The World’s Best Restaurant — the finale

This posting concludes a mini-series on our recent trip from our French village of Daglan to the northeast of Spain. Our vacation centred on Barcelona and the Costa Brava area, with the highlight being our September 23rd lunch at Girona’s El Celler de Can Roca, reputedly 2015’s No. 1 restaurant in the world.

So far, in three postings,  I’ve provided some overview comments on El Celler de Can Roca, plus descriptions and photographs of the starters and the “main” courses we enjoyed at our September 23rd lunch. Today I’ll conclude the series on a sweet note — a look at our desserts.

First up was a light dish called “Suspiro limeno,” shown below. Although it looked something like a slice of white cheese,  our menu explained that it was constructed of “Milk, lime, coriander, milk caramel, pisco.” Quite refreshing.

Our first break from the fish and meat dishes.

Then came this beautiful blue bowl, filled with “Turkish perfume” — meaning that it offered the scents and tastes of “Rose, peach, saffron, cumin, cinnamon and pistachio.” It was also delicious (and light), but the best was yet to come.

A beautiful mix of flavours in a beautiful bowl.

And here’s your first view of what we thought was perhaps the most perfect — or at least perfectly amazing — dish of the meal. Our menu describes it simply as “Orange colourology,” and provides no clue as to the ingredients. As you’ll see, it looks like a very large pearl.

At first blush, it’s a perfect sphere. What’s inside?

As you get closer, however, you can see through the outer shell. And there you find a variety of flower petals , arranged inside. Have a look:

A close-up shows that there’s lots going on inside the sphere.

Finally, we each broke open our desserts to find not only flower petals but a delicious cream, plus little tasty spheres. It’s hard to describe the mix of textures and flavours, but the overall effect was truly outstanding.

Broken open, the delicious goodies are revealed.

Of course, once the dessert plates were cleared away and our coffees ordered, we were served the obligatory collection of mignardises — a rich variety of fruits and candies and cookies. Here’s one of the trays on our table:

The final act — a tray of goodies to enjoy with the coffees.

And then it was all over, and time to get back on the mini-bus we had hired to take the 10 of us back to the house we were renting, overlooking the Mediterranean. As the centrepiece of our vacation in Spain, lunch at El Celler de Can Roca had more than met our expectations.

Finally, three cheers for the three Roca brothers and the roles they play– Joan Roca as head chef, Jordi as pastry chef and Josep as sommelier. Thanks for the memories.