Only five months have been enough for the Canfranc Express restaurant, located on the railway tracks next to the spectacular Royal Hideway luxury hotel in Canfranc (Huesca), to have completed its triumphant entry into the Olympus of Spanish gastronomic gods. It was last November 28, when the culinary proposal of chef Eduardo Salanova and his partner, Ana Acín, achieved a Michelin star in their new adventure, thus replicating the success they once achieved with their praised Espacio N in La Venta del Sotón , in Esquedas.
“The truth is that we did not expect it,” Salanova tells this newspaper, who had taken this year as a transition period between both locations. “From the beginning we worked in the same way that we had been doing in recent years, with the idea that if one day the award arrived, it would be welcome. But that it happened so soon is a surprise,” he acknowledges.
Standard bearers of avant-garde Aragonese cuisine, this couple were presented with a new challenge a couple of years ago with the opportunity to return to their origins (Salanova is a native of Canfranc) with a project like Canfranc Express. From the depths of the Aragonese Pyrenees, just 8 kilometers from the border with France, they would be able to continue reinterpreting the traditional Aragonese recipe book in a restaurant located in an old 1927 wagon that has been rehabilitated in the purest Orient Express style to provide a service exclusive to only 12 diners.
Its current success combines several factors. On the one hand, creative Aragonese cuisine based “on traditional recipes linked to the history of the season”, where local products prevail above all else. On the other hand, the “magical” experience that Canfranc Express offers to diners, inviting them to discover the modernist station, which experienced its golden age in the middle of the last century, through a tour that ends with a gastronomic tasting within the restored wagon.
“With our dishes, we remember stories and anecdotes about Canfranc and the Arañones Valley (where it is located), and customers value that very much. They tell us that the food is very good and that the experience is interesting, but that they are even more excited about the way in which we link it to the history of the town and the station,” he comments.
Logically, the restaurant's clientele is closely linked to that of the 5-star hotel, which the Barceló group has managed since the beginning of 2023 after the comprehensive rehabilitation of the historic international station. “We have very interesting profiles,” says Salanova, ranging from Spaniards who have been regulars in the area “for a lifetime” to a more international audience – French, English, German – who come attracted by the reports that different media have dedicated to the area. history of this magnificent station.
Salanova hesitates when choosing his favorite, since many "have emotional components", but he admits to being "in love" with his 'sea lamb'. He says that both Eloy (the head chef) and he had heard the story of some lambs from the Normandy area that grazed in fields irrigated with sea water and whose meat had a salty, marine-like taste. "To recreate those sensations, we cure a local lamb with seaweed and then we finish it in the wagon's kitchen with an à la minute seaweed butter, so that a very interesting sea and mountain dish comes out."
From now on, whoever wants to know about this proposal will have to be patient because, with the Michelin star, reservations have skyrocketed and it is almost full for the next three months. "One of the great advantages of the award is that from the first minute many requests begin to come in, something good for the restaurant, the hotel, Canfranc and the entire valley," he says.
Looking to the immediate future, the chef is focused on the opening of another restaurant car from 1928, in which dinners will be offered where the union between the Spanish and French cuisine of the area will prevail, as well as defining the creative process for the coming years, with nods “to both the history of the station and the railway world.”
