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Barcelona, Spain, August 28, 2010 Restaurant Sant Pau Restaurant Sant Pau
Calle Nou, 10
That Carme Ruscalleda is often seen at prestigious conferences like Madrid Fusion and San Sebastian Gastronomika sharing the same stage with Ferran Adria is testimony to the calibre of the chef/owner of the three Michelin-starred Restaurant Sant Pau.
While it may seem contradictory to put the two friends together in a joint presentation given that their styles are as similar as chalk and cheese, they share a common bond.
Both are artists – while Adria embraces logic-defying Surrealism, Ruscalleda leans maybe towards Monet-like Impressionism with her penchant for colours and precise composition of every dish.
Indeed, after the mental gymnastics experienced in elBulli, a meal in Sant Pau is almost like exchanging high anxiety for a tranquil stroll in a beautiful garden. Your sensory receptors are not assaulted but gently nurtured, as if you are in the care of the Florence Nightingale of high cuisine.
Yet she is no pushover, for Ruscalleda has spent the past 22 years quietly crafting an enviable reputation for herself that includes being the only female chef in the world with a total of five Michelin stars – her Tokyo outpost has two – while displaying an obsessive, almost anal devotion to quality.
She’s come a long way for a small town girl who has lived in the coastal region of Sant Pol de Mar all her life. She grew up helping her parents with their delicatessen business, specialising in fresh meat products, wines and cheeses.
Wanting to build something on her own, she and husband Antoni Balam bought over a ramshackle old hotel in 1987 with no more ambition than to just cook the food that she loves with the best produce the region has to offer. The rest is, of course, history.
About an hour’s drive from Barcelona, Sant Pau is located in a lovingly restored building painted in warm Mediterranean colours with an elegantly rustic interior.
A special visual treat is the magical outdoor garden that conjures up images of twinkling fairies popping out from one of the four large trees proffering little fairy bonbons. Here is where you can enjoy desserts and after dinner drinks in good weather – something we have to forgo given the thundery weather that followed us on the way.
Even so, the visual and gastronomic splendour that awaits us is an experience in itself.
One thing that never fails to amaze is how affordable Michelin-star dining can be in Spain. While elBulli tops the lot with a 250 euro bill per head, the degustation menu at Sant Pau is a very digestible 146 euros – a steal at today’s exchange rates.
The amount of effort expended in producing the meal hardly seems worth their while but yet the clockwork precision, grace and charm of the staff shows that they feel otherwise.
Already, the amuse bouche is a major production in itself.
Billed as a micro menu, it’s literally a mini meal in itself – four tiny portions respectively of tempura zucchini flower in a tangy romesco sauce, addictive octopus sandwich made with chewy toast and tender pulpo, comforting stew of fish and lentils, and a dessert of crunchy chocolate-nut “rock”.
Purity of flavour is Ruscalleda’s trademark and it's evident in the clean tasting cold pesto broth and the super sweet prawns in a tomato soup dressed up with chopped apple, cucumber and cherries for sweetness and crunch.
While we can’t abide by the level of saltiness in the salt cod brandada, we can appreciate the beauty of the presentation. Aptly titled “gastronomic Mondrian” it’s an edible canvas featuring colour blocks of pureed red and yellow peppers ringed in a border of olive tapenade.
If you’ve never really thought about the difference between a male and female chef in terms of cuisine, it’s very clear here just how Ruscalleda’s feminine touch makes every dish so picture perfect.
Just take her vegetable ravioli – a wafer-thin pasta pocket that spurts hot pea soup when cut – which is painstakingly wrapped in overlapping strips of carrot, courgette and eggplant, topped with joselito ham and finished off with dashi stock.
Local produce takes pride of place here and lovers of super-expensive wrasse or “so mei” fish will salivate at the knowledge that they are indigenous here, albeit much smaller. Here they are filleted and deep fried in a featherlight batter that’s like eating crunchy air.
But even this is no match for the esperdanyes – or sea cucumber muscle (Spanish sea cucumbers are nothing like what we’re familiar with) that has a texture like bamboo clam prepared simply but exquisitely on a bed of creamless yet super creamy potato puree and suga sweet mangetout. Wherever you may be in Spain, if you come across this delicacy, go for it, regardless of price – it’s divine.
If you’re a sucker for cheese boards, Ruscalleda’s perfectly matched platter takes the hassle out of choosing. Accompanied by whimsical hand drawings by Ruscalleda, you get five different kinds of cheese matched with sweet accompaniments designed for each individual cheese.
Saint Nectare teams up with watermelon preserve, Ossau with a thin peanut cookie, and so on. It makes dried apricots and muscat grapes such a lazy alternative.
What woman doesn’t like sweets and here Ruscalleda pulls no punches with her girly confit of rose petals with strawberries – fragrant sweet petals arranged on a jellied ring filled with rose water syrup, accompanied by sliced strawberries and a strawberry-flavoured cream.
Maybe a little too girly for comfort, but the cute Tonka bean chocolate dessert of chocolate ice cream, vanilla mousse, coffee jelly and brownie was just nice.
To end the meal, there are no fairies offering magic cakes, but there is the elaborate petits four platter featuring ice cream lollipops and different kinds of bonbons prepared by the pixie-faced Ruscalleda complete with her naive sketches of each sweet.
It’s a nod to the child in all of us, and in this case, we are willing Alices in the Wonderland of treats that is Sant Pau.
Calle Nou, 10
08395 Sant Pol de Mar, Barcelona
93-760-06-62
