ABaC, Barcelona
I was aware that it is a very famous restaurant, yet it certainly did not work well for my taste and interest, unfortunately. Let’s back to the beginning :). I took a train to the station next to the restaurant, which is inside a very nice and private 5-star hotel. When I arrived, half of the tables were already occupied. In addition, since it is not a large dining room, I found it was rather cozy compared to many stereotype restaurants in fancy hotel. The menu style is as simple and modern as expected, a few words on the ingredients.
Table and menu
The beginning canapés were interesting. The tuna in bowl was interestingly fully cooked on the skin and raw in between, so it had a fun texture. I found the fish crack with the bone was very appealing. The bone tasted very bitter, and the rest had light fish flavour yet mixing with some flour flavour.
Blue fish sequence with ajo blanco and romesco & Pickled chili with tuna belly
The first dish in the first courses, ‘Milk tomatoes with dry maccheroni as a pesto, green tomato "gazpacho" and Caprese salad sprouts‘, turned out to be my favourite, even though it was a bit of too much show for me. From left to right in the pictures, I got (1) green tomato penne, which was a bit wet rather than crunchy, (2) goat cheese, (if I recalled correctly), which I did not understand why, but it was nice cheese (3) tomato soup in glass, which was very dense and thick, and had a bit of wooden flavour, (4) tomato ‘salad’ in tube, where the transparent liquid and green oil on top were in tomato flavour and the leaves served as salad, and last (5) three red tomatoes in foaming, which were very in meaty textures and had light chilli flavour. They all looked nice and fun, yet the problem is, I was overwhelmed by too much tomato flavours. Also, it was rather confusing how I was supposed to consume all the dishes! Maybe I was not creative enough here, but I just wanted to simple plate presentation with cutleries or chopsticks.
Milk tomatoes with dry maccheroni as a pesto, green tomato "gazpacho" and Caprese salad sprouts
The immediate next dish, ‘Cured sea bream with mollusks, frozen hummus, and spring onion gazpachuelo with cilantro’, was in coriander, light lime and also tomato sauce. It gave me a sense of southeast Asian cuisine. Yet the cured sea bream was not very memorable. In fact, I recalled more that there were some nice bitter vegetables and nuts to add some sharpness.
Cured sea bream with mollusks, frozen hummus, and spring onion gazpachuelo with cilantro
Then we got a break and butter. The butter candle gradually melted down, and then we can dip the bread into. It did give an interesting smoke flavour, but I was not sure I liked it. Also, I was not sure the butter is enough for such large bread, even though one can ask for more. I found this is more for a show than for the taste unless one like the mix of creamy and smoking flavours.
Candle grill on black bread
Let’s move to one of the main dishes, namely ‘Iberian pork pluma with romesco sauces and pickled carrots’. It looked too busy for me. I would describe the sauce was fancy BBQ sauce, although they mentioned white miso and sake. Unfortunately, that was it, I could not recall anything apart from, well, a nice piece of pork.
Iberian pork pluma with romesco sauces and pickled carrots
A similar problem for the desserts. They looked too busy in unorganised way and two desserts looked alike! However, the left one is yoghurt and flower based, and the right is chocolate. Similarly, I did not remember anything here. They certainly tasted nice, but, well, nice only. I missed a theme here, even though they phrased it as a childhood memory. However, any candy or sweet can be childhood memory.
As I mentioned at beginning of this blog, I did not like the menu. I guessed, the chef designed the menu alternating between strong sour and spicy flavour and earthen flavour, however all the earthen flavour dishes tasted nothing to me, hence it did not appear in the writing. While many sour and spicy flavour dishes had tomato taste inside. I understand it is in Spain where tomato played a big role, but I expected more. The pork and consecutive desserts really let me down, as I felt a very boring ending of the menu. Also, in general I found there were too much show in the plates and too much story-style explanation from the waiters on what is the dishes.
🐼 Score: 3/5
