The world's best restaurant

In February 2013, we booked a table for 4 at a restaurant, El Cellar de Can Roca, in Girona. At that time, the restaurant had been number 2 in the world ranking for a couple of years. We booked with our friends Martin and Sile Dwyer who run a Chambre d'Hôtes with Table d'Hôtes in our village. We had been talking about doing it for years. Deciding on a date that we could all commit to and that the restaurant had available was tricky, but we eventually settled on November 14th.

A couple of months later, we read that El Cellar was the top restaurant for 2013, so we were pleased that we had got our reservation and held on the to the date ferociously.

Clearly, for full enjoyment we had to stay the night, so we booked into a hotel in Girona where we had stayed before. We were lucky enough to get a suite, although we had booked standard rooms. This was our sitting room with wall feature.





We took a walk around Girona after a light lunch of tapas.








El Cellar is not a large restaurant, but it is spacious and very well staffed. It is run by three brothers, Joan, Jordi and Josep Roca and the tables are dressed with rocks.





This is the entrance to the restaurant with Pat and Martin



and the interior with its central garden of trees.



Along with the menus, we were presented with a trolley containing 3 wine menus - one each for the white, red and rose wines. Clearly, choosing the wines could take some time .....






We had the choice of an 8 course or 14 course menu - we decided that, as this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, we would go the whole hog and chose the longer menu with accompanying wines. (By the end of the meal we had decided that it would most likely be more than once in a lifetime).

We started with Cava and apéros which were beautifully presented in a black globe there were five tastes from around the world.




This was followed by caramelised olives stuffed with anchovies and presented on an bonsai olive tree



And more apéros














Then we started on the menu - everything on the plates is edible including flowers and prawn tentacles.


Vegetable stock





Asparagus viennetta




Chestnut and smoked eel




Mackerel



Boletus edulus





Sea anemone





Prawn



Steamed langoustine, cooked in situ by pouring sherry onto hot stones




Sole




Lamb with artichoke flower


Pigeon




Sour dough ice cream




Candy Apple, as presented, what was inside and a tiny sugar maple leaf.









Walnut lemon and ratafia.




We finished with petit fours





Martin is a professional chef himself and ran a restaurant in Waterford and on request we were allowed to see the kitchen. Here we all are with the head chef, Joan Roca.






It was truly a great experience. The next day, we returned home to France. Snow had fallen on the Pyrenees overnight making the scenery that much more interesting.


- Pat and John on tour