ABaC - Barcelona
The kitchen is one of three dining locations
Rating: 18/20
Where: Barcelona, Spain
When: Dinner for 2 on 1 December 2019
Cost: Tasting menu 190-210 Euro, Wine pairing 90-110 Euro
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars
Why: Modern Spanish cuisine with elaborate presentations
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...
ABaC is located towards the outskirts of Barcelona on the ground floor of the ABaC hotel. The property is surrounded by a solid wooden fence, so it felt like entering a different world. We walked through a small garden (a mix of green and concrete) to the entrance of the building, whose design was clean and modern.
The evening started with a mini-tour of the restaurant. This tour was not as elaborate as, say, the one at Azurmendi, but it still made for a nice diversion. First, we were seated outside. Given that it was December, this “outside” happened to be a space that was covered by clear plastic tarps and warmed by heat-lamps - not exactly the great outdoors, but at least with a direct view of a small grassy garden. Several nibbles were served: a glass of strawberry soda, a liquid bonbon of rose water on top of a real white rose, and a slice of cured beef (“cecina”) with butter. Nice, but not mind-blowing 0.
After that, we were led to the kitchen, with a first stop at the dessert station. Supplied with a complimentary glass of Cava, we enjoyed a sunchoke chip topped with Parmesan mousse. Moving on to the main part of the kitchen, we encountered (and obliterated) a dish of tomato and sardine that was served with a seaweed bread and pesto sauce. The tomato was prepared in multiple styles, from mousse to dried tomato - delicious 1. It also started a pattern of using serving vessels that were shaped according to what they contained, so in this case the food was presented inside a ceramic red tomato.
The tomato was quickly followed by an anchovy on a cracker paired with a broth that had been made from the cured beef from a few minutes ago. Simple, but good 1-. The nibbles in the kitchen concluded with foie gras shaved over a cracker. Not bad either 1-.
Afterwards, we were finally led to our table in the dining room. There were several sections of the dining room, partially separated by curtains. So even though the dining room was not particularly small, one seemed to sit in rooms of at most four tables or so. The majority of the guests were speaking English; the couple at the table behind us had just flown in from New York for the weekend.
We started off the main part of our dinner with a glass of Bloody Mary made from clarified tomato juice, spices and a splash of vodka. The ice cubes in the glass were made from the same cocktail, so there were no worries about diluting the cocktail by drinking it too slowly. Very tasty, and much better than the Red Snapper that I had at the St. Regis in New York almost exactly a month prior. The original is not always best, I suppose 2.
Only at this point did we get to see the menu and had to decide which of two tasting menus we wanted to follow for the rest of the meal. There was a shorter menu of best-ofs (the restaurant classics) and a longer menu with the latest dishes. We opted for the latter.
The first dish of the longer menu was a frozen olive granita, served inside a ceramic olive along with some seaweed. According to our waiter this was riff on a classical tapa. The dish had a strong olive flavor, and was very salty. Thankfully I don't mind salt, so this was very nice 1.
Next, raw oysters with frozen apple. The oysters were good, but maybe a tad overwhelmed by the other flavors in the dish 1.
This was followed by a “ramen” course. Instead of noodles the dish contained sea cucumber, which was served with a poached quail egg and a shiitake consomme that had been cooking on the table for the past ten minutes or so. Again nice, but the broth was a bit light, especially compared to real ramen 1.
Whipped “hazelnut” butter was served with caviar and some hazelnut crisps. I'm using quotes here since I couldn't really detect any hazelnut flavor in the butter. It was also meant to accompany the bread course that showed up not long after. I'm still a bit puzzled about the butter/caviar combination - was one supposed to eat those together? Or use them separately as accompaniments for future courses? The caviar was good, but didn't really create a dish with the other components, especially since the crisps were very brittle, making it hard to do anything useful with them 0.
A perfectly cooked salt-cured shrimp on top of boiled hazelnuts, uni and a shrimp-intestines sauce made for a nice dish with strong flavors. I was not 100% convinced by the texture of the hazelnuts, but this was otherwise very good 2.
Not being a fan of pumpkin, I wouldn't have put much money on liking a pumpkin dish served inside a ceramic pumpkin. But it turns out I would have been wrong. The pumpkin flavor was there, but not overpowering the eel, crispy bread pieces, and fritters filled with blue cheese. A solid dish 2.
The main fish dish was a red mullet (I think) with greens and a pepperoncini, on top of a slightly sour sauce that complemented the other ingredients well 2.
The following dish was described by the waiter as “very weird, but I really like it”. Thankfully it was more of the latter - I liked it as well. Sheep's milk curd was paired with lamb sweetbreads (in their jus) and pine nut crumbles. The curd in particular was very tasty, and the sweetbreads so small that they just added a hint of “meat” to the dish 2.
Our main course was a mini lamb rib accompanied by a bao filled with ground lamb (presumably). The bao was steamed table-side over a broth of Moroccan spices, but this seemed to be more style than substance since I couldn't actually detect any of the spices. The lamb was prepared perefectly though, so this was a great dish otherwise 2. On the side was focaccia served with a butter that had been delivered to the table in the form of a candle, and had been burning/melting for the last several courses. A bit gimmicky, since this didn't really change the taste of the butter, but maybe the background smell made a difference to previous courses?
The cheese course was a collection of six cheese in a liquid sphere-ized form. The Roquefort was clearly identifiable as such, while most of the others were pleasant but not particularly exciting. The vegetable broth that came with the cheeses had almost no flavor 0.
Our first dessert won the price for least photogenic dish of the evening: dark gray on light gray blobs probably won't get anyone to salivate. The basis of the dish was a mixture of cocoa shells, coffee, vanilla and other spices. It was first cooked table-side as a soup, then strained, and finally made into ice cream using liquid nitrogen. The dish was topped with soft and hard meringue that were infused with the same flavor profile. All of this tasted pretty good, but our server had problems with getting the ice cream to properly freeze, so the result was mostly sludgy, presumably not the ideal texture 1.
This was followed by a hollow cube of bruleed white chocolate, filled with a mousse. Pretty tasty, but I had wished there had been more filling inside the cube 1.
The final dessert of the evening was bubble gum ice cream served with strawberries and marshmallows. It was served along a (hollow) sphere of strawberry ice cream, shaped like the pink balloons that were brought with the dish 1.
Several petit fours concluded the dinner, the chocolate based ones being our favorites 1.
Overall: This was a very nice meal, at the level of at least a solid two stars. Dishes were very inventive and tried for unusual combinations of ingredients - mostly successfully. My nitpicks are mostly minor. Some of the presentations struck me as overly gimmicky - several broths were cooked table-side for 10-20 minutes, and other dishes were also finished at the table. This didn't really improve upon anything one could have done in the kitchen, and in the case of the nitrogen ice cream actually made things worse. The candle of butter seemed to be mostly a gimmick as well. Finally, the ceramic tomatoes, olives, pumpkins etc, seemed a bit out of place decor-wise, given how modern the rest of the ambiance (and the food) looked. But with such an excellent dinner, these are minor gripes 18.
