Going to Barcelona , I had to make a pilgrimage to Disfrutar, the #1 restaurant in the world…read moreaccording to the 2024 world's 50 best list. Problem was, I tried to get reservations 7 months out and they were fully booked. So on the waitlist I went. Then my phone rings in Los Angeles at 3:30 am 2 months later. My wife is panicked like some emergency is happening....I spring awake as I hear Disfrutar on the other end, asking me if I could make a cancelation they just had on one of my dates I requested. Wow, best phone call I ever got in the middle of the night. So glad I happened to leave my cell next to my bed and forgot to silence it, The Foodie Gods work in mysterious ways.
1. Frozen Passionfruit Lady Finger with rum
2. Drop of rose petal water, then lychee frozen raspberry, followed by drop of rose petal water. Beet macaron that dissolves in your mouth like cotton candy.
3. They call it a "panchino" I would describe it as a baked Chinese bao bun filled with caviar and crème fresh. Served with truffle vodka.
4. Solid bubbles of smoked butter with caviar, the magnifying glass to appreciate the detail of the smoked butter, and the little person on the paper is a reminder to look towards th. It even has a shadow as it is a tiny pop up book.
5. Gazpacho sandwich. Rather than being soft, it had the texture of a light meringue, which left the familiar flavor of the traditional soup. Served with a scent of vinegar spray for you to smell before each bite
6. Deconstructed Gilda Pintxo with marinated mackerel. We were shown a photo of a traditional Gilda prior to being served theirs. Of course there was a surprise as the "olive" kind of exploded in your mouth and wasn't really an olive at all.
7. Flourless Coca (Catalan pastry) with Escalivada (Catalan relish of eggplant, peppers, onions, tomatoes, oil) and anchovy crème. The golden "caviar" on top was droplets of olive oil that burst nicely in your mouth.
8. Crunchy mushroom leaf. This had the intense flavor of a porcini mushroom soup, and incredibly delicate.
9. Crispy egg yolk with warm porcini and trumpet mushroom gelatin. Bite through the tempura, pour the yolk into the cup and eat side by side with the mushroom gelee.
10. Oxygenated mushroom broth with oyster mushroom and succulent. It tasted like cactus, meh. But everything else was delicious.
11. Multispherical pesto with pistachios and smoked eel. An iconic dish. Those aren't peas, it's a string of green pearls of pesto that turn into sauce to mix with the Parmesan sauce and smoked eel.
12. Macaroni alla carbonara. The clear pasta has the texture of pasta but is made with beef gelatin to add a nice extra flavor to each bite. This was one intense Parmesan cheesy cream sauce.
13. Liquid Salad and tomato Polvoron (which had a light spongy texture like a fine creamy chocolate) Olive oil pearls made a return on the tomato cookie.
14. Suquet fish stew deconstructed Hake White fish, with potato gnocchi saffron, parsley foam, potato cappuccino. A traditional Catalan dish in an untraditional way.
15. The Goose that laid the golden eggs: fried egg of crustacean. Fried egg white with a golden "egg yolk" that was actually a Thai red sweet chili crab sauce. With Thai peanut sauce, cilantro, shrimp, this is a very familiar flavor profile.
16. Multi spherical tatin of corn and foie. This is an illusion. You try to pick up a mirrored version of the dish. Beautiful sweet corn flavor offsetting the earthiness of the foie on a light crispy corn base.
17. Squab with amasake kombu spaghetti, rice sauce, almond sauce, and grape. Kombu is a Japanese edible kelp. Working the sauces from inside to out, grape at the end led towards the desert portion of the evening.
18. Served with a smoked apple cider, you crack a walnut, inside you wil find a small manchego cheese cube. As you reflect on how inedible the walnut shell is, the next dish....
19. Musings on Walnuts. Disfrutar has found a way to make the walnut shell edible, fairly soft and left marinating in various ways over time to break down the shell and infusing it with various flavors without completely losing the walnut taste. The Idiazabal cheese foam held everything together.
20. Hoisin Cucumber. Candied pork rind, cucumber granita with mint. Like eating a mojito with a crunchy sweet hoisin sauce pork rind. Might be the best dish of the night.
21. Black sesame cornet. The next layers had strawberry and crème. Very delicate, eat it quick before it breaks into shards.
22. Black apple with noisette butter ice cream and flourless puff pastry. The black apple...they show you the aging process at different stages. They serve it at 60 months at which point it is kind of a brown fleshy goop, but such an intense flavor, almost booze like in nature, served warm and with butter ice cream.
23. Petit fours were served in the courtyard. Contained Pineapple rocks, strawberry mochi, raspberry marshmallow, matcha tea rock, chocolate and passion liquid bonbon, and cotton candy.
