“Good evening, sirs. Do you have a reservation?" Where are we? London? New York? Singapore? No, no and no. We haven’t left Barcelona. We’re still here! The food’s great here, although we still have lots to discover and share with you. It’s Sunday night and we are greeted in English in a restaurant that we have been watching for a long time. So there you have it. No problem, we Miguelines are also citizens of the world!
Every year Barcelona welcomes 8 million tourists… They have to eat somewhere, and they have the right to do so in restaurants with a local touch. Plus, if they find venues that are prepared to welcome them, in terms of both the language of the servers and the menu and gastronomic adaptation of the dishes, business and success are guaranteed. At night, the venue we are presenting today, Etapes, has an international clientele, although at lunchtime it is packed with office workers attracted by an interesting set menu priced at only around €20.
Etapes is a small restaurant with modern décor, with as little history as capacity – fewer than 40 diners. We assume that, aware of the venue’s limitations, they took advantage of the mezzanine above the restaurant, where they house the entire interesting, extensive collection of wines available on the menu, to make a private dining room tucked in amidst the bottles. The restaurant itself is located in Plaça Letamendi, a square bisected by Aragó Carrer in the middle of the Eixample Esquerre district. The servers are engaged and accessible yet professional.
Etapes is a place where the gourmet sampling menu is so attractive that there is no need to actually ask for a menu. They have two sampling menus: the short one with 4 dishes at €35/person and the long one with 6 dishes at €60/person. So with the goal of getting to know their dishes better, we buckled down and went for the long menu.
We begin the appetisers with a small but beautifully presented steak tartare. We continued with a classic surf and turf, wonderfully cooked jumbo scallops over a fine layer of pancetta topped with crisped Iberian ham. You can’t go wrong. We finish with a delicate duck ravioli with foie cream. It was good, although we are missing a bit more “spark” and oomph in the flavours.
Steak tartare
Surf and turf
Duck ravioli
We proceed to the main courses with a well-crafted lobster rice; it is flavourful, and the rice was cooked to perfection. We then sample suckling pig with peach, onion and chicory purée. It is also well-crafted and mellow with crispy skin. We finish the long sampling menu with a fine composition of different textures of chocolate and dried fruit.
Lobster rice
Suckling pig
Chocolate textures
The Etapes team may deserve a better venue, but they managed to delight us with elaborate, balanced dishes with well-thought-out mixtures of flavours and ingredients. The food may be a bit cold for locals, but it is perfect for foreigners who want to discover very well crafted local/market cuisine. But we’re not all the same, and when a restaurant with a clearly gastronomic focus works this well, we Miguelines can only applaud. You’ve got our complete support, Etapes team!
| Score | ||
|---|---|---|
| Food | Wines | |
| 70 | 73 | |
| Service | Venue | |
| 65 | 65 | |
| Price | MIGUELÍN STARS | |
| 50€ |  |
|
| Per person: €50/pax, 1 appetiser, 1 main course, 1 dessert, 1 glass of wine | ||
Where is Etapes?
Address: Carrer d'Enric Granados, 10, 08007 Barcelona
Telephone: 933 23 69 14
Timetable: Monday to Friday 1 to 3:30 pm, Saturday and Sunday 8 to 11 pm
Website: http://www.etapes.cat/ca/