There are hotel dining rooms that, despite their very central location, remain discreet and have a constant clientele from the area, but without much talk about them. This is the case of the Sintonia in the Galery Hotel (Rosselló 249), which has recently ceased to be in the hands of the family that founded it. Its large room is accessed through the passage that connects the building with the Palau Robert garden and where at Christmas they organized a pleasant craft market that they ended up moving to the basement of the hotel, which this year can be visited from the 21st to the 23rd. December.
The restaurant has one of those quiet terraces that are appreciated in the center and inside a whiskey bar with which they intend to keep the place busy all day. This is the case from the early morning breakfast, to the appetizers before meals, to the afternoon or to the dinners, which on these dates on Thursdays include live music.
In charge of the kitchen is a chef with a long career, Pablo Tomás (Lleida, 1978), who smiles when he states that when one has started in the profession working in a place as prestigious as Via Veneto (in the days of Josep Muniesa ) being almost a kid, as was his case, he earns the right to be considered a cook by vocation. He completed his apprenticeship in the kitchens of Arzak, El Bulli and at Fermí Puig’s Drolma, where he met Julià Duque, he was there for five years and would later work at Casa Paloma, Chez Cocó or Marea Alta. When Tomás had the opportunity to run the Galery restaurant, which reopened in 2019 as Sintonia, he knew that only if he did it alongside his former colleague at Drolma would he achieve the harmony he was looking for between the kitchen and the dining room.
And they want to stage that rapport with the staging, which they try to take care of. Part of the room ritual is practiced with one of their successes, the steak tartare, which they prepare with beef matured for 30 days and in which the liturgy is above a correct result. Along with this dish there are others that have become customers’ favorites, such as the cod gilda, in the appetizers section, the Russian gypsy arm, actually a cylindrical Russian salad, or the XXL roast cannelloni, with foie sauce and seasonal mushrooms, impeccable flavor but with a very dense farce. We find the off-menu dishes much more attractive, which change very frequently because Pablo Tomás is absolutely aware of seasonality (he has very good suppliers) and they are those in which his mastery of the craft shines the most and with which he is go enjoy.
From the delicious artichokes with free-range egg, Iberian bacon and sliced ??porcini to the pleasant reunion with the emblematic cabrit engangat, a small tribute to maestro Fermí Puig, which is a nice way to keep recipes alive that deserve it. They also have a section dedicated to history, in this case to remember classics present in hotel cuisine, such as Caesar salad, fresh pasta carbonara or aged beef tenderloin with Parisian coffee sauce. Finally, its sweet star is a smoked croissant filled and accompanied by ice cream, which would fit well in a possible snack section or recommended to extremely sweet-toothed diners, not to those looking for easily digestible desserts. The lunch menu formula has two options: you can choose the one that is configured by them (about 50 euros) and that these days have gone up a little because it is a Christmas version, or resort to the interesting formula of selecting one or several dishes from the menu and for an extra six euros convert it into a menu that includes accompaniments, wine, bread and dessert.
