When Dos Palillos (Elisabets, 9), one of the most inspiring restaurants for great chefs, turned ten years old, its owners, Albert Raurich and the Japanese sommelier Tamae Imachi, organized a series of four-hand meals with some of their colleagues from the most renowned haute cuisine on the planet. At that moment they set themselves the challenge of not resorting to any of the dishes from their career and creating new preparations for the occasion. That year, interesting paths were opened and he opted for techniques in which this chef who spent a decade at El Bulli, under the orders of Ferran Adrià and with command over some of those who would later become leading figures in the restaurant, continues to evolve. high kitchen.
This 2024 they will celebrate their 15th anniversary with the opposite premise: they want to review the most interesting creations of those three decades of creativity, always with a look at Asia, increasingly focused on Japan. This is because of the origin of Tamae Imachi, which takes them to travel there every year and because of Raurich’s passion for the techniques and sensitivity of that cuisine. This time the idea is to analyze and evaluate the path traveled and return from scratch in 2025.
The retrospective menu will change depending on seasonality. It will be by dishes… during those 15 years of life Raurich and his team (today with Marc Comella as head chef and Edoardo Trentin in charge of the room) have practiced an unprecedented creative exercise to bring oriental techniques closer to a nearby pantry. They didn’t want to make sushi or tempuras, but their curiosity would lead them to explore those areas as well, making great contributions. Dos Palillos is a restaurant of incalculable value for its masterful reinterpretation of the East from the West, and for that look full of sensitivity and talent with the Bullinian DNA of the search for conceptual elaborations.
We will try dishes that, without a chronological order, make up a harmonious menu, in which everything makes sense and is still valid. Dos Palillos has always been an innovative restaurant, marked by the curiosity of someone who, like Ferran Adrià, asks questions incessantly and who recognizes, smiling, “I come from where I come from.”
The tour begins with a welcome cocktail in which it uses the technique of infused sakes, here not with fugu fish, as is usually done in Japan, but with hedgehogs, accompanied by some hedgehog treats, with the himono conservation technique (2018 ), to dehydrate while maintaining all the flavor, as is the case with oyster himono (2021).
The delicious cherry tomato tempura (2008) was the starting point of a work with original tempuras, which would culminate with the fig tempura (2019) or the artichoke and coffee tempura (2019), exquisite. The crispy chicken leg (2017), of Chinese inspiration, is part of the world of snacks and surprising textures, such as the mochi Iberian ham croquette (2022) or the delicious eel canapé (2009). The mushroom dabinmushi (2012) is an example of the evolution of the concept of dashi, pure subtlety; The yuba with sea urchins and Iberian ham (2023) is an extraordinary sea and mountain and one of the great dishes of the house, like the shabu shabu with octopuses (2009), or the sunomono with fresh seaweed and mollusks (2010), a version salad that for Raurich summarizes his cuisine well.
We continue with the surprising black shiokare squid (2023), the blue crab chawanmushi (2011) or the three nigiris of this chef who resisted making sushi and ended up achieving delicacies such as the ancestral one (2019) and the yuzu tiger one (2018). or caviar (2023). The disruptive chicken sasami with wasabi (2010) continues to bewilder with its raw, delicious meat; such as the Maresme green peas curry (2016), the live and blanched eels (2026) or, more recently, the hake kokotxa with Japanese pil pil (2022) or the suckling neck korma curry (2023). Desserts as subtle as the matcha tea castela no maki (2013) or the coffee and coconut kuzu-mochi (2023) conclude the party.