Disfrutar
The #1 restaurant in the world, Three-Michelin Stars, and the inspiration for the Caviar Donut name, Disfrutar in Barcelona is an epicurean revelation bursting with boundless imagination, unbelievable flavor and technical perfection.
Our Grade: 99/100 (Best of the Best/ Upper Three-Star)
What is the “Caviar Donut”? For my wife and I, it’s a moment in time when we looked at each other and knew that we had just experienced something we would never forget. We were at Disfrutar when this occurred. We took a bite of a donut filled with beluga caviar and crème fraiche. We both laughed. Almost in disbelief, I recall saying “that was perfect”.
In 2024 Disfrutar was named the World’s Best Restaurant. To get a table here, you need to book a year in advance. I realize how crazy that might sound, but it’s worth it. So tomorrow after you see this review, go on their website, book a dinner, and take the next 365 days to figure out the rest. I would happily jump on a plane to experience Disfrutar again.
Disfrutar is the brainchild of Oriol Castro, Mateu Casañas and Eduard Xatruch. The three met at Feran Adria’s El Bulli. Adria is one of the most influential chefs of all time and El Bulli was considered to be the best restaurant in the world before it closed almost 14 years ago. At Disfrutar, El Bulli’s spirit is alive and well. Disfrutar means “to enjoy” and pure joy is the simplest way I can describe our experience.
Before we get to the meal, let me first mention the staff. I’ve never experienced hospitality at this level in a restaurant. The moment you walk through the doors you simultaneously feel like the most important person in the world and also at home. On the way to the table you walk through a corridor next to an open kitchen. Every member of the staff, from the chefs, front of house and kitchen, greeted us. Over the course of the meal, I lost count of the number of servers we interacted with, and everyone brought their A game. If we needed to use the rest room, the staff asked us to give them a heads up to prepare. If we wanted the pace of the meal to slow down or speed up, the kitchen would adjust. I just loved that. They were there for us. We were here for over 4 hours, and I could’ve stayed longer. The staff created the perfect atmosphere for us to enjoy our experience. What a special feeling.
Now let’s talk about the food. The late Anthony Bourdain used to love to ask people what their death row meal would be. After nearly 30 courses at Disfutar, this is my current pick. In fact, if I were to make a list of my 10 favorite dishes at any restaurant, at least half the list might come from this menu. As to the menu, we went with the Classic menu. Instead of a traditional menu, we were presented with a menu that had a list of the emotions we would experience during the meal. We thought this was a little heavy handed, but creative geniuses are entitled to be a little over the top.
The opening dish of the night was a frozen passion fruit ladyfinger with rum. A cocktail that you could eat with your hands, our first bite opened up the palate and was a wonderful introduction to the imaginative dishes to follow.
The server next brings out a bowl of what looks to be black sand. A delicious and airy treat is hidden beneath. With a little artistic shake, two beet meringue balls come to the surface. Wonderful bites.
Next came three rose petals. Two contained delicate spheres of rose water and gin that exploded in your mouth on contact, and the third was frozen lychee made to look like a white raspberry. Delicate and wonderful.
What happens when you take the most delicious and fluffy donut in the world, fill it with high-end caviar and crème fresh? To call this dish sweet, savory and salty doesn’t do it justice. I would call it heaven on a plate. Disfrutar’s Panchino filled with caviar is an all-time great dish and quite possibly my favorite bite of all time. I almost forgot to mention that the dish is served with black truffle-infused vodka. Wow!
Disfrutar’s version of bread service follows. Aerated solid bubbles of smoked butter and caviar sit on a thin slice of toast. There is also a magnifying glass to inspect the dish. I looked at this dish and thought of Jeff Goldblum’s famous line in Jurassic Park about being preoccupied with whether or not something can be done and ignoring whether it should be done. But in the end, this worked.
Next comes a dish that looks like a grilled cheese sandwich. The “cheese” is a creamy gazpacho sorbet, and the bread is tomato meringue. While delicious and a wonderful concept, our gazpacho sorbet melted prematurely at our touch.
Disfrutar’s Gilda with marinated mackerel, pepper, anchovy and olive oil, is a take on a San Sebastian classic, and it began to introduce more intense flavor complexity to the meal. There was heat, brine and fat. The famous El Bulli olive which explodes in your mouth was also incorporated into this dish.
Our next bread course was flourless ‘coca’ bread with “escalivada” and anchovy. The “bread” is created by paper thin sheets of potato starch layered on top of one another and baked. Roasted eggplant and bell peppers, anchovy butter, and anchovy are placed on top for three satisfying and distinct bites.
Brilliant in concept but lacking the explosive flavor I was expecting, the Crunch Mushroom leaf was one of the few misses for me.
Keeping with the mushroom theme, Crispy egg yolk with warm mushroom gelatin brought us back on track. An egg yolk is fried into a tempura ball that is crispy on the outside and liquid on the inside. You bite into the tempura egg yolk and pour the yolk into a mushroom gelee. Great dish.
Our final mushroom dish of the evening was another venture into molecular gastronomy. With marinated mushroom vinegar with oyster, you are presented with a bowl of 4 mushrooms, a huge oyster and a creamy mushroom sauce. 2 of the mushrooms are real and 2 are fake. The two fake mushrooms are reminiscent of the El Bulli olive from earlier in the meal where mushroom consommé is fashioned to look like a mushroom only to explode in your mouth. Playful and delicious.
Solidly in my top 5 dishes of all time, multi-spherical pesto with pistachios and eel blew me away. I have never taken so long to finish a dish in my life because I didn’t want it to end. I recall telling my wife, “that’s the best Italian dish I’ve ever had, and we are in Spain.” Using the multi-spherical technique made famous at El Bulli, pesto sauce is turned into spheres and made to look like a snake (or is it a caterpillar?). Complementing the pesto were two cubes of smoked eel topped with pancetta, Parmesan, a rich Parmesan sauce, pistachios and pine nuts. Rich and intense, this dish is worth traveling to Barcelona for on its own.
Staying in Italy, Disfrutar’s macaroni alla carbonara was another dish where I felt the interplay of imagination, taste and technique didn’t quite align. Translucent penne is created from a consommé of ham. The “pasta” is topped with ham, Parmesan and a carbonara mouse. The dish is then finished with black pepper and a healthy serving of Parmesan. Brilliant concept, beautiful dish and good (not great) taste.
Leaving Italy, it was time for a salad. Well, it was time for a liquid salad and a tomato polvoron with arbequina Caviaroli. The liquid salad comes in little coup cup and the tomato polvoron is an intensely flavored dry tomato cookie.
This was followed by Hake ‘Suquet” and Cappucino “Suquet”. This dish is the closest to what you will find at a traditional Michelin restaurant. The fish was perfectly cooked and the cup of sauce to the side was hearty and delicious.
While the prior dish signaled a turn to the more traditional, the next dish reversed course. You are presented with a basket of traditional eggs surrounding a golden egg in the center. Immediately afterwards the next dish arrives. It is called the goose that laid the golden eggs: fried egg of crustacean. In the middle of the dish is what appears to be a golden shimmering egg yolk. Beneath the “golden egg” is egg whites surrounded by prawns dressed with a kind of Thai sauce with peanuts and a touch of spiciness. When you pierce the golden egg, a rich reddish orange liquid oozes out. What is the golden egg? A sublime spicy consommé of prawn brains. Don’t let the description deter you. This is a all-time great dish.
More mind-games follow. Multi spherical tatin of corn and foie is served in a magical box. When you go to grab the bite, there is nothing there. An optical illusion with mirrors. Talk about empty calories. When the jig is up, you see another example of the multi-spherification technique used earlier. Here, liquid corn sits above velvety foie.
Before the final savory course of the evening, it is time for a disclaimer. We’ve had squab/pigeon at multiple 3, 2 and 1 Michelin-Star restaurants. For whatever reason, we cant develop an appreciation for it. Still, Disfrutar’s squab with amasake kombu spaghetti, almond and grape is far and away my favorite interpretation of the bird.
Next, a homemade cider is smoked tableside while you crack open a walnut shell with a walnut and cheese inside. This segways into Disfrutar’s take on a nut and cheese course. Creamy cheese is surrounded by four variations on the walnut. A soaked walnut shell, a raw walnut, a walnut candy and a liquid walnut. Hoisin cucumber and black sesame cornet deserts followed. All were nice dishes, but this was the least impressive section of the evening. Too often desert disappoints. Would Disfrutar let me down? No…no it would not.
Our last desert of the evening was exceptional. Black apple with noisette butter ice cream and flourless puff pastry is currently my favorite desert in fine dining. An apple is fermented in a vacuum sealed plastic bag for 60 days. The resulting flavor had an intensity I’ve never experienced before in my life. This is another dish easily in my top 10 of all time.
Petite fours were presented on a beautiful garden table to end the meal where you are invited to find the deserts like an easter egg hunt. All were fantastic. I especially liked the exploding bonbons and cotton candy.
As our meal ended, I looked at my watch. Over four hours had passed, and I was ready for an encore. If there was ever a meal that lived up to the Michelin Guide three-star designation of “worth a special journey” this was it. Was the meal perfect? No. Nothing is. There were dishes I didn’t connect with. I’ve had better wine pairings. I’ve dined in settings I’ve preferred. However, this was an evening that we will never forget and a meal that transformed the way I looked at fine dining. If today was my last day on earth and I could eat anywhere in the world, this would be the place.
Thank you to everyone at Disfrutar. You deserve to be called the best restaurant in the world, and one day we hope to visit you again. Bravo!
