There were two very good reasons to try L’Antiquari Gastronòmic.
One: it was my wife’s birthday and it’s always a good idea for a husband to lavish care and attention (not to mention extravagant expense) on a woman during such celebrations. (My wife is, of course, a member of The City Trail team, so whether this opening paragraph gets through the editing process is rather uncertain).
Two: I have always had a fondness for gastronomic tasting menus. What some might deride as unnecessary pretension, I always think of as mouthwatering creativity. Providing it is good, of course!
The moment I popped the fake chocolate olive into my mouth, which exploded in a delightful spray of exciting flavours that sent shivers through my taste buds, I knew that it would be a good meal.
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 had been pre-arranged. In fact the only decision we had to make for the entire meal was what the wine should be. We chose a lightly-sparkling wine from the Penedès region of Catalunya, made with Macabeo and Reisling grapes.
Slightly shamefully, a large factor in choosing this particular tipple was the price (after all, we were splashing out quite a bit for this meal), so we needed to show some restraint. At €32 for the bottle, the wine happened to be one of the cheapest on the menu. It was delicious, though!
The dishes arrived at a decent pace – serenely unhurried, allowing ample time for conversation between plates and commentary of each of the sumptuous platters as we progressed through the menu.
We found almost all of the dishes exquisite, although there were one or two that failed to excite – out of a 14-course meal, that’s not a bad ratio!
There’s little to be gained in enumerating all the platters. Our favourites, though, were the 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 these two stars remain.
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.
The restaurant itself has an elegant intimacy to it, with soft music and low lighting. The place isn’t terribly big, but despite this we had little difficulty enjoying a conversation.
All in all, this was an experience that we would definitely recommend, as long as you don’t mind splashing out a bit. The entire meal, with wine, came to €168.
There was only one dish that we didn’t particularly enjoy, which very unfortunately came right at the end. This was a pistachio ice-cream that was far too cloying, with a claustrophobic taste that lingered a little too long on the tongue. Even worse, the chef had taken the caramelised base a little bit too far, introducing a tinge of burnt into the dessert. I am sure that this was a one-off accident (maybe the chef wasn’t even aware that this had happened?) so I was undecided as to whether we should include this in the review. But I figured we probably should.
Other than that, an absolutely five-star meal, with an appropriate price tag.
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