I was lucky enough to get a table for dinner off the waitlist in March for June. The property is beautiful – modern yet comfortable due to the wooden elements and inner garden.
They hand you a huge menu with two options, we chose the feast menu with 20 courses for 295€ and the wine pairing for 150€. There were an endless number of small snacks before the actual dinner even started. My favorite dishes were the shrimp veloute, which had a very intense flavor, and the nettle dish, but I honestly loved every single dish. Also the desserts were in a league of their own. Not to mention the play dough dessert for which they infuse acutal play dough. It really is a lot of food and you get very full in the end.
The wine pairing was extraordinary, 17 glasses of phenomenal wines as half pours, you don’t get such a high class pairing for that money anywhere else. It started with a 1986 Gonzalez-Byass Añada Palo Cortado, which recently sold in an auction for 2000€ per bottle. I honestly can‘t remember every single wine, as you will definitely feel the alcohol towards the last third the pairing.
The service was flawless, we had different servers throughout the evening and all were excellent. Josep Roca also greeted each table, he seemed like a shy but very sweet guy! We even got a kitchen tour in the end, there are 30 cooks for 45 guests which is incredible if you think about it.
Overall, El Celler de Can Roca was the most complete and perfect fine dining experience I've had to date. It really is what one would expect from a three-star restaurant. Compared to Disfrutar, I personally found it more substantial food-wise and also like the atmosphere more.
On a site note, Girona is a beautiful city and is definitely worth a visit.
by Comprehensive_Let408
6 Comments
This looks beyond amazing
Thanks for including the wines! Love that they had some Sherries in there.
For value, that may well be the best wine pairing in any restaurant, Michelin or otherwise. Looks great.
Menu looks pretty stellar
> Overall, El Celler de Can Roca was the most complete and perfect fine dining experience I’ve had to date. It really is what one would expect from a three-star restaurant. Compared to Disfrutar, I personally found it more substantial food-wise and also like the atmosphere more.
Well, there are currently 10 restaurants that are disqualified from the 50 best list due to winning #1 previously (in El Celler’s case twice). Of those 10, el Bulli is long since closed, Noma is set to close this year and Eleven Madison Park may as well be a different restaurant and eligible for the list again.
So whenever we read “best restaurant in the world” we need to attach an asterisk in our minds that reads “besides El Celler de Can Roca, The Fat Duck, The French Launcry, Mirazur, Osteria Francescana, Geranium, and Central and also its probably not as good as el Bulli or Noma or peak EMP.”
Not only are none of the recent or future winners likely at that level, but El Celler climbed to the top while Noma was having its insane run that was only ever rivaled by el Bulli’s dominance. Not only are some of these restaurants still better than the recent winners, but they had to face the other Hall of Fame restaurants every single year to climb to the top. I’m sure that sooner or later a new restaurant will be ranked #1 and will fully deserve it, but unfortunately due to the stupid Hall of Fame rule we’ll never know (not that these lists are perfect or objective anyway).
Not that I want to attack Disfrutar or any other 2019 and later winners. I think they’re done as much of a disservice by the Hall of Fame rule themselves. I’d love to know that they’re #1 or #3 or #8, but all we’ll ever know is that they’re at least #10 out of restaurants that are in business today.
Anyway glad you enjoyed it so much. In my eyes El Celler is the best of the best period right now. Not that I or anyone I know has visited more than like 3 or 4 contenders in the last 12 months.
We walked from the train station to the restaurant (a bit of detour to the historic sites), and enjoyed the city as well as the food greatly.
Disfrutar we did very close to El Celler de Can Roca, and while Disfrutar was a top 10 meal (too many courses each with a “gimmick” felt a bit tiring towards the end), El Celler de Can Roca is our consensus #1.