To be fair, gastronomic fine-dining isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Many people looking to eat out in Barcelona would much rather chomp on a hamburguesa or settle for a generous portion of patatas bravas than dabble in chocolate olive-filled eggs. But for those that do have a fondness for gastronomic tasting menus, and all the conspicuous pretension that this entails, then L’Antiquari Gastronomic is unlikely to disappoint.
The food is deliciously inventive and the price, for a five-star eating experience, was not at all unreasonable: €68 per person for the food. Wine was extra, with the cheapest bottle on the menu being around €32.
The tasting menu consists of 14 elegant dishes, each assigned to a particular category: fish, poultry, red meat, vegetables (and then dessert at the end). After the appetizers came a series of fish-inspired dishes, then poultry, then… well, you get the idea.
The whole tasting menu is pre-prepared, so you do not get a choice in what to order. In fact the only decision that has to be made throughout the entire meal is what the wine to order.
Almost all the dishes at L’Antiquari Gastronomic are excellent. There were one or two that failed to excite the palette as one might have hoped – but out of a 14-course meal, that’s not a bad ratio! Clear stars of the meal were: the fake chocolate olive appetiser that explodes in a delightful spray of exciting flavours when one bites into it, duck cannelloni (created in the memory of the chef’s grandmother) and a bisque made of an Italian red shrimp known as gambero rosso. The restaurant changes most of the dishes on the menu every month, but thankfully the duck cannoloni and the shrimp bisque remain.
The restaurant itself has an elegant intimacy to it, with soft music and low lighting. Service is excellent, with the dishes arriving at a decent pace – serenely unhurried, allowing ample time for conversation between plates but not leaving diners wondering what has happened to the rest of their meal.
At one point, the waitress crouched before our table and asked us to try and guess the main ingredients in the dish before us. It was a green mousse, served as dessert. She came back later to test us. Much to our chagrin, we didn’t get even one of the ingredients right – but I think this is more a tribute to the chef’s creativity than a slight to our taste buds. They do this to every customer. It’s their entertainment for the evening.
L’Antiquari Gastronomic isn’t terribly big and usually gets booked up weeks in advance. If you’re planning to come here for a special occasion, as we strongly suggest you should do, make sure that you plan ahead!
Address: Plaça del Rei, 1 First floor
Opening times: Wed, Thu & Sunday: 2pm to 4pm, 7.45pm, 10.30pm; Fri-Sat: 2pm to 4pm, 7.45pm to 1am
Telephone: +34 648 745 910
Email: antiquarigotic@gmail.com
Website: https://antiquarigastronomic.com
