The best restaurant in Barcelona: an evening at Disfrutar

The ranking

The chefs at this restaurant in Barcelona (Mateu Casañas, Oriol Castro and Eduard Xatruch) have a very clear idea of what they want their diners to do: Disfrutar. It means “to enjoy” in both Spanish and Catalan, and enjoy you will if you have a meal at this restaurant, which has managed to position itself as the undisputed best restaurant in Barcelona as ranked by Macarfi.

Disfrutar opened its doors in 2014 and, as of 2022, it ranks as the 5th best restaurant in the world according to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, and it has been awarded two Michelin stars and three Repsol suns. In a nutshell, this restaurants focuses on avantgarde cuisine (and they mean it), but never forgetting their Mediterranean roots. Most dishes have a nod towards local cuisine, but they are reimagined, reinvented and beautifully served. If you want to know more about our experience, keep reading.

The offer at Disfrutar, the best restaurant in Barcelona

Food

They are not here to play, they are focused. For that, they offer two degustation menus AND NOTHING ELSE, so do not expect a la carte dishes. The menus are the Disfrutar Classic, which is an homage to the restaurant’s best dishes that have withstood the test of time; and the Disfrutar Festival, which is more explorative with dishes from the current season. Both serve an outstanding sequence of 30 dishes and both cost 235€ (around 255 USD). If you think this is a lot, wait til you see the amount of dishes and, especially, the outstanding skill they demonstrate. And the good thing of the “little” offer (and I say little in the loosest of terms, since each contains a lot of dishes), is that they excel at each and every one of them.

Drinks

On the drink side, you have more freedom, since you can browse in their long wine menu. If you want to leave that in their hands as well, they also offer a Wine pairing for 110€ (around 120 USD) that will match the menu that you have chosen. For those who can’t or don’t wan’t to drink alcohol, they also offer a non-alcoholic Wine pairing that keep the organoleptic qualities of the wine but removing the alcohol.

My recommendation

Honestly, I have no advice on what to choose, since nothing would be a mistake here. However, I do recommend that if it is your first time, you should try the Disfrutar Classic menu, but if you’ve already been there, take the Disfrutar Festival menu.

The venue

OK, let’s get real. By all accounts, this is a beautiful restaurant. The decor inspired in Spanish Arabesque lattice (celosía) and tiles is not only beautiful and unique, but it also promises an intimate experience. I wish they had space to keep this in between the tables. The long hallway will take you in front of the open kitchens, where they will introduce you to the chef and you will be able to see the insane amount of people working on the insane amount of dishes you’re about to taste. Then there is the dining room, with very few tables, subtle lighting and a gigantic window (basically the whole wall) facing their beautiful inner terrace.

HOWEVER, (and please understand that I am nitpicking)

I did not like the entrance from the street. It looks fun and laid back, but it gave me “upscale fast food” vibes, it doesn’t say “best restaurant in Barcelona”. Also, while the area is not a bad neighbourhood AT ALL, it is not particularly beautiful, as it is next to the hospital and surrounded by rather bland and neglected buildings. Not their fault, but I thought I should mention for my next non-professional assessment. I think these are the only reasons they do not yet have their third Michelin star: the entrance, the surroundings and, unfortunately, the limitations of having a restaurant in the middle of Barcelona, where the architectural touch that you can give it is decorative, but it cannot fully convey the essence of the restaurant with its structure (like the current Noma location does).

Our experience in the best restaurant in Barcelona

Private room

Let’s get to the interesting part: our experience and THE FOOD (deliberately with capital letters). First of all, our booking was without incidence and only a few months in advance, but most likely because we booked for a Monday. Take that into account when making your reservation.

When we got in, the hostess showed us around the establishment, showing us the kitchens and introducing us to some cooks and Mateu Casañas, one of the chefs. Then they told us that we got the incredibly sought after private table in the creation lab (WHAAT??). We were a group of four, and they took us to our own private room, going through their cellar and into the kitchen where they test the new dishes. I cannot imagine a best way to experience this.

The creation lab at Disfrutar

Our team

Then, we were introduced to Daniel Ivan González, our room service responsible, and Toni Boada, our sommelier. We decided on the Disfrutar Classic menu without wine pairing, so we discussed with Toni our wine bottle options. We decided to just blindly follow his recommendations, which were spot on, and it was a very dynamic experience, since it was a constant conversation throughout the whole meal. Exactly what you want. The same with Daniel, the timing of the dishes was very well paced and again, a constant conversation with us so we were comfortable the whole time. We hadn’t even started with the food and we already felt like we were in the best restaurant in Barcelona!

The shelves at the creation lab at Disfrutar

The star at the best restaurant in Barcelona: the food

Now the food. Everything was ingenious, surprising in texture and flavour, but still very familiar to me (I am from Barcelona after all, so I do get the roots of the food) and incredibly presented, with special mention to whoever designed the plates (and by plates I mean the beautiful structures where the food was on, in or around).

Since there are 30 dishes I will just mention the few that I found to be spectacular. Well, let’s say the few that stood out, because all were spectacular in their own way.

Panchino with caviar

This is probably one of their most iconic dishes and the reason is clear. It is an explosion of flavour and texture in your mouth. The soft and delicate bread is filled to the brim with caviar and sour cream, giving each bite a ton of velvet flavour. It is served with truffle infused vodka. A very Russian-inspired dish.

Panchino filled with caviar and sour cream

It is FULL of caviar

Salty walnut candy with mango, tonka bean and whisky

The combination of the salt, the earthiness and mouth-covering texture of the walnut and tonka beans, the freshness and creaminess of the mango and the smoky flavour of the whisky makes of this simple looking dish an orchestra of flavour complexity.

Creating mystery

Walnut salty candy with mango, tonka bean and whisky

La Gilda del Disfrutar

This is a clever thing they did here. Gilda is a traditional pintxo from the Basque country consisting on a skewer with pickled stuff: olives, green chili peppers and anchovies. They reinvented it by using the iconic ElBulli olive, pieces of chilli, anchovies and capers, a plethora of gels and mackerel. They serve it on top of a picture of the traditional dish.

La Gilda del Disfrutar

Crunchy egg yolk with mushroom jelly

This one was AWESOME. First of all, look at the presentation. I need that little stand for my soft-boiled eggs. Anyway, there are many combinations of ingredients in cuisine that work very well. Very few work as well as eggs and mushrooms and this is a clear example. They somehow manage to bread an egg yolk while it is still runny on the inside. Add the potent mushroom jelly on the inside and MAGIC! Honestly one of my favourite dishes on the menu.

Crunchy egg yolk with mushroom jelly

Multi-spherical pesto with pistachios and eel

This is oversimplified, as it also had parmesan and pork belly. Just an awesome combination of traditional flavours and technical mastery, not much more to say about it.

Multi-spherical pesto with pistachios and eel

Carbonara

Tou read it right, just pasta carbonara. But of course this is Disfrutar so it was not JUST pasta carbonara. They replaced the flour in the pasta with gelatin from tendons, keeping the bite of normal pasta, perhaps even softer, but adding a background of pork flavour to potentiate the bacon bite. This also gives the sauce its place to shine. Really delicious.

Before the sauce to appreciate the pasta

And after the sauce for full flavour

Seafood “suquet” with its capuccino

“Suquet” is a traditional Catalan potato-based seafood stew. Here they reinvented it by using a massive and tender langostine accompanied by potato creamy spheres and seaweed foam, bathed with the bisque. The dish came with its own drink, a bisque-based capuccino. I am a sucker for seafood and this dish screamed with seafood flavour. Bravo!

A seafood paradise

Txuletón with glass piquillos

Another remarkable dish because of its simplicity but outstanding flavours. “Txuletón” is a beef rib steak that in this case was presented as a tartare accompanied with its grilled  fat. As a “drink”, a powerful broth made with its bones and on the side, glass-like chips made of piquillo peppers. Despite the simplicity, there is a clever contrasts between the cold and lean meat and the warm and lardy fat, with the broth to potentiate the flavour and the  peppers to add a crunchy wink.

And now a meat paradise

Piquillo glass crackers

Pigeon and foie trio

This is not exactly a dish but three, all revolving around pigeon and foie. The center is pigeon “pibil”, a Mexican-style of cooking (traditionally pork). The meat is extremely tender but full of flavour, intensified by the potent sauce but compensated by the cilantro-based second sauce (Warning: you probably won’t like this dish if you don’t like game). Corn and merian add contrasts in texture and flavour. On the side, pigeon and foie bonbon. A mouthful of liver flavour. And lastly, a tatin toast with foie gras and multi-spherical corn. The corn surprisingly complements the foie by giving it a starchy yet fresh counterpoint. These three dishes bring an end to the savoury part of the meal, and what an end!

This dish was massive for the kind of menu that they offer

This belongs in a jewellery store

One of the most beautiful dishes

Chocolate peppers, oil and salt

The desserts keep the same line as the rest of the dishes, but the one that most impressed me was the most “usual” in flavour (still amazing) but spectacular in technique. One of the most traditional Catalan desserts is the chocolate with oil and salt, typically served with bread. They recreated the dish by giving the chocolate pepper shapes. Such a beautiful way to present this dish, which in flavour brings me back to my childhood but my eyes tell me a completely different story.

The trickster dessert

Just to wrap up, we had a coffee and a bit of whisky with some petit fours in the terrace after this amazing dinner.

Closing statement

Now the verdict. Is it expensive? Yes. Is it worth it? HELL YES! And to be honest, it is a price that is generally out of my budget (and probably other people’s as well), but the value for the price here is really amazing, so I recommend to make the monetary effort. After finishing dinner (which took us around 4 hours) I felt that the overall experience is cheap. Every bite, every drink, every timing is thought through and it is a completely different experience to just going out for dinner.

My take home message is that this restaurant manages to give a complete new interpretation of traditional Catalan and Spanish food (among others) using a mixture of traditional and innovative ingredients and a masterful technique that impresses you bite after bite, dish after dish. Despite having an insane amount of dishes, I can say that I still truly remember each of them after a few months, which is not always the case in this kind of restaurants. And even though each dish is very different from the previous one, there is a sense of flow, of plot and story-telling that makes the menu very cohesive. Add the incredible staff, the intimate atmosphere and the cleverly chosen wine and there you have it, a perfect experience.

Here being incredulous at how good everything was

Is it the best restaurant in Barcelona? I haven’t yet been to all of them, but I can honestly say it is the best one I’ve been in. Would I go there every week? No. Let’s say if dining out is watching TV, dining at Disfrutar is going to the Opera. It is much more spectacular, understandably more expensive, and probably something that you’ll keep for special occasions. But if you like innovative and surprising food and you’re willing to pay a bit for it, I truly recommend that you book NOW! (you can book through this link).

If you’re in Barcelona, make sure to have a look at this post about things to do in the city:

→ Top 10 things to do in Barcelona

And its more specific sub-posts:

→ Route through Modernisme in Barcelona

→ Barcelona from above: 15 best views of Barcelona

→ Medieval Barcelona: a route through Barcelona’s Old Town

Also, if you have some time, include this route through the north of Spain in your itinerary!

→ Route through the north of Spain

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