road to perfection that, in the end, is never achieved - at the risk of the end of the search - but allows expressing a high positive tension right in that direction. The wonder of happy paradoxes.
I am a step ahead, here at Disfrutar, but above all, Oriol Castro, Eduard Xatruch, and Mateu Casañas know how to tell their story and have understood, far from any self-reference, how crucial it is to make their history and evolution known to the public. Emblematic was the ovation received from the entire audience at the Auditori de Barcelona at the moment of Michelin's announcement of the long-awaited third star: a collective enthusiasm from colleagues, all standing happily watching the astonished expressions of the trio.
We were there and felt a different warmth, one that is offered together with enormous respect. Fresh from their long experience at elBulli with Ferran Adrià, these three chefs resumed together from Compartir, in Cadaquès, and Disfrutar - which in Italian we like to translate as "to enjoy," although it is a broader expression that also implies sharing - arrived in December 2014 in Eixample, the largest central area of the Catalan capital, right in front of the Ninot market. The spacious and bright interiors are characterized by ceramics similar to the colors of Joan Mirò, and the entrance is inspired by the city and the wrought iron of the Market; to reach the main dining room, you walk through a suggestive corridor that crosses the spectacular open kitchen. It is a sober place, where spaces and heights represent luxury and anticipate a unique experience.
An experience that starts from a very high level of service, grown over the years with a progressive reduction in the number of covers, now just over forty, inversely proportional to the increase in staff. In this regard, it is worth reading what is reported in the new "Disfrutar Vol. 2," just released, which tells the story of the restaurant from 2018 to 2020. Among the steps: "(...) the customer must feel at home. Reducing the numbers was the only way to provide more comfort to both customers and waitstaff, who would enjoy a more agile workflow, improving their work." All of this goes hand in hand with a meticulous organization of arrival times to make the experience flawless.
From 2018 onwards, the three chefs became aware that Disfrutar was moving entirely in the direction of creativity. They held firm even during the forced closure of the pandemic, and this further intensified their efforts in the same field. They dedicated spaces in the basement exclusively to research and development, continuing to conduct thematic studies on various topics, focusing on products, techniques, and other specific aspects of cuisine: starches, fermented products, microwaves.
It's remarkable how the entire staff is always involved in creative research; in the book, it is stated, "Naturally, we continued to keep an open mind, and since 2018, we started having a weekly meeting with the entire team, including sommeliers and waitstaff: these meetings allowed us to update the staff on the progress made in the research we were conducting. We listened to all the suggestions they had to offer, and during some of these sessions, we created challenges to stimulate creativity, while in others, we launched a discussion on gastronomy and the flavor combinations of some geographical areas of origin of the team members. That period led to the development of a large number of new techniques and concepts, so much so that in 2018, we added 70 creations, another 60 in 2019, and 63 in 2020, leaving out all those that did not have a high level of creativity."
On the purely gastronomic front, the experience at Disfrutar is one that changes perspective and cuisine. At astronomical technical rates, it has the foundational characteristic of never being an end in itself and keeping the flavor clear at the center, in different degrees of radicality and with a playful element underlying the entire journey, an indispensable thread of irreverent irony far from the prophetic virtues that too many star chefs tend to attribute to themselves.
"We embraced new challenges with the intention of achieving a more complex cuisine, made possible by the enthusiasm shown by our customers who always wanted to try new dishes: their trust was a stimulus for our creativity. It is said that our cuisine is very technical and conceptual, but there is no question: in our minds, the product is everything, and we could not cook without the highest quality of the same. We have always wanted to go to the source of the product and have expanded our research to international ingredients because our cuisine knows no boundaries."
The experience
We were talking about the dining room, masterfully led by Vicente Lara and absolutely fundamental for the success of an adventure that transcends from food to entertainment, passing through a whirlwind of taste stimuli translated into textures, temperatures, games, and science converted into pleasure. An experience to be lived, before being told, where immediacy and complexity, imagination, and enjoyment blend into each other. After a few small and absolutely crispy amuse-bouche and a formidable liquid salad, a minimal plate arrives at your table, featuring twelve different sprouts, each with its concentration and the effect of setting the senses in motion, preparing to be challenged at times, pampered at others, but always thoroughly satisfied.
Even for an entertaining enological (and more) pairing, ranging from wine as such to the home-dealcoholized one thanks to the Girovap. For example, it's a self-produced black truffle vodka, letting the tuber macerate in alcohol for just over a month, accompanying the Beluga Panchino: pure delight. To describe it unabashedly, it resembles an incredibly light bombolone obtained from a siphonated foam of dough with water and yeast, fried after being filled with caviar and sour cream.
And then the smoked butter, served again with caviar and a magnifying glass to appreciate the technique that transforms it into a crispy lattice of bubbles: with toasted bread, it's another incredible bite. Just like the amaranth coral with oyster and again caviar: everything changes decisively, in this case translating into a variety of nuances that leave you open-mouthed for their goodness.
One plate after another arrives, engaging and pleasantly merging into a sensation of extreme delight, like all the oil-free microwave-fried dishes that lead you to taste absolute masterpieces of finesse like the crispy mushroom leaf. Or the airy, wonderful "coca," a typical Catalan flatbread, here called, where no flour is used but a mixture that includes potato starch and inulin in very thin layers that, when cooked, gain volume and crispiness, with porcini mushrooms and layered extra virgin olive oil. The cuttlefish with Catalan multisphere pea cream in botifarra negra sauce, a local sausage containing boiled pig blood, is of exquisite goodness.
A timeless classic is the carbonara macaroni in which the pasta is made from thickened ham broth with agar-agar. Evoking a sense of uncertainty at a certain point, you are invited to put your hand into a wooden box emitting smoke: it is dry ice, and your hand finds a huge, succulent shrimp just cooked, accompanied by a spoonful of shrimp and chicken jus. Technique and taste also in the goose that has laid the golden egg: actually, crustaceans shaped like eggs with Indonesian peanut sauce, spices, and chili, where spherification allows transforming any juice into a fake yolk, then assembled with the egg white and fried. When it comes to meats, even the cooking of the pigeon, served with kombu seaweed spaghetti, amasake cream, almond, and grape, is perfect.
With a wonderful taste, among the desserts, the play on walnuts served in an Idiazábal cheese cream stands out. A year of processing for the green walnut, which matures for a year in water along with its husk, served confit, the crunchy walnut, a salted walnut caramel with tonka bean and whiskey, and again the green confit with walnut-based ratafià.
And no, the dishes described are not all; there is much more, many emotions, but the sequence is one that doesn't make sense to list in a pedantic enumeration. You just have to fly to Barcelona. Right away.
Contacts
Disfrutar
C. de Villarroel, 163, L'Eixample, 08036 Barcelona, Spain
Phone: +34 933 48 68 96
