Fabulous Can Fabes

Fabulous Can Fabes. This was truly the indulgent, culinary pinnacle of our trip to Barcelona – an amazing multi-course (I lost count!) meal that showcased the amazing produce, seafood, and meat the region has to offer.

Located in Sant Celoni, about 40 minutes or so north of Barcelona, Can Fabes is Chef Santi Santamaria’s interpretation of Catalan cuisine using the best ingredients from the region. The restaurant actually was the first in Catalonia (yes, before El Bulli) to receive three Michelin stars.

Pulling up to this unassuming (from the outside…) restaurant in the middle of sleepy Sant Celoni surrounded by narrow streets, apartments, and townhouses, I didn’t know what to expect. But walking in, the restaurant is super sleek, black, neutrals and clean lines with splashes of color. The kitchen is glassed in, so you can watch the chefs at work. It was truly a beautifully designed, yet intimate space.

I don’t know where to begin with the food! We did the summer tasting menu instead of à la carte, and it was a serious affair. An amuse bouche to introduce the three amuse bouches courses – each course having three different amuses. Is that confusing enough??? It was for me too, in fact. Crunchy squash blossoms, chicken gelée with mushrooms, parmesan grisini with lardo di colonnata, endive spears with aioli and olivade to name a few…Nine tiny dishes later, the actual menu began.

Zucchini with eggplant, green almonds, and jamón served alongside a crunchy tartlet with anchovy sauce was the first full dish of the menu. This one was kind of a blur for me to be honest. Then came delicious langoustines in a creamy parsley sauce with a cherry tomato salad. Next, my favorite dish!! Little dumplings filled with a creamy cheese, basil, pine nuts, and spring onions covered (generously) with summer truffles…I’m still dreaming about this one. A stuffed, huge calamari came after with a delicious, rich butter sauce and really thin crispy, green peppers. Finally, there was an amazing goat for two, which came in at a close second to the truffle dumplings – it’s quite frankly hard to beat that. The goat was a succulent rib, perfectly charred and not too gamey, in a delicious jus with baby corn, pearl onions, and nutty roasted garlic.

I can’t even talk about the dessert courses. Why? Because the house Merlot had gotten to me at this point. It was truly spectacular, and I’m not really a Merlot drinker. The restaurant owns about 1 hectare of land (about 2.5 acres for those of us that are metric-challenged) and produces only three-dozen bottles yearly. The wine is aged about 15 months but was incredibly drinkable with sweet tannins.

The desserts included a delicious melon soup, baked pears with pear ice cream over crunchy caramel, a strawberry and hibiscus non-alc martini, rich vanilla ice cream over apple macedoine, and an amazing petit fours course.

The lunch was entirely something else. The restaurant is part of the Relais & Chateaux group, and is attached to a “hotel” of sorts – small rooms adjoining the restaurant mainly for diners who stuff themselves silly and prefer to spend the night. There is also a fantastic wine cellar, a Chef’s table, and the Dins bar, which is a cigar cave of sorts. This was, for me, destination eating at its finest – a truly memorable experience.

Mercat de la Boqueria

A kid in a candy store. That’s the most apt description for my wide-eyed, wandering around one of the world’s greatest markets during a trip I took to Barcelona. I examined nearly every stall (umm…there are about 250 or so) and drove my husband nuts as he vaguely trailed behind me, snacking on bolinhos de bacalhau (salt cod fritters) – WHICH I gave him to keep him happy on the journey

Located off La Rambla, one of the most popular, walking streets in Barcelona, Mercat de la Boqueria is an indescribably rich market frequented by locals, tourists, and chefs alike. Like our own Union Square Greenmarket, many restaurants in the area source completely from what’s available in la Boqueria. Stalls consist of produce, hams (a lot!), dried fruits, candy, spices and other grocery items, seafood, meat, and even small restaurants. The tapas bars were packed when we were there – diners seated on bar stools scrambling for the servers’ attention. Bar Pinoxto, which was closed when I was there (so sad), is one of the most popular tapas spots in the market with (supposedly) incredibly flavorful dishes

To warn you, the meat stalls are not for the faint of heart / stomach! I refrained from posting any pics of pigs’ heads or whole rabbits. But everything else is pretty spectacular, incredibly fresh, and ridiculously diverse. From truffles to pimientos de padrón to fresh snails, they have it covered. I seriously would lose my mind if I could shop there everyday for my cooking

I personally picked up a boatload of saffron, cava vinegar, a host of cooking salts and sampled juices, fritters, and hams galore. My advice: go on an empty stomach. The U.S. banned jamón ibérico until 2007, so for a (ridiculously expensive) sample, check out Dean & Deluca, Agata & Valentina, or Despaña and let me know if it’s worth it

Elliot’s in the Park

In all the times I’ve visited or stayed in London, I have never had the opportunity to check out Victoria Park in East London. And it’s quite stunning. It has a section for the Old English Garden, a deer enclosure, and a serene lake with a fountain surrounded by ducklings and swans. A beautiful setting for a fantastic evening.

A few weeks back, some friends of mine invited me to join a group at Elliot’s in the Park. Elliot’s was a pop-up restaurant that was hosted at the Pavilion Café in Victoria’s Park every Friday this summer. The chef recreated the five-course menu weekly, using locally-sourced and seasonal ingredients. The full-time restaurant will be opening in October in Borough Market – a spectacular wholesale and retail food/green market (top 5 in the world). This pop-up restaurant was a cool way for the chefs to do a little pre-marketing, and it worked: they were booked solid.

The evening started with some “fizz”, as they call it, and canapés on the deck – oat crisps, spiced popcorn, and chicken oysters in pine salt. Bottle Apostle provided all of the wine pairings (one with each course) and had some incredible selections. The fizz was one of the best champagne’s I’ve tasted – Champagne Gallimard Brut Réserve N.V. It’s made by a small champagne house and is exclusively from Pinot Noir grapes. Dangerously good – fruity with rose-lychee undertones. I’ve asked my local wine guy to find out if we can get it; he said no one imports here because of how small the purveyor is but is on the case! It retails for the equivalent of $30 in the UK, which makes it even more dangerous. Fingers crossed.

After canapés, we made our way over to the communal tables for dinner. It began with English asparagus with mussels and tarragon butter. Bright and yummy with edible flowers and paired with a German Sauvignon Blanc. The next course was my favorite – a crispy Cornish mackerel served with Celtic mustard and dill pickled cucumbers. It was paired with a deliciously floral and green apple Austrian white – Anton Bauer, Gruner Veltliner “Gmork” 2009. This was followed up by braised Old Spot pork shoulder with broccoli and spring onion that paired with a deep Portuguese red.

Two desserts! A goat’s milk mousse with blackberry jam and Belgian speculoos. What the heck are speculoos? They are Dutch/Belgian/French shortcrust biscuits (I must try to make), and here they were crushed on top for texture. This was followed up by English strawberries with sour cream and elderflower. Beautiful. The dessert wine was spectacular, and we all snuck in a second glass. It was South African, Paul Cluver Weisser Riesling Noble Late Harvest 2009 and reminded me of some I brought back from South Africa from the Simonsig winery. Dessert wines from South Africa are generally delicious and always really well priced.

The night was really spectacular – nothing beats a novel experience with great friends. Local people in the know have a lot to look forward to when Elliot’s restaurant opens up in the fall!

Dinner @ Can Recasens

I feel like taking a red-eye from NYC to Europe is a gift and a curse. In my mind, getting there first thing in the morning is like cheating an extra day out of the trip. I always have these grandiose visions of getting to the hotel, showering, and heading out for a day of adventure. This almost never happens.

My first day in Barcelona, I ended up spending half the day waiting for the room to be ready because the hotel wouldn’t let us check in “early”…arghhh! I felt trapped, sleepy, and un-showered…not a great combo. And as I waited, I watched as the sun clouded over, the skies turned a deep gray, and then opened up…a thunderstorm our first night in Barcelona. I was told it only rains 28 days out of the year…. what luck!

That said, I heard about a cute, local, uber-authentic spot in an area called Poble Nou. The name of the place was Can Recasens, and I trekked (through the rain!) for dinner. Family-owned, this place was a butcher shop until 2003 when it was converted to a full restaurant. As you enter the front, you are surrounded by shelves of different olive oils, vinegars, and spices and a case full of cured meats and cheeses (all of which are for purchase). Why do the shelves in shops like these look so elegant whereas in my apartment kitchen, it’s just clutter…in any case, it was more reminiscent of a quaint, Catalonian specialty shop than a restaurant, incredibly warm and vibrant.

I felt like I was entering someone’s home, a series of small adjoining rooms, each named after an artist. The rooms were full of diners, none of whom were speaking English. If Spanish diners are there at 11 p.m. on a rainy Thursday, the food must be the truth…

Meats, cheeses and wine – that’s what to expect (as well as being completely dehydrated the next day…). The dinner started with a lovely cava and a salad loaded with oranges, lamb’s lettuce, mint, pine nuts, chili oil and crispy, fried onions. Then came a Spanish cab, delicious, nutty pernil(Iberian acorn-fed ham, a house specialty), luscious sobrassada (cured sausage from the Balearic islands) with rosemary honey, caramelized chorizo from Leon, melted gruyère cheese over roasted red peppers…Many items are featured as torrades, meats and cheeses stacked or melted over crunchy bread. They also have fondues as well as fustes, which are large wooden cutting boards piled high with various Catalan meats, sausages, pates, and cheeses.

We finished with something that was called chocolate mousse but was a bit lost in translation. I would definitely go back for a casual and (slightly) lighter alternative for dinner. All in, a completely delectable evening and well worth the trek through the rain…

A Day @ Hélène Darroze

I looked up the word serendipity to make sure I am really using it right. “Serendipity is a propensity for making fortuitous discoveries while looking for something unrelated.” Yes! That sufficiently describes being able to spend a day in the kitchen of Hélène Darroze at the Connaught in London.

But first, a little background. I am a godparent to a little bundle whose parents are dear friends of mine, extraordinarily sweet …and also not exactly the plan-ahead-kind-of-folks. So I found out, with about two weeks notice, that they would love if I could come to my godchild’s christening…in Bolton, England, the father’s hometown. Where IS that exactly. About 20 minutes outside Manchester, and it took planes, trains, and automobiles to get there!

Needless to say, I used this excuse to spend a little time in London. I am a GOOP reader, and Gwyneth's endorsement of the Connaught was all I needed to book a room there. They have both traditional and modern wings, and the rooms were stunning (I’m a modern gal, myself).

Another great friend of mine who lives out there and is seriously on the pulse of the London lifestyle declared the Connaught Bar “brilliant!”, which it was. Amazing bespoke martinis and a room that oozes elegant, glittering sex appeal. Like the Blue Bar at the Berkeley’s sophisticated older cousin. A few pics that don’t do it justice

So the serendipitous part. The restaurant at the Connaught happens to be none other than Hélène Darroze. She, herself, is iconoclastic – a Michelin-starred chef who left her family’s traditions to start her own. She trained under Alain Ducasse during a time when female French chefs were scarce (they still are) and has a restaurant in the Left Bank in Paris and this one at the Connaught. BOTH hold Michelin stars…

Hélène and her awesome Chef de Cuisine, Raphael, spent some time at Per Se while I was there, so I gave Chef Raphael a quick call asking begging him to let me come trail for the day. And he agreed! He was so kind and accommodating, and the kitchen there is such a complex operation. I left totally amazed and impressed.

Only 6 chefs work in the fine dining kitchen, and they quickly turned out dishes for service like the escabeche-style marinated mackerel with warm potatoes with pesto and pimientos del piquillo (yes, that’s one dish) and duck foie gras from les landes with a seasonal fruit chutney and grilled country bread (another).

You’ll notice in these pictures the lighting is different. That’s because they are plated on the “pass”, which is the area of the kitchen where dishes get their final touches; this one has a warming light. The line-caught calamari ravioli with Swiss chard, confit tomatoes and capers from Pantelleria, black ink reduction, and Parmigiano Reggiano emulsion looked amazing as did the poached, soft-boiled egg with white asparagus and truffles.

The Chef also showed me the Sommelier’s Table, which is a super-cool subterranean (I think! The place was a maze, and we took an elevator and some stairs to get there.) private dining room adjacent to a temperature and humidity-controlled wine room. The wine room is built from some imported, French stone that is supposed to be the best material for maintaining the room’s ideal conditions. The concept behind this dining room is that the patrons choose specific wines from the vault, and the chefs design (on the spot!) a bespoke menu for the evening’s dinner.

It was an incredible day. I feel so fortunate to have had this opportunity, so thank you to Chef Hélène and Chef Raphael for allowing me a glimpse of a brilliant restaurant.

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