There is barely a table for more than two diners in a room occupied by couples looking tenderly into each other's eyes. There are some who look like they have just fallen in love (glasses and lamp removed to hold hands); There are those who, delighted with life, confess that they have taken advantage of the children's winter camps and have a gastronomic plan for each day of respite; those who take advantage before a birth that is obviously just around the corner, and also those who whisper words in French, the language of love.
It is Valentine's night and the setting invites you to observe and ponder what they call the gastronomic experience - this is what the restaurant team led by Irene Padín along with sommelier Albert Señor repeats here: “These oils - delicious - form part of the experience”, “the experience ends with these petit fours and the recommended order to taste them is this”− and the importance of who it is shared with.
We could be in any city that celebrates the syrupy tradition and we would hardly intuit that we are in Catalonia, where love is celebrated much more on Sant Jordi's day. But the Quirat menu (90 and 160 euros), at the Barcelona Continental (Rius i Taulet, 1-3) is designed to remind us in every bite and also in a good selection of Catalan wines, where we are. The chef Victor Torres (Barcelona, 1993), explains that this was his purpose since right in the time of the pandemic he agreed to take charge of the advice that would end up being launched later −due to the vicissitudes of that forced parenthesis−. This chef who maintains a Michelin star at Les Magnòlies (Arbúcies), the restaurant opened by his in-laws, who continue to give them a hand, has also managed to get Michelin to reward his work in this hotel, which this year has achieved a star .
“It caught me by such a surprise that at the gala held in Barcelona, my Empòrium colleagues had to tell me to get up from my chair to go on stage because I couldn't believe it.” That recognition, he openly admits, has been the support of Quirat, where he has the head chef Xavier Busquets. If I had to choose between the star or filling every day, as has been the case since last November when the cast of the guide was announced, it is clear that I would choose the latter. As clear as one has come with another, something that, due to his experience in Arbúcies, has helped him to verify that if the star outside of a big city attracts weekend clientele, inside he is a daily attraction in an establishment that, for now , only open at night.
Before going to Les Magnòlies, Torres had a very interesting learning path: from the Hofmann school to his beginnings in Romain Fornell's first Caelis, to continue in Mugaritz, Bras and the missing Swedish Fäviken. A luxury apprenticeship that did not distance him from his idea of betting on the cuisine that he wanted to reclaim Catalan flavors and tradition to make them known to foreign clients and also to those from Barcelona.
Flavors, to give an example, such as those of the popular cap i pota, which turns into a carpaccio with scallops, an interesting sea and mountain to be followed by others, such as monkfish meatballs with fricandó sauce or country chicken and lobster , with cooking of seafood that takes us to that traditional cuisine and not so much to the minimal cooking common in haute cuisine, except for the shrimp in its version of suquet. Combinations of few ingredients without stopping to look at the local pantry and achieve them successfully. And to sweeten the after-dinner even more, the sobrasada and anise fritter, the pineapple with white chocolate and yuzu or the delicious flan with ratafía ensure the shot.
