Cocina Hermanos Torres - Barcelona
The kitchen in the middle of the dining room
Rating: 17/20
Where: Barcelona, Spain
When: Dinner for 3 on 25 March 2023
Cost: Tasting menu 275 Euro, Wine pairing 180 Euro
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars
Why: An enjoyable culinary tour through Catalonia and Spain; dramatic modern dining room with an open kitchen in the middle
Cocina Hermanos Torres is Barcelona's latest three Michelin star restaurant, and it is, as its name suggests, run by two brothers. From the outside, the building looks like a barn, but on the inside it is a minimalistic, high-ceilinged hall held up by a steel frame. Dining tables and two kitchen columns occupy most of the interior space. And this is a truly open kitchen: no walls or counters separate the staff from the guests, and the kitchen is essentially surrounded by dining tables. There is actually another kitchen semi-hidden in a separate room, but the layout of the main dining room is still pretty dramatic. Black is the color of choice here, except for the red sneakers worn by half the staff, apparently.
Having a kitchen right in the middle of the dining room runs the risk of feeling too busy, but that was not the case here. The room was not too loud, and the service relaxed and unhurried. Only towards the end of our dinner, when the kitchen was being cleaned in plain view, it felt a bit weird sitting next to this while eating desserts. One half expected a vacuum cleaner to start meandering between the dining tables.
The restaurant had just a single tasting menu, but there was an option to add a course of baby eels (at 45 Euro), which we did. A wine pairing was available as well, consisting of ten glasses or so. The wines were mostly pretty good and quite fragrant, but there were a few unusual choices that tasted quite vinegary. An entertaining pairing overall.
One could call the cooking here “modern Spanish”, but more specifically it is a culinary tour of Catalonia, where Barcelona is located. This theme is not really emphasized by the staff, it is only mentioned obliquely. Since I love hearing the thinking behind a menu, I wished that this had been made more explicit.
The first bite arriving at our table was an ice cream sandwich. It was filled with pine nut ice cream, and the pine nuts came from the Collserola mountains that border Barcelona - local indeed. This was a nice dish, with thin, crispy wafers (wafer-thin wafers?), but having only a subtle aftertaste of pine nuts 17.
More pine nuts were in the following cocktail that was mixed table-side. Its main ingredients were cucumbers, yuzu and sherry, and it was finished with pine nut oil. This drink felt like a liquid salad: the cucumber flavor was strong, the yuzu lighter. Quite salty and sour, it would have made for an excellent salad dressing - the kind you want to drink after the salad is gone 18.
Next came a collection of three tapas. Arguably, one might associate them more closely with San Sebastian than Barcelona, but why nitpick? Pickled peppers, olives and anchovies are a classic tapa combination, and here we got a variant of that dish. Pickled piparras peppers (think: pepperoncini) were part of a tomato gazpacho that had been encased in a bonbon shell. Topped with smoked anchovies, this was a dish that had to be eaten in a single bite. The liquid and its strong flavors exploded in the mouth, and for fans of slightly spicy gazpacho this was an amazing dish. The anchovy wasn't quite as flavorful and disappeared a bit next to the soup, but the result was still excellent 19.
An almond bread topped with Iberian pancetta and shredded truffles had a wonderful smoky bacon flavor - the truffle was a bit lighter in comparison 18.
Finally, a cracker that was similar to a tortilla chip was topped with pickles and a slice of Iberian ham. I liked the slightly sweet pickles, and the jamon iberico was reliably good as well 18.
The next dish was entitled “sea and mountain”, reflecting both Barcelona's location (between the sea and mountains) and the ingredients used. (The latter was a bit of a stretch, since chickens are not stereotypical mountain dwellers.) The dish consisted of squid tartare that had been cured in sake, topped with caviar, and surrounded by a cold poultry consommé. The tartare was fine, but not among the best I've had - its texture was so creamy that I could have sworn that it contained actual cream, but supposedly this all came from the squid itself. The poultry broth was nice enough, but pretty light, and also nothing too special. The caviar was probably the best of the three ingredients in a dish that didn't quite come together as a cohesive whole 16.
We were served sourdough bread made from a starter that was “as old as the restaurant”. It was delicious with the accompanying fragrant, but light Catalonian olive oil. Especially the bread's crust was astonishing: crunchy, chewy and quite thick - it seemed that half the bread consisted of its crust. Very good 18.
Maybe the prettiest dish of the evening was an eel that was served with little flowers cut from kohlrabies. It was finished with some finger limes, a sauce made from the water that the eel had been cooked in, and with little green drops of basil oil. The eel was nicely seared, but quite fatty, almost too much so. The kohlrabies added some nice crunch, but the star of the dish was the sauce, which was utterly delicious, and might have rated a 20 by itself. With the less exciting eel, this was a 18. (My dining companions thought that this was a 19.) This was also the exception proving the dishes-from-Catalonia rule: the course was inspired by a nature preserve near Valencia teeming with eels.
Our next dish, the addition to the tasting menu, was quite literally teeming with eels - baby eels to be precise. A healthy serving of baby eels was served with pil pil sauce, a black garlic puree and tomatoes. The pil pil sauce was texture-wise like a mousse, with strong flavors, but feeling a bit heavy. A pretty good dish; the eels were texture- and taste-wise closer to pasta than to their full-grown cousin. Probably not worth the extra 45 Euro for this dish 18. My dining companions were horrified by the slimy mass of baby eels, and would have rated this a 15. That reaction might be one of the reasons why this dish is optional.
Tagliolini were topped with uni (sea urchin) and served with an uni sauce and a seaweed foam. The dish had a nice seafood flavor, and the uni was of good quality. On the other hand, the sauce and thereby the whole dish were quite heavy. A lighter dish might have scored higher than 18.
A rustic peas and ham dish was next. The peas from Maresme, near Barcelona, were tossed with an Iberian ham sauce, and surrounded by fried breadcrumbs that were meant to evoke “migas”, a traditional shepherd's dish made from stale bread. The peas in the dish were actually quite heavy, and failed to introduce any lightness to a dish that was not just heavy, but also had pretty muted flavors overall. At least the crumbs added some nice crunchy texture 17. The rest of the table would have rated this higher at 18-19.
Caramelized onion soup had been slow-cooked for 18 hours, and was served in a bowl covered with a Parmesan cheese bread in the shape of Barcelona's traditional flower that can be found on cobble stones all over the city. Shaved truffles and some black garlic completed the dish. The truffles were hardly noticeable (as is so often the case), and the onion soup was too sweet, too hot and not particularly exciting. The best thing on the plate was the Parmesan bread, especially after soaking it in the soup for a couple of minutes 16.
Our next dish was named “Arrom” after a famous fishmonger in Barcelona. White turbot was served with spinach, black garlic, crispy mushrooms and morels filed with more turbot. The turbot was very tough - possibly overcooked -, and while the sauce was very nice, the rest of the ingredients were only so-so 15.
Leading up to the “main” savory course, we received a sandwich filled with a mix of blood orange and quail thigh meat. Curiously, the bread used the same ingredients as its filling. The bread had a very soft crunch, and on the whole this was a pleasant surprise, a dish both savory and sweet 16.
The final savory dish was a risotto served with a seared quail breast. The rice also incorporated black truffles, black olives and a kohlrabi-like vegetable. The quail sadly didn't taste much of anything, and the rice dish was quite heavy and seemed undecided as to whether it wanted to be savory or sweet. Given its slight gaminess, maybe the former 15.
On to the pre-dessert: white vermouth snow was seasoned with lime and rosemary and sat on top of an olive brioche. The “snow” fittingly had a very light, airy consistency, and was deliciously lemony. It went well with the sweet brioche 18. This dish was named after Reus, a Catalonian city that is not only a big producer of vermouth, but also the birthplace of Barcelona's famous architect Gaudi.
A seasonal dessert (“Spring”): strawberry sorbet with a basil mousse, balsamic vinegar and wild strawberries, probably among the first of the season. The strawberry flavor was excitingly fresh, and the basil and vinegar went very well with it. A lovely, light dessert 19.
Chocolate formed the basis of the second dessert. Chocolate pulp ice cream, chocolate mousse, and chocolate splinters were all on top of a swish of caramel. A very pretty presentation, feeling simultaneously organized and improvised. Thankfully the result (except for the mousse), was not too heavy, with the ice cream and splinters especially good. The fact that I scraped every last bit of caramel from the plate is probably good sign, too 18. The rest of the table was even more enthusiastic, and would have gone up to a 20.
In a black jewel box we found a chocolate rum praline. This was a step down from the previous chocolate dessert - not bad, but also not particularly special. Large, pretty heavy and definitely containing alcohol 16.
Some petit fours concluded our dinner after over four hours. A yuzu marshmallow was crusted with sugar for a nice crunch, and had a lovely lemon flavor 17. The lemon poppy seed cake next to it went somewhat overboard with the intensity of both the lemon and the poppy elements; toning them down a bit would have made for a better bite 15. Chocolate truffles were filled with “cara crakine”, a caramelly crumbly cookie combination - very chocolaty, and the biscuit texture was quite nice 18. A profiterole was filled with passion fruit, which should have been a winner, but this particular filling tasted just weird, and not of passion fruit at all 14. Thin toasted slices of brioche were adorned with pistachios, but they didn't add much taste to the bread 13. Finally, “coffee caviar” was air chocolate topped with coffee pearls - pleasant enough 15.
After our dinner, we naturally tried to compare this restaurant to Atrio, another new Spanish three-Michelin-star winner where we ate on the previous night. They are very different: there is more variety in ingredients and inspirations here, whereas everything at Atrio began and ended with pork. But food-wise, Atrio might have been a tiny bit better overall, and had some “main” dishes that were clearly three-star material, whereas Cocina Hermanos Torres shone more in the amuse bouches and desserts.
Overall: A culinary tour through Catalonia and Spain that was very enjoyable throughout, but unfortunately hit truly three-star high-points only a couple times. But I liked that the food was connected to and thereby grounded in the place that we were in. This can sometimes be an issue in technique-heavy Spanish high-end cuisine 17.
