Lasarte - Barcelona
Rating: 16/20
Where: Barcelona, Spain
When: Dinner for 2 on 30 November 2019
Cost: Tasting menu 245 Euro, Wine Pairing 150 Euro
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars
Why: Modern Spanish cuisine with some excellent dishes
Note: This was one of the first reviews that I wrote right after visiting a restaurant, and the rating scheme is on a scale 0-3 depending on how many Michelin stars the dish warranted. I later realized that a more fine-grained scale would be more useful...
Lasarte is located in the center of Barcelona. It is technically part of a hotel, but I know this only from the website, since the entrances are separate and nothing about the high-ceilinged, modern dining room screams “hotel restaurant”. Walking from the entrance past a wine cellar led us to a large room containing maybe ten tables. Another four two-tops were set in a second room - on some nights this might be a private dining room. Besides us, two tables had guests from Asia, and one had guests from Spain.
This is Martin Berasategui's “second” Michelin three-star restaurant. His eponymous and more famous restaurant is in a suburb of San Sebastian called Lasarte-Oria (hence the name of this restaurant). We visited that restaurant in the September of 2016, and it was spectacular, one of the best meals of my life. What amazed us most back then were the bold flavors that started seemingly from the first appetizer and were a constant all the way through the end of the meal. Start slow and build up momentum? Not in that restaurant. And what's more, all the strong flavors hit the mark, there was nary any letdown over our multi-hour dinner. This came with some amazing plating, in particular a “salad” composed of tomatoes, lobster, and herbs, among others, was a beauty to behold, and must have taken quite a while to arrange.
But back to Barcelona. Our dinner started with some nibbles, a tempura-ed clam, and some crackers topped with small pieces of shrimp and seafood-flavored dots. Subtle flavors, pleasant, but not terribly memorable 0-1. This was followed by one of Berasategui's signature dishes, a “sandwich” of foie gras, apple and eel, served with a sauce that had a hint of onion. I actually liked this dish better than the version I had in San Sebastian, but that's not saying much since that was one of the few weak points of the former dinner. It's a nice combination of flavors and textures: crunchy apple and brulee topping, creamy foie gras, tart apple, smoky eel 1.
The last appetizer was a jalapeno mousse on top of some radishes and seafood. This was easily my favorite so far: strong flavors, a hint of spiciness from the jalapeno, crunch from vegetables and seafood, and creaminess from the mousse. Great! 3
Bread with an excellent olive oil and five butters, each with a different flavor and color, were served as the official part of the tasting menu began.
First up was a dish consisting of three different parts: a sphere of liquid corn (excellent), a dish of sliced potatoes (unremarkable) and a piece of marinated hamachi (ok). I ate the three pieces in sequence, which might have been a mistake: the corn flavor was really strong, and the other two much more subtle. That made it somewhat unclear what they were doing on the same plate, unless mixing them improved matters? It's generally not a good sign when I have to give a dish the benefit of the doubt that I might have eaten it the wrong way... 0
This was followed by a nicely-cooked langoustine with “roasted sheep milk”. I'm unsure how you roast milk (presumably easier than getting milk from roasted sheep, though), but it worked well with the langoustine. The small drops of coffee infusion on the milk foam distracted from the rest of the dish, their bitterness was a bit too much for the sweetness present in the other ingredients 1.
Next came a ring of squid tartare. In the center of the ring was an onion consomme topped by a nicely runny egg yolk. We had some (optional, and not pictured) white truffles shaved on top, which - while smelling heavenly - didn't add much flavor to the dish. The egg and onion soup combination had a good flavor and richness. The squid by itself didn't add much taste, only a small amount of texture - it's hard to judge how much flavor it had, since the rest of the dish was so dominant 1.
The next dish was named “Caper Royale” for no immediately apparent reason. Shrimp and mushrooms, unoffensive but not especially memorable 0.
This was followed by a version of the salad dish that had impressed us so much at the San Sebastian restaurant in 2016. Taken by itself, it was very nice - the bottom was a jelly of clarified tomato juice, and was topped by salad leaves, the core of a tomato, and two preparations of lobster. The tomato jelly was so good that I would have eaten almost anything on top of it 1. It's only in comparison with the San Sebastian dish (see second picture) that this one falls way short. That previous version had much more varied ingredients (maybe because it was September) and was also much more artistically constructed. The present dish felt like a phoned-in version of the former.
Wagyu ravioli with caviar - I'd happily eat any of these three ingredients, and they came in a single dish! The ravioli filled with braised wagyu were nice, but the caviar on top got totally lost taste-wise - it turns out that braised beef has a much stronger flavor than caviar... The paired eel was pleasant, the horseradish that the menu claimed was present was too subtle to notice 1.
On to the fish course: the red mullet was a winner. It came with a wonderful sauce, and toppings of vegetables and fish on the crispy skin, only the celery on the side was a bit incongruous. Bold flavors, well balanced 3.
Venison, our meat course, was also very good. Tender, perfectly cooked medium-rare, the accompaniments adding as much for the taste buds as for the eyes 2.
Desserts were solid as well. A kind of deconstructed cheese cake came in the form of cream, yogurt and apple spheres with pieces of cake 1. Smoked whiskey ice cream was wonderful - pecan and coffee flavored mousses were a good addition to mix in 1. Of the petit fours, I liked the mini apple cheese cake the best.
The chef was kind enough to make a round, shaking hands, and posing for photos with the two birthday celebrants.
Overall: This was a pleasant dinner. The service was good, although sometimes a bit hard to understand. I appreciated that for the wine pairings, wine got topped up several times as needed. Alas, the food quality was mostly at a one or two-star level. Some of the dishes showed that the kitchen can deliver amazing things, but sadly those were few and far between. So if I only had time to go to one of Martin Berasategui's restaurants, then it would without doubt be the one in San Sebastian instead 16.
