Today Susan and I went in to Barcelona on the train, to wander around and indulge ourselves. I wanted to do something unusual for lunch – in Sitges we have been a bit too conservative, too pedestrian, landing repeatedly at a popular Argentine steak house (pleasant but a tiny bit boring). So we were thinking in terms of El Bulli, the famous Costa Dorada restaurant that has ‘deconstructive’ cooking – not because there was any intention or even any faint chance of getting there, but because the demented chef who created it has followers and imitators in Barcelona. So we ended up at the Santa Maria... only a mild version of deconstructive cuisine, with a lot of what would really be called fusion; but the idea was there, and it was an amazing meal.
We had the ‘taster’ lunch... odd variations of ikuru-sushi, tuna empanadas, sardines with curried mayonnaise; then a cube of tuna; and, most intensely, a chunk of duck’s liver, fried – amazing and appalling at the same time; my body reacted to it like a strong shot of tequila, the kind where your eyes tear up and you leap for the lime. Then figs sliced on bread, covered with melted cheese. This was followed by three desserts – a small cup of cantaloupe, mango, and something I couldn’t identify, covered with a layer of pudding; a dollop of a tiramisu-like cream, like a ‘conceptual’ tiramisu; and finally a cluster of cornflakes on white chocolate and a rather fierce dark-chocolate truffle, in case you weren’t completely wrecked by this point.
Amazing... intense, but amazing. How to have fun with food (without, of course, throwing any of it)....
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Later that same day, I had dinner (as though I needed it by then). This was, however, the opposite kind of decadence: rather than elaborate avant-garde fragments, we ate the heartiest and most overwhelming of traditional food – two Catalan dishes, a calamari fried in tons of garlic, followed by fideuá with seafood. Perhaps my digestion will never forgive me, but: what a day for a gourmand....
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And the next day, lunch at almost the same level of density – but this time, after the avant-garde and the traditional, the sophisticated. A quasi-French, quasi-Catalan restaurant of great hauteur – the starter was an intense conglomeration of mushrooms, some of which had been shaved paper thin; the main course was rare ostrich and pears with chocolate sauce (and when did your mom last make that at home?). I ended by choosing a plate of cheeses, each of which was seriously intimidating (the kinds of cheeses that have more personality than most people) – the truth is, they were too much for me, and I felt a bit as though the menu itself had pointed out what a provincial, suburban colonial I really am.
Okay: it’s time for me to pull back. Three intense meals in a row: enough to make anyone a bit dizzy. Tonight, for dinner, I am allowed one fig... and water.
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