October 26, 2014
On the first night in Barcelona we went to dinner at a favorite place from our last visit, La Cuina d'en Garriga. It is small. Four tables on the sidewalk protected from the traffic by a glass paned wooden screen painted fire engine red. Inside there are about eight tables. Along the walls are baskets of fruits, vegetables and a refrigerated display of cheese, meat and fish, products which you can buy if you want to cook at home. In the past we bought vegetables from them for Wes to cook up a Spanish storm. This time we let the Garriga chef cook for us. But it is our first night after a long flight and we must begin with a toast. A toast to our good fortune to be able to explore the world. To learn about the how other cultures handle the nuts and bolts of life. To revel in the evidence of human existence via the two thousand years old Roman city walls and nine hundred years old churches and two hundred years old restaurants. Europe has a head start on America. They have been refining their lives for more years than we have been in our young United States of America. So, with goblets in hand—in mine sangria, in Wes's Ribera del Duero—we welcome each other to another adventure, enlightening and pure pleasure. For dinner we had a local fish and an acorn fed pork. They were conventional, yet delicious.
On our second night, Wes had the idea to go to Tickets.
Tickets is the hottest ticket in town. A tough reservation to get. We did not have one. Instead, we went thirty minutes before they opened. We stood at the door, looking hungry, as if we had travelled half way around the world just to eat there, which in fact some people do.
During the past dozen years, north eastern Spain has been Mecca for creative cooking. It displaced France as the standard for the most interesting and technically refined food. French food may not often be thought of as technical, but just read Mister Escoffier's cookbook about stock. Dozens of kinds of stock specific to different dishes. Do not dare use the wrong stock in your dish. And do not cut corners on the making of your stock. Have your staff of three get to work on your stock a day or two in advance of preparing your dish!
Which is not to say all French food is that strict, but in the food temples regarded as the best restaurants in the world, which have mostly been French, that has been the standard. Barcelona changed that. One restaurant in particular, El Bulli, an hour north of Barcelona, changed that. They brought science into the kitchen to create little spheres, little globules that when placed on your tongue explode into pure flavor, often your favorite flavors. Dinner there was like a magic show. And the head chef, the chief magician, the master of ceremonies was Ferran Adria. He would stand in the dining room and watch his hundred diners make their way through his fifty courses during six hours. He took great pleasure and derived great satisfaction from from seeing his customers smiling and joyous as if it was Christmas and they were under the tree unwrapping enthralling gifts. That restaurant, El Bulli, closed forever about four years ago. We had the privilege of eating there. It was an experience of a life time.
Though the restaurant is gone, Ferran Adria and his brother, Albert, are not done with cooking. The have moved their attention now to a few eateries in Barcelona.
Whereas El Bulli received two million reservation requests per year and served only eight thousand people during their four month a year schedule, their new places are more accessible. A challenge to get into, but not an impossibility. So, on our second night in Barcelona we went to their new eatery, Tickets.
It is a tapas bar. And it is a circus setting, colorful, whimsical and stimulating. As I mentioned, we did not have a reservation, but Wes had heard that a few lucky people are allowed in if they show up before the first seating and that is what we did. Thirty minutes early. Bright eyed and eager, yet not desperate. We got in and sat at a great table. And this is what we ate.
Spherical Olives. They rest, each one, in their own shiny steel won ton soup spoon, and they do look like olives. Actually they are olives that have been taken apart and reassembled. Let me describe it this way, if you like to sew and you want to make a patchwork quilt you will take fabric, cut it to bits and reassemble it in an arrangement that satisfies you. You could have just sewn the large pieces together. But you felt a creative impulse. Where those impulses come from, who knows. The finished quilt is greater than the sum of it's parts.
And so it is with these olives. They have been brined and spiced and dehydrated and pulverized into powder, then reconstructed with maybe some algae based material until they once again look like an olive. However, now they are perfect little delicate balloons. Put one on your tongue, apply a little pressure, the little balloon pops on your mouth is engulfed in a sea perfect and pure olive liquid. All the best qualities of olive flavor refined, balanced and concentrated to the nth degree. The sum greater than it's parts. One might say, why not just eat an olive. But then one could say to Antonio Gaudi or to Frank Gehry, "do you have to put all those crazy shapes into your buildings?" "Can't you just build a square box of a building?"
After the olives we ate perfect freshly caught anchovies from the Bay of Biscay. They rested on a thin peninsula of toast slathered with olive oil jam. Garnished with scales of silver leaf and tomato seed cream.
We ate little small delicate pillows of puff pastry. Inside was a foam of Manchego cheese. On top was a sliver of Manchego strewn with beads of hazelnut oil "caviar" and fine shavings of cocoa beans.
Next up was tuna tartar dressed with wasabi avocado cream encased in crisp delicate square sheets of nori (sea weed).
Filet of smoked eel slathered with wasabi aioli was layed
inside a mini roll of bread made green with scallions and strewn with tiny purple garlic flowers.
Avocado sheets were rolled like cannelloni around Snowcrab.
We finished with butter cookie cones, three inches tall, standing upright in a bed of crushed cocoa beans. Atop the cone a dollop of cream, beneath that a scoop of apple ice cream and in the cone's. bottom apples slow baked in butter. The whole thing added up to Tarte Tatin
Then we really finished with tiny whiskey cupcakes in edible muffin wrappers. A base layer of cream, then cake with a tiny plastic vial half the size of my pinky, filled with bourbon to inject into the cupcake.
How does one follow that? We went to Kaiku on Saturday.
Wes had the idea to rent bicycles and scoot around at Barceloneta, the beach. The bicycle path runs for miles. It is a popular spot. Lots of people in the water and on the sand in skimpy swim suits and some in no suits at all. And joggers and families and tight rope walkers a gymnasts and sail boats shoving off from the sand and restaurants casual and formal, some tacky jet setty glitzy and some like Kaiku, low key, not fancy, no show to put on, just
good cooks doing fine work.
We began with Ravioli de carpaccio de Rap farcit de guacamole i toc de tomàquet sec (Monkfish carpaccio with avocado and dried tomato)
Then came Zamburiñas al toc de forn amb emulsió de gengibre i llima. ("Zamburinas" little scallops, ginger and Le vinaigrette.)
Tonyina Balfegó de l'Ametlla de Mar amb saltat de gírgola i melmelada de "guindillas."("Balfegó Ametlla de Mar" tuna, with mushroom and chili ham.)
Serviola amb escarxofa en textures. (Amberjack with artichoke textures.)
There was a lot more food in Barcelona, but I think I have said enough.
Wes and Marlow
Barcelona
La Garrida, Tickets, Kaiku
October 26, 2014
On the first night in Barcelona we went to dinner at a favorite place from our last visit, La Cuina d'en Garriga. It is small. Four tables on the sidewalk protected from the traffic by a glass paned wooden screen painted fire engine red. Inside there are about eight tables. Along the walls are baskets of fruits, vegetables and a refrigerated display of cheese, meat and fish, products which you can buy if you want to cook at home. In the past we bought vegetables from them for Wes to cook up a Spanish storm. This time we let the Garriga chef cook for us. But it is our first night after a long flight and we must begin with a toast. A toast to our good fortune to be able to explore the world. To learn about the how other cultures handle the nuts and bolts of life. To revel in the evidence of human existence via the two thousand years old Roman city walls and nine hundred years old churches and two hundred years old restaurants. Europe has a head start on America. They have been refining their lives for more years than we have been in our young United States of America. So, with goblets in hand—in mine sangria, in Wes's Ribera del Duero—we welcome each other to another adventure, enlightening and pure pleasure. For dinner we had a local fish and an acorn fed pork. They were conventional, yet delicious.
On our second night, Wes had the idea to go to Tickets.
Tickets is the hottest ticket in town. A tough reservation to get. We did not have one. Instead, we went thirty minutes before they opened. We stood at the door, looking hungry, as if we had travelled half way around the world just to eat there, which in fact some people do.
During the past dozen years, north eastern Spain has been Mecca for creative cooking. It displaced France as the standard for the most interesting and technically refined food. French food may not often be thought of as technical, but just read Mister Escoffier's cookbook about stock. Dozens of kinds of stock specific to different dishes. Do not dare use the wrong stock in your dish. And do not cut corners on the making of your stock. Have your staff of three get to work on your stock a day or two in advance of preparing your dish!
Which is not to say all French food is that strict, but in the food temples regarded as the best restaurants in the world, which have mostly been French, that has been the standard. Barcelona changed that. One restaurant in particular, El Bulli, an hour north of Barcelona, changed that. They brought science into the kitchen to create little spheres, little globules that when placed on your tongue explode into pure flavor, often your favorite flavors. Dinner there was like a magic show. And the head chef, the chief magician, the master of ceremonies was Ferran Adria. He would stand in the dining room and watch his hundred diners make their way through his fifty courses during six hours. He took great pleasure and derived great satisfaction from from seeing his customers smiling and joyous as if it was Christmas and they were under the tree unwrapping enthralling gifts. That restaurant, El Bulli, closed forever about four years ago. We had the privilege of eating there. It was an experience of a life time.
Though the restaurant is gone, Ferran Adria and his brother, Albert, are not done with cooking. The have moved their attention now to a few eateries in Barcelona.
Whereas El Bulli received two million reservation requests per year and served only eight thousand people during their four month a year schedule, their new places are more accessible. A challenge to get into, but not an impossibility. So, on our second night in Barcelona we went to their new eatery, Tickets.
It is a tapas bar. And it is a circus setting, colorful, whimsical and stimulating. As I mentioned, we did not have a reservation, but Wes had heard that a few lucky people are allowed in if they show up before the first seating and that is what we did. Thirty minutes early. Bright eyed and eager, yet not desperate. We got in and sat at a great table. And this is what we ate.
Spherical Olives. They rest, each one, in their own shiny steel won ton soup spoon, and they do look like olives. Actually they are olives that have been taken apart and reassembled. Let me describe it this way, if you like to sew and you want to make a patchwork quilt you will take fabric, cut it to bits and reassemble it in an arrangement that satisfies you. You could have just sewn the large pieces together. But you felt a creative impulse. Where those impulses come from, who knows. The finished quilt is greater than the sum of it's parts.
And so it is with these olives. They have been brined and spiced and dehydrated and pulverized into powder, then reconstructed with maybe some algae based material until they once again look like an olive. However, now they are perfect little delicate balloons. Put one on your tongue, apply a little pressure, the little balloon pops on your mouth is engulfed in a sea perfect and pure olive liquid. All the best qualities of olive flavor refined, balanced and concentrated to the nth degree. The sum greater than it's parts. One might say, why not just eat an olive. But then one could say to Antonio Gaudi or to Frank Gehry, "do you have to put all those crazy shapes into your buildings?" "Can't you just build a square box of a building?"
After the olives we ate perfect freshly caught anchovies from the Bay of Biscay. They rested on a thin peninsula of toast slathered with olive oil jam. Garnished with scales of silver leaf and tomato seed cream.
We ate little small delicate pillows of puff pastry. Inside was a foam of Manchego cheese. On top was a sliver of Manchego strewn with beads of hazelnut oil "caviar" and fine shavings of cocoa beans.
Next up was tuna tartar dressed with wasabi avocado cream encased in crisp delicate square sheets of nori (sea weed).
Filet of smoked eel slathered with wasabi aioli was layed
inside a mini roll of bread made green with scallions and strewn with tiny purple garlic flowers.
Avocado sheets were rolled like cannelloni around Snowcrab.
We finished with butter cookie cones, three inches tall, standing upright in a bed of crushed cocoa beans. Atop the cone a dollop of cream, beneath that a scoop of apple ice cream and in the cone's. bottom apples slow baked in butter. The whole thing added up to Tarte Tatin
Then we really finished with tiny whiskey cupcakes in edible muffin wrappers. A base layer of cream, then cake with a tiny plastic vial half the size of my pinky, filled with bourbon to inject into the cupcake.
How does one follow that? We went to Kaiku on Saturday.
Wes had the idea to rent bicycles and scoot around at Barceloneta, the beach. The bicycle path runs for miles. It is a popular spot. Lots of people in the water and on the sand in skimpy swim suits and some in no suits at all. And joggers and families and tight rope walkers a gymnasts and sail boats shoving off from the sand and restaurants casual and formal, some tacky jet setty glitzy and some like Kaiku, low key, not fancy, no show to put on, just
good cooks doing fine work.
We began with Ravioli de carpaccio de Rap farcit de guacamole i toc de tomàquet sec (Monkfish carpaccio with avocado and dried tomato)
Then came Zamburiñas al toc de forn amb emulsió de gengibre i llima. ("Zamburinas" little scallops, ginger and Le vinaigrette.)
Tonyina Balfegó de l'Ametlla de Mar amb saltat de gírgola i melmelada de "guindillas."("Balfegó Ametlla de Mar" tuna, with mushroom and chili ham.)
Serviola amb escarxofa en textures. (Amberjack with artichoke textures.)
There was a lot more food in Barcelona, but I think I have said enough.
Wes and Marlow
Barcelona
La Garrida, Tickets, Kaiku
October 26, 2014
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