PHOTO
INSERT CREDIT HERE
TEENAGE TASTING NOTES
Food critics are used to fancy Michelin-starred food, but how would a
14-year-old find it at the world’s best restaurant?
Ollie Drew
reports
this was the first
tasting menu I'd tried and I was pretty
excited. I never knew what was coming and that kept
things interesting. Lunch lasted about five hours, but the
time flies as you end up discussing everything you eat.
I’ve probably been to more restaurants than most people
my age because of my dad, but this was a million miles from
anything I’ve had. One course was a kind of vegetable soup.
It sounds boring, but it was delicious. It was made up of
dozens of miniature vegetable elements, which meant each
mouthful was completely different. And it looked like a piece
of art. I found the head juice of a king prawn a bit intense,
but that’s part of the experience, I suppose. Desserts were
amazing too: one was based on the chef trying to create the
flavour of a perfume; another moved around on the plate.
The whole place was more relaxed than I expected.
The Roca brothers were really laid-back; they weren’t like
some of the shouty chefs you see on TV. When you're
eating here you feel like you’re part of something special.
Pretentious? Not when carried off with the style and
skill seen over a four-hour-plus lunch or dinner service.
During that time, customers’ senses, emotions and
memories are frequently stimulated, whether via
an evocative smell, an explosion of flavour, a familiar
texture or a visual trick. At the same time, this is
real food as well: a dish of charcoal-grilled lamb with
aubergine, coffee and liquorice not only looks like lamb,
but tastes like it too. It’s just likely to be the best lamb
you’ve ever put in your mouth.
The menu frequently leans on traditional Catalan
ingredients, including olives, asparagus, aubergine
and cod, prepared with supreme culinary precision.
Some dishes are elaborate – a salad of sea anemone, razor
clam, cucumber and seaweed in
escabèche
(marinade)
springs to mind – others are more straightforward, but
each course remains beautifully balanced. Presentation
is imaginative, often brilliant – especially when it comes
09
0 6 8
