Disfrutar [1, 1 ed.]

Table of contents :
Content:

Part I - Book Enjoy

Foreword To the reader

1. First steps

2. Space

3. Our team

4. Room and service

5. Wine and other drinks

6. Gastronomic offer

7. Learn, share, enjoy acknowledgments about the authors

Part II - Cabinet with recipes

Citation preview

Disfrutar Oriol Castro Eduard Xatruch Mateu Casanas

Foreword by Ferran Adria

08

To the reader 10

1 Starting out The road to Disfrutar 16 Opening Compartir 24 Disfrutar: initial ideas

32

2 The space 34

3 Our team 60

4 Hospitality and service 72

5 Wine and other beverages 88

6 Gastronomic offering Evolution

102

Products

126

Techniques and concepts

140

Sequences of dishes

152

Influences

158

Tableware and other serving utensils

174

7 Learning, sharing, • • enJoy1ng Central at Disfrutar

186

Lectures at gastronomic conferences and travel

188

Recognition

192

Acknowledgements 196

About the authors 198

Disfrutar

Foreword If I had to describe Eduard, Mateu and Oriol, and their restaurant, Disfrutar, in five words, the first one on the list would be effort. It has taken effort to get as far as they have: endless hours of work, in both management and in everything to do with innovation. Imagination and creativity would come next, as I have no doubt that you can count chefs in the world who are on a par with them in this respect on one hand. There's no question that courage is the attitude that best defines how they've taken on this project since the outset in 2014: their determination has allowed them to resolve the financial and gastronomy-related issues that opening a restaurant of these characteristics entails. Finally, teamwork is synonymous with Disfrutar, because the joint leadership exercised by these three chefs and the respect, care and admiration they profess for each other and for their team is vital if we're to understand their success and why they're some of the most esteemed professionals in the business. As an added bonus, Disfrutar is uniqueness, an experience that is impossible to find outside of their restaurant. These words - effort, imagination, creativity, courage and teamwork - are precisely what we need in such difficult times as these. Because today, as I write this foreword, the calendar marks 1 August 2020, the day on which eIBulli1846 was born and which, although it should be a cause for celebration, has been tarnished by the Covid-19 pandemic. It's a tragedy never before seen and a situation that has affected us healthwise, socially, economically and even emotionally. It has deprived us of the great joy of seeing the results of nine years of continuous effort finally realised. This capacity for effort will be essential for everybody if we're to exit this crisis, particularly as regards the economic aspect. I've resumed writing this foreword on 8 August 2020, after returning from a purchasing expedition in Roses, and after phoning Eduard and Mateu about an issue concerning suppliers. And at this very moment, my mind is filled with recollections of all the work these chefs did to make elBulli the restaurant that everybody knows, and of the importance they came to have. All three were mainstays of the restaurant when it came to creating values, philosophy, attitudes, character and conduct - in other words, the organisational culture, which is so important for a restaurant, and which they subsequently took to a much higher level thanks to their personality and their way of looking at cooking and what a fine-dining restaurant should be. Today we had lunch at eIBulli1846. It was the second family meal, together with the participants in the first open call. We were all seated, and for a moment the core team members looked at each other and we smiled. At that instant, the spirit of Eduard, Mateu and Oriol was with us, in the new kitchen, this hub whose mission is to cook, eat from knowledge and enjoy cooking. Effort, imagination, creativity, courage and teamwork is what you'll find in this book, which I have no doubt will leave an important mark on gastronomy. Many thanks, Eduard, Mateu and Oriol.

Ferran Adria

Disfrutar

To the reader We are very excited to present to you the first book in the series Disfrutar (2014-2017). Much time went into it, and we carefully deliberated on every aspect of its structure, design and writing to find the best formula with which to catalogue our culinary work, as well as to offer you other contents in relation to the restaurant that you might find useful and interesting. In order to achieve a quality result, we surrounded ourselves with experienced professionals: Jon Sarabia, managing editor; Francese Guillamet photographer; Gerard Calm and Jordi Serra from Zoo Studio came up with the book's design; and Rosa Molinero were responsible for editing the texts. We wish to share with you all our motivation for Disfrutar: its conceptualisation, construction, opening and how we progressed, improving one step at a time, until the end of 2017. For this reason, it was our intention to present an analysis of the way our team operates, the development of our gastronomic offering and the creative contributions that we have been incorporating into different areas, such as products, techniques, concepts and tableware. The final chapters describe some of the experiences we have been given the opportunity to enjoy as the result of our work, such as travel, demonstrations and the awards we have received. Each section is meant to reflect our way of thinking, acting and cooking. For this reason, it was not a random decision to include a binder with the book you are holding, which is how we document the work we do on a daily basis. It is a format that allows you to keep notes, menus or any other document you please together with these 548 pages, where you will find recipes from a selection of the most important creations of the 2014-2017 period, together with more than 600 images. We hope that it will gratify all readers, both professionals in the restaurant business and lovers of fine-dining, and that this will be the first of many other volumes that compile as many years as those of Disfrutar's existence.

Welcome to Disfrutar!

Starting out The road to Disfrutar 16 Opening Compartir 24 Disfrutar: initial ideas 32

The road to Disfrutar We were drawn to gastronomy from a very early age. Eduard felt a great passion for agriculture and his mother's home cooking, and his path led him to train as a chef at the Hospitality School of Cambrils, from where he went on to work in different restaurants on the Costa Daurada. For his part, Mateu grew up surrounded by cookery books because his parents were ardent food lovers who ended up opening the Si Us Plau bar and restaurant in Roses, where he and his sister worked long hours helping them. Oriol, who was drawn to fishing as a young boy, found his vocation in the kitchen inspired by the exceptional skill of his mother, a great chef, and he studied at the Joviat School of Hospitality in Manresa, where he won a prize consisting of a three-day course at elBui Ii. Fascinated by what was being done at that place, he started work there as a stagiaire in 1996. A year later, in 1997, he would meet Mateu, who was looking for a cooking school in which to enrol. Mateu would make his way to elBulli thanks to the advice given to him by Juli Soler, a good friend of his parents': he assured him that he could learn all he wanted at the restaurant run by Ferran and Albert Adria. A year later, Eduard would also end up at elBulli on a work placement. It was 1998 when all three of us would coincide at Cala Montjoi.

Albert Adria, Ferran Adria, Marc Cuspinera, Juli Soler, Albert Raurich, Eduard, Mateu and Oriol in the kitchen of elBulli in 2007, during the farewell for Albert Raurich, who was starting his own project at the Dos Palillos restaurant in Barcelona.

Oriol, Eduard and Mateu in 2006 in a ryokan in the city of Kyoto on one of their many work trips to Japan.

Mateu, Oriol and Eduard in 2007 in Chicago, where they went to pay tribute to Charlie Trotter's restaurant, Charlie Trotter's, which was celebrating its 20th anniversary. They cooked together with Tetsuya Wakuda, Daniel Boulud, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller and pastry chef Pierre Herme.

At that time, with Eduard Bosch as head chef and Marc Puig-Pey as pastry chef, elBulli already stood out for its great creativity and quality. We honed our professional skills there, together with such chefs as Albert Raurich and Marc Cuspinera, understanding from the outset the very high levels of discipline that were required in order to be a part of the restaurant. We started out as stagiaires, and later as commis, station and sous-chefs, until we became head chefs and worked in the Creative Department, where we spent six months of the year developing new dishes, becoming acquainted with a large number of products, building connections with people who taught us a great deal, and travelling to other countries and familiarising ourselves with their gastronomic cultures. We were entrusted with such interesting and unusual tasks as photographing dishes and writing recipes, and taking part in recordings and publications, among others. All of this gave as a much broader idea of what cooking is and left a deep impression on us because when you work in a restaurant, the day-to­ day takes up all your time and energy, and there is barely any time left to you to devote to research and other activities outside of the kitchen.

We formed a close friendship during those years. The years passed and we became accustomed to spending all our time together: we shared practically all our waking hours in that remote corner of the Costa Brava, removed from family and friends, which allowed us to get to know each other very well and to build up our trust in one another. In addition, the three of us lived under very great pressure on the professional side because the work at Cala Montjoi was very demanding, and we helped each other to cope with it. We've been through all sorts of adventures together, from moments of joy to those when anything that could go wrong did go wrong, such as the banquet we prepared in Doha: the ceiling of the kitchen that was arranged for us collapsed halfway through the morning; there were gusts of wind that were so strong that we were forced to evacuate; and when we were relocated, we were interrupted by such a strict security control that we lost valuable time. Even so, we were there for each other, calming each other and doing our best to successfully overcome those mishaps.

We look back today and we realise that if one of us had quit elBulli, the rest would most likely have done the same. Nonetheless, we remained united, and this friendship gave rise to an idea: back in 2008, each of us had our own aspirations, which led to the creation of a consultancy company together with Ernest Laporte called Cooking Value, with the blessing of Ferran Adria and Juli Soler. It continued to operate until the restaurant closed and turned into a foundation, which was when we resolved to work with Ferran Adria to get the Bullipedia project up and running. At the same time, we kept up our consulting activity of different companies in the food industry.

Opening Compartir Shortly before elBulli closed, we received an offer from a customer, Pere Vehf. He had a commercial space available in Cadaques, a trattoria that was up for sale, and he thought that it might interest us for the activities we were doing with Cooking Value at the time. Although we didn't have a clear picture then, the decision to move forward with it finally came in October 2011. elBulli had closed for good on 31 July that year, and in October the three of us were alone in Istanbul working on a consultancy project for an international food company. One night, as we chatted in the hotel, we shared a thought that we had been considering for some time: opening a restaurant. We came to the conclusion that the three of us together would make our shared dream a reality and decided to give the space offered to us by Vehf an opportunity. We visited it on our return and made up our minds then and there.

We got to work with great excitement and expectation. By late October we had already defined the concept of the future restaurant and were calculating what it would cost us. We ended up signing the lease for the premises in January 2012. Our first visit to the space after leaving the notary's office will always be remembered by us as The day of the mandarins. It was winter, Cadaques was deserted and a fearsome tramontana wind was blowing. There we were in a typical old Costa Brava house that was crying out for a complete makeover, with the windows closed, our coats done up tightly and a sad light bulb flickering on the ceiling. 'What have we done?' we asked ourselves over and over for hours as we ate a few mandarins we had bought. We refused to lose our nerve, and we began to work hard on what is today our restaurant Compartir ('Share').

Mateu, Eduard and Oriol on 13 October 2011 at the entrance to Istanbul's Grand Bazaar. They travelled to Turkey as food consultants for elBulli. Where everything began!

Starting out

Compared to the dishes we had been working on in previous years, the menu we initially devised for Compartir was simple because we started out with no intention of being ground-breaking or overly ambitious: salads, grilled fish and rice dishes. We gradually developed our gastronomic offering in the space lent to us by Mateu's parents, together with the chef Nil Dulcet, whom we had met during his stage at elBulli. We would later hire Marc Llach, the current head chef. We were satisfied with our early endeavours. However, we would soon feel the need to create a more ambitious menu in order to make the most of our creative abilities, so we set about refining our dishes. One day, we came up with the dish of sardines with green olive cream and orange, and we knew then that this had to be our starting point for the style of cooking to be set in motion in Compartir.

At the same time, we occupied ourselves with something that was also very important to us: building a good team of waiting staff. Led by the newly arrived Ramon Canaleta, manager and ma1tre d'h6tel, who would soon be joined by Roger Margalef, another mainstay of our hospitality, Compartir opened its doors in April 2012 to customers who would find a simple but distinct menu, with classic and also modern dishes. The offering could be summed up this way: while eschewing the notion of a tapas restaurant, we wanted people to sample the dishes we ourselves enjoyed whenever we visited Cadaques, sharing them at their table as they would typically do in their own homes. We were actually quite anxious about how such a different offering to what we were known for until then would be received. Hence, we were pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm shown by our customers for those dishes in which we had captured our own identity. What's more, they came back to enjoy them again, an unmistakeable sign that the restaurant was working. That was a fantastic boost to our confidence: on our own, we had learnt to successfully run a restaurant in operation all year round (despite its activity being heavily dependent on the summer season) in order to keep our team united and on the payroll, something that is reflected in better hospitality and service for our customers.

Disfrutar: initial ideas The opening of Compartir also made us aware that in order to continue to depend only on ourselves, financially, and to be able to forge our own gastronomic path, we would have to open a second restaurant. At the end of 2012, in spite of the understanding that one of us would always have to be present in Cadaques, we began to think about what we wanted to define the new restaurant: modern cuisine with a certain degree of technical complexity on our dishes and to offer hospitality and service that were as personal as possible. It would be located in Barcelona, given that Eduard had been residing there for some time, and that Oriol was based in nearby Sitges. The premises would express the Mediterranean aesthetic that characterised all three of us. And despite the fact that we were still toying with the idea of christening it 'Compartir Barcelona', without yet having come up with a definitive name for what would be our flagship, we set out on the path towards a new opening.

In January 2013, we undertook the difficult task of finding premises in Barcelona in a suitable condition to house the restaurant we had in mind, for which we were going to need numerous staff and a large space with a floor space of at least 400 m2• Finding it wasn't easy owing to the state of the property market and, furthermore, to the fact that there was one thing that was going to determine what the place would be like: our freedom. It was clear to us that in order to be able to do what we liked at all times, without answering anybody, we couldn't depend on any partners. We could only count on our own resources - those of three modest families - and any loans that a bank would give us. For this very reason, the process of obtaining finance was quite arduous. The restaurant we intended to establish was very atypical. The operating costs we were looking at were insane in terms of returns because such a unique project is typically only conceived in the context of a hotel owned by a large investor who can guarantee the economic feasibility of the project.

Nevertheless, giving up was never in our plans. We visited all sorts of spaces until June 2013, when we came across a suitable space opposite the Ninot Market in the Eixample district, at number 163 in Carrer de Villarroel. It was a former blanket shop in which _there was nothing more to be found aside from two somewhat battered chairs (we still have them in the office as part of our history) and a large open space that the interior design studio El Equipo Creativo, whose earlier work transmitted the creativity we were after, helped us to envisage. We still recall how it occurred to us to reproduce the layout of the restaurant as devised by the designers based on our plans on the floor using fishing twine, sheets of polystyrene foam and fruit crates collected from the nearby market. That way, even though we wouldn't sign the lease until December, we were able to play around with and feel for ourselves the layout of the different zones of the future restaurant that we had drawn together with the designers until we found the one that was best suited to the movements and tasks of the staff on any given working day.

The works we had scheduled with the Arteco construction company started in April 2014, and their architects and builders were set in motion. Another decisive factor was the conversations we held with Hostelgrup to assess the cost of installing our kitchen. Their blind trust in the project provided us with an extraordinary boost: we built a kitchen with superior features to the one we had imagined having. As usually occurs with most building works, they were very tiresome. A very profound intervention was required, which included demolishing different sections in order to create, for example, the current stairwell and the skylights on the terrace that bring light into the basement, a space we expanded. Furthermore, we felt the burden of the great effort in economic terms that opening a restaurant entails, and the huge task of modelling our most personal project from beginning to end. Daily, at the end of our day of working on Bullipedia, we would supervise the building works and work out all the details with which we wanted to breathe life into our future restaurant.

What should be experienced at Disfrutar? Our wish was that diners could feel and breathe in the Mediterranean and Barcelona, the celebration and the tradition, the prestige and the precision, the enjoyment and the desire to take a chance on a distinct offering. In order to express all of this, we thought of clay, a material that has been used in countless applications since ancient times and permeates our culture, and so we decided that ceramic would be the unifying thread for the restaurant's design. We took it on ourselves to visit a manufacturer, Cera micas Ferres, in order to find out at first hand the range of possibilities available to us. Consequently, El Equipo Creativo used ceramic as a distinctive element of each space. In the foyer, you find different brightly coloured ceramic tiles inspired by the large murals by the artist Joan Mir6, which are combined with the wrought iron columns typically found in the markets of Barcelona designed in the Modernista style, like the neighbouring Ninot Market. Two types of decoration co-exist in the kitchen: on the one hand, the unglazed ceramic that alludes to the Mediterranean and Mozarabic ovens and latticework; and on the other, the golden tiles that cover the walls, recalling the fire we work with on a daily basis. When it came to the main dining room, we wanted to acknowledge the landscape of whitewashed fac;ades of our fishing villages, like Cadaques, by covering the main wall in white tiles to match the other walls, accompanied by vegetation typical of our coast and in combination with the tables, also featuring ceramic, in shades of cream and blue.

However, not everything turned out as planned. The initial layout of the restaurant was unlike any convention design and consisted of five spaces that emulated different features of the Mediterranean landscape: the mezzanine was to be a lighthouse where lunches could be served and the basement was to be the sea floor where you could have cocktails or dinner in a group; the pine forests that are typical of our coast would be recreated on the terrace; the main dining room would exude the tranquillity of a cove; while the bar counter in the foyer would reflect the fresh, urban atmosphere of Barcelona. We even planned to have another terrace in the street! This spatial design involved increasing our capacity to 166 customers, a number that was much greater than possible given our modest economic resources. And although this was a big disappointment for us at the time, we now feel it was lucky because if we had undertaken all the works, we wouldn't have been able to expand the production kitchen, adapt a space for the wine cellar or set aside a zone exclusively for R&D as we've gradually been doing in the basement. Finally, we opened with a capacity for 70 diners only seated on the ground floor, but this number has been gradually decreasing as the tasting menu has been gaining in complexity, technique and ambition, and with a more developed waiting service in order to provide a better experience.

By that time, we had already left our work with Bullipedia and had come up with our name, Disfrutar ('Enjoy'), because what we want people to do in the restaurant is to enjoy themselves. As we were aware that defining a good graphic image was essential, we turned to Borja Martfnez, a graphic designer at the Lo Siento studio, who together with his team was able to reflect our values in our logo: the smile that enjoyment brings, the breaks that a highly pleasurable moment offers, and even, when it appears on paper, a background pattern comprising irregular squares that stylistically blend the shape of the waves on the sea with the tiles that decorate the space .

Disfrutar was born out of the initiative of three chefs, which is why thinking in plural, sharing ideas and taking joint decisions has always been a constant for us. We also know that a good team is indispensable; good ideas and creativity serve no purpose without a group of people who do their best every day to make them possible. We take great pride in each and every one of the individuals who help us make our dreams for the restaurant a reality. As we 'cook up' this book, we can't overlook the teams who run the reception, dining room, kitchen, cleaning, administration and public relations, who operate like clockwork so that we, in the meantime, can write our story. We are grateful to all of them for their involvement and faith in the project.

Since the very first day, we've been lucky to have great professionals, all of whom are very committed, like Nil Dulcet, our head chef; Toni Boada, our manager and maTtre d'; Vicente Lara, his assistant; and Ruben Pol, our head sommelier. Working with them were others who had shown blind faith in Disfrutar when we still didn't know what we would become and who have since left, such as Albert Guerrero, Patricia Martfnez, Francesca Gallardo and Antonio Lopez. We would later be joined by Marfa Ricote, to handle reservations and customer service; Crystal Wang, pastry chef, and Oscar Mayer in the kitchen; Andrea Bergamasco and Eric Batet in hospitality and service; Susana Farreros, public relations manager; and Pere Gomez, in charge of business administration.

More talents have been incorporated over the years, and as we have grown, so has our determination to form a cohesive team. How have we succeeded? By applying a simple motto: 'What you don't want for yourself, you don't want for your team'. A good example of this was the matter of annual leave. At first, we thought we wouldn't be able to close at any time during the year for economic reasons, but we realised that such a pace wasn't good for the restaurant or for its employees. We believed that in order to keep up the standards we wanted, we wouldn't divide the staff into shifts; instead, when the restaurant was open, we would count on the entire staff, and when it closed, we would all rest . However, in late 2017, we decided to close on Saturdays and Sundays instead of on Sundays and Mondays as we had been until then. This would allow us to offer our employees a work-life balance that is difficult to achieve in the hospitality business nowadays, and we would rely on potential customers available earlier on in the week.

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Disfrutar with the Castellers de Vilafranca

We firmly believe that a job well done and as a team makes us stronger, and we've insisted on conveying this continuously and in many different ways. One of these occurred to us when chatting with Toni Bach, cap de col/a ('technical director') of the Castellers de Vilafranca group of human tower builders and a regular customer. We found there was a great deal in common between the values that keep both a human tower and a good team like ours on their feet: cohesion and the good performance of each link allows you to build a castle and, in our case, a restaurant. In order to share this view with all the staff of Disfrutar and Compartir, we held a session of human tower-building on the terrace of the restaurant on 28 November 2016. T here the Castellers de Vilafranca taught us about their history as a group and the technical aspects involved in building a castle. We even tried to build on ourselves! It was a great experience in which we wanted to show the members of our team that each and every one of them played an essential part in the day-to-day success of Disfrutar.

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We have continued to grow in unison. Unlike what we believed at first - when we thought that after opening with 30 employees, we would reduce staffing levels to 20 once we had all the process under control reinforcements have been added. The good reception the restaurant had at the start made us think that our cuisine would soon evolve into something more complex and we would be able to offer a better experience to our customers, improvements that no doubt would require more staff in all areas. More specifically, indulging our customers is one of the areas that concerns us most. We want our customers to feel they have our full attention whenever they phone us, that we're always available to resolve any problems; that when they walk through the door, somebody will be there to welcome them; and that when they go to the lavatory, everything will be immaculate. These tasks, which often go unnoticed, are an essential part of making Disfrutar the restaurant we want. As a result, we ended 2017 with an average of 63 staff - 47 permanent employees and 14 students on work placement agreements - three times what we had envisaged three years earlier.

Left to right: Vicente Lara, second maitre d'h6tel: Toni Boada, waiting staff manager and first maitre d'h6tel; and Nil Dulcet, head chef

Candidates wanting to join Disfrutar aren't subjected to a complicated exam because we've always placed more importance on personal qualities rather than professional ones. We believe every restaurant has its own style that it has to teach to new employees, and applying this criterion, we prefer that a person has the will to learn, is good-hearted and will become an excellent colleague who adapts well to the team over any experience they may have. We look for respectful, honest people with a mindset for continuous improvement and who like the style of cooking we offer and the way we provide our service. This is how it's been since the beginning, when the three of us managed the team directly, and since we were joined by lnma Taylor, human resources manager since mid-2016. At that time, the number of students on work placements increased, as did the paperwork required for us to take them, owing to requests starting to come from everywhere after Disfrutar gained worldwide recognition. It fil Is us with ·pride to know that local and international hospitality schools trust in us to provide good practical training to aspiring chefs, sommeliers and waiting staff. T his is exactly what we do: train them. However, we never depend on them because the demands placed on staff at Disfrutar are high and requires a solid and secure structure that is made up of permanent employees, our starting line-up that we send out every day.

The following is a list of the names of Disfrutar employees by area and year, regardless of the duration of their service.

2014

2015

Waiting staff

Kitchen

Carolina Alarcon BernatBahr Maria Isabel Bernardez ToniBoada Alejandro Cabrerizo 6scar Domenech Hadja Fanta Jonathan Frade Albert Guerrero Vicente Lara Marina Montserrat Palau Anna Sus

Cristina Alfonso Elisabeth Braun Carlos Cascalles Mariano Citterio Carlos Gonzalo de la Pena Romero Nil Dulcet Sergi Felguera Francesca Gallardo Miguel Garcia-Romeral Matias Javier Gonzalez Giacomo Hasan Daisong Kang Antonio Lopez Victor Maries Priscila Martinez Pedro Jesus Micunco Carlos Miralles Joe Moretones Ki Won Kim Lee

Reception and reservations

Patricia Martinez Cleaning

Mariia Fedorychko Dishwashing

FrancoisBasse Tahir Iqbal

Waiting staff

Kitchen

Mariia Fedorychko Carolina Sanmartin

Fernando Agudo Cristina Alfonso ElisabethBraun Sergi Casanovas Mariano Citterio Fructuoso del Casar Nil Dulcet Sergi Faro Francesca Gallardo Giacomo Hasan Jose David Justo Daisong Kang Antonio Lopez Borja Lopez Julieta Menendez Pedro Jesus Micunco Carlos Miralles Victor Molins Joe Moretones Gabriela Puntes Sandra Perez Aristide Ribalta Isaac Sampere Miquel Serveto Yoshikazu Suto Aurelia Toichoa Thales Trujillano

Dishwashing

Administration

Carolina Alarcon Andrea Bergamasco Marfa IsabelBernardez ToniBoada Nuria Canals Alba Canamero Jordi de las Heras 6scar Domenech Hadja Fanta Jonathan Frade lbai Garzon Marga Gimenez Albert Guerrero Vicente Lara Maria Melnik Marc Nosas Anna Planas Ruben Pol Sofia Salomon Hug Sanch6n Reception and reservations

Patricia Martfnez Cleaning

Tahir Iqbal Golham Ramhan

Pere G6mez Public relations Susana Farreros

2017

2016 Waiting staff

Kitchen

Waiting staff

Kitchen

Fernando Agudo Jorge Amores Marfa Azparren Chayma Boytkabout Enric Buendia Mateo Clavera Andres Conde Nil Dulcet Sebastian Espinosa Francesca Gallardo Giulio Gigli Nicolas Gomez Peter Hanson Antonio Lopez 6scar Mayer Alex Molina Fabio Monterisi Laura Morey Laura Onofrio Albert Pi Lucia Perez Hector Sanchez Thales Trujillano Alfredo Vozmediano Crystal Wang

Patricia Martfnez

Juan Bautista Agreda Fernando Agudo Cristina Alfonso Marfa Azparren Chayma Boutakbout Enric Buendia Mariano Citterio Vicente de Esteban Fructuoso del Casar Nil Dulcet Francesca Gallardo Giulio Gigli Nicolas Gomez Jose David Justo Antonio Lopez Jaume Marambio 6scar Mayer Carlos Miralles Victor Molins Hugo Morais Elia Moral Laura Morey Albert Pi Sandra Perez Aristide Ribalta Aleix Saiz Yoshizaku Suto Aurelia Toichoa Thales Trujillano Crystal Wang

Cleaning

Administration

Carolina Sanmartin

Pere Gomez lmma Trayter

Cintia Alonso Eric Batet Andrea Bergamasco Toni Boada Alba Caf\amero Mario Diana Luisa Diaz Hadja Fanta Ruben Fernandez Giulia Gabriele Araceli Garcia Antonio Giraldo Ruben Gonzalez Marta Iglesias Vicente Lara Alessandra Marchesani David Martinez Maria Melnik Mar Mendoza Jack Micheloni Silvia Montali Marc Nosas Anna Perez Anna Planas Ruben Pol Georgia Rocabayera Gisela Royes Sofia Salomon Rafael Sanchez Hug Sanchon Lluis Sirvent Alex Tenedor Andrea Treviso Jonathan Yepez

Public relations

Reception and reservations

Carolina Alarcon Eric Batet Andrea Bergamasco Toni Boada Nuria Canals Alba Canamero Gerard de la Cruz Jordi de las Heras Hadja Fanta Ruben Fernandez Araceli Garcia Marga Gimenez Ruben Gonzalez Vicente Lara David Martinez Ana Melgoso Maria Melnik Mar Mendoza Marc Nosas Anna Planas Ruben Pol Georgia Rocabayera Sofia Salomon Rafael Sanchez Hug Sanchon Andrea Treviso Jonathan Yepez Reception and reservations

Dishwashing

Tahir Iqbal Golham Ramhan

Susana Farreros

Administracion

Pere Gomez lmma Trayter Public relations Susana Farreros

Patricia Martfnez Maria Ricote Cleaning

Zoila Del Carmen Yohanna Mendez Carolina Sanmartin Dishwashing

Tahir Iqbal Golham Ramhan

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The service at Disfrutar was initially influenced by what we were offering at Compartir. Just as we hadn't considered a cuisine as complex as what we have come to offer, it wasn't our intention to provide such meticulous service as what we've achieved. Nevertheless, the fact that we're chefs and not ma,tres d'h6tel had always led to our concern about the details of what was going on in the dining room, which is why we placed so much emphasis on creating a friendly and hospitable team that is able to anticipate diners' needs and to serve them properly without resorting to bothersome insistence, affectation or theatrics. We want the members of the waiting staff to convey the same joy and excitement that we feel for our profession. There's no doubt that they achieve this becau·se they know what we do is real and are enamoured of the restaurant. Toni Boada, who has grown up with us from waiter's.assistant to waiting staff manager, embodies this way of providing and overseeing the customer experience. He's the living image of Disfrutar. Although he manages, everybody is important because the charisma of each individual is what has gradually built up our hospitality and service. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that many returning customers inquire about a certain sommelier or waiter who made their last visit to the restaurant a wonderful experience.

Likewise, the waiting staff are highly committed to their work because they very strongly believe in the importance of good service. In the same measure, they also like the dishes they take to the tables, with which they are thoroughly familiar owing to the continuous training we give to explain the composition of the dishes, the way they are to be eaten and why, and to indicate the cutlery we assign to each one. These and many other aspects of the workings of the dining space are controlled by a series of procedures through which we establish exact and reasoned instructions for each step of the service, and the brief explanations about dishes given to diners, which would slow down the pace of the menu and could become tedious if they were drawn out.

We've always had a clear idea that the waiting staff is as important as the kitchen staff. Provision of smooth hospitality and service is a decisive factor that allows the tasting menu to reach the table as expected and our customers to experience maximum enjoyment. The service has to be tight in order to avoid having diners wait. Because if that were to happen, calculating five minutes between courses for a 25-course tasting menu, they would be sitting there doing nothing for more than two hours. This dynamic pace is only achieved through a very close rapport between the waiting staff and the k itchen. In fact, we believe the dining room and kitchen to form a single engine: the dining room is an extension of the kitchen, which is centrally located and functions as the hub of the restaurant. We are the ones who set a fast pace in both spaces, although we naturally have to adapt to our customers: we always ask ourselves before beginning the tasting menu if they prefer the usual fast pace or, on the contrary, whether they wish to slow it down or even speed it up more. Creating a large menu makes no sense if each of the dishes can't be sent to the table in the proper way and at the right time.

For the structure of our hospitality and service, we began with an arrangement of stations or groups of tables, each consisting of four tables and seating a maximum of 14 people. In this way, we started out by serving a tasting menu comprising between 18 and 25 courses to about 70 people, a number that was decreased in 2017 by cutting out four tables. The reason for this is that as the menu quickly developed, so did the dining room: its slightly casual feel was transformed into elegance, without losing the friendly and personal nature of the service, and the sharing dishes were gradually relegated in favour of a predominantly more individual offering. There continued to be a strong emphasis on dishes that were finished at the table, by either waiters or chefs, which is something we've never relinquished and it has allowed us to develop an even more subtle cuisine that has gained in immediacy.

· As an illustration-of the'importance given to the waiting staff, the following table lists all the dishes finished at the table, except for discontinued ones.

Creation

Action

Frozen passion fruit, rum and coffee cocktail in two textures (002).

Grinding roasted coffee beans over the cocktail with a pepper rni!1.

Hot/cold apple, celery and gin cocktail (005)

Piping hot gin-fizz foam over the same cocktail in the form of a frappe.

2014-2015

Melon caipirinha infusion (008) The 'cold' infusion is served from a teapot.· ___ ___:__________:_________ ��--------------------'------__L_-"-"---,; ,,. Beetroot emerging from the earth (009)

The bowl of sesame seeds is shaken to al�ow the beetroot to emerge.

Sweetcorn and foie gras tart (030)

The sweetcorn and foie gras tart is cut

Frozen almond 'recuit' with pine nuts, fir honey, black truffle and . anchovy (034)

The recuit is opened using tweezers and then,§easohed with the different condiments. ' ,.

Our macaroni carbonara (042)

On a gueridon, the clear macaroni are covered with the hot carbonara foam, the surface sprinkled with grated Parmesan and seasoned with pepper. Everything is stirred tor creaminess ., and corre