CornerTable Barcelona Edition! : Commerc 24

Well, my boyfriend is, as you might have realized, very into food. When we decided to go to Barcelona, Spain for a quick jaunt, I knew I would be in for it on the eating front. So, he did a bunch of research and found this place Commerc 24 (named for its location’s number and street). It was a quiet, dark and loungy restaurant, decorated with a modern bourgeois flair, with a lot of red, black and yellow. We weren’t seated for 10 minutes when the waiter asked if we had been there before and started to explain the menu, which was the point where he was quickly stopped and told that we wanted the Grand Festival Tasting. Yes, even the name of the tasting menu sounded crazy. 12 courses later, I had finished one of the most unique meals I have ever had.

Luckily for me, they were nice enough to give us a list of the dishes we had on the menu. Two of the 12 courses, amuse bouche and dessert, were actually multiple small items. For the amuse we had: Olives stuffed with anchovies, golden macadamia nuts, chicharróns with guacahina, filo/parmesan/lime and basil, avocado and lobster makisand French oysters (Marennes d’oleron). Now, that may seem like a lot of food, and we were actually very shocked that this all came out at once, it was a little overwhelming and we tried to guess how many courses they would count it as. Turns out it was the first of many.

Course two: Marinated sardines with blood orange and wasabi. Ugh sardines… they are little gross and slimey. I tried my hardest to eat one, but I couldn’t even put it in my mouth.

Course three: Cold infusion with flowers, vegetables and clams. Wow. Not only was this dish really pretty and cool looking but it was also a great soup. The soup wasn’t too salty or heavy, it was just a perfect blend of light and flavorful.

Course Four: consommé with truffle, parmesan and egg. This dish was equally as interesting as the last. In the soup dish, as you can see pictured, was a trio of encased fillings. The white parmesan, the black truffle and the yellow egg. I tried each of them separately at first, and they tasted as they should (which was only a guess because I have never tasted a bubble of yellow egg, let alone a black truffle), but the kicker was to crush them all together to flavor the consume. I believe this was how it should have been eaten, but I couldn’t pass up tasting the flavors one by one.

Course five: Razor clam and tangerine Yakisoba – I don’t remember this one at all. I have been avioding clams in general ever since I found out I'm slightly allergic.

Course six: Pizza-sashimi with tuna. This is one of the favored dishes in the restaurant. It was decent, but not as wonderful and unique as the rest. The tuna sashimi, as with the next dish, was good, but the pieces were so small and I’m not totally sure that it should be considered pizza. It was more a cracker topped with tuna.

Course seven: Tune tartar. Same as above. Nothing special, but still good.

Course eight: Kinder Egg. After two basically mundane dishes, the eighth course came back with a vengeance. The hard shell of the egg was filled with a frothy, salty foam made of the egg whites. I have never eaten egg foam before, nor have I eaten out of an egg shell. It was almost like a salty dessert, because who really eats foam for a meal?

Course nine: Duck rice with foís gras. I didn’t eat this. Who really liked fois? WHO? Where are you and can you please explain to me why this is so popular? The rice was sticky it was flavored like duck....can't go wrong there...

Course ten: Sardines… I don’t really have much to say about this. I tried it, because hey… when in Rome (Spain). But, sardines are just gross little slimey things.

Course eleven: sirloin with roses and berries. Again with the flowers. Now I know I love roses in every form. The steak was a little well done, but the presentation, thin slivers of roses and a berry sauce was a great combination, bringing a little life to an otherwise dull piece of meat.

Course twelve: Dessert overload.

Mandarin-passion-mint

Muesli-yogurt-passion

Sable with pineapple and meringue

Bread, oil, chocolate and salt

Nougat with tuille cigar, chocolate and coffee

Black sesame Oreo with vanilla

Chocolates

Its too hard to go into the exact description of every dessert. There was A LOT of them. I was surprised when they brought everything out, the waiter didn’t say “TA DA!” at the culmination. My favorite dessert was the bread, oil, chocolate and salt. Not such a great menu description? Actually it was. It was literally a piece of bread, pieces of chocolate and an accompaniment of oil and salt. All my favorite things wrapped into one: starchy, sweet, salty, oily goodness. Ok, fine, some of the other dishes were more imaginative, but sometimes less is more, especially at the end of a 12 course meal. There was only so much I could take.

At least we didn’t have the wine pairing. I think that would have put me over the edge. Instead, we had a nice bottle of white which the server poured us throughout the meal. I really liked everything about this restaurant. I like to non-overbearing, yet great service; I liked the wine; I liked the interesting and unique food combinations and the glamorous presentation. I’ve only been to Barcelona for 3 days in my life, so I can’t say it’s the #1 place in the city and you definitely need to go there (ok, I’m pretty positive that Il Buli is the #1 place… in the world…) but, if you are looking for some place to spend the evening and perk up your sense, Commerc 24 is a good start.

Ok, ok, we also went to the famous Bar Pinotxo in the Boqueria. You MUST try it if you head to Barcelona. The Boqueria is the coolest food market on earth (that I have been too…). The seafood is ridiculous looking; huge lobsters with claws as big as my hand, crabs as big as my head, tuna steaks as big as my thigh (which is huge...I’m a food blogger). The owner/chef of Pinotxo, Juanito is awesome. Stop by and let him pick the plates for you. He is a legend in Barcelona and quite possibly the most photographed person in the Boqueria. He has been written up in magazines and is the cutest little funniest looking man ever. He served us wonderful cockle clams, squid with white beans and langoustines. They were all great.

*Random Note: Gwyneth Paltrow's random blog/email called GOOP mentioned this restaurant!