They arrived late, but they arrived, after midnight, accompanied by a bunch of security guards, but without the slightest sign of fatigue, but happy and close. Neither the team at the Amar restaurant, in the El Palace Barcelona hotel, nor the diners who hallucinated when, in the middle of the after-dinner meal, they saw some customers enter who greeted them with sympathy. They were the six most wanted friends in the city all day yesterday: Springsteen, Spielberg and Obama with their respective partners.
The table had been reserved the same day, although the origin of the choice must be placed a few days ago, when José Andrés, a great friend of Obama, visited the Amar restaurant run by Rafa Zafra with the Adrià brothers. The Asturian chef told Pol Perelló, in his day a key figure in the El Bulli dining room and currently director of all the restaurants in Zafra, the culinary preferences of those who would visit them, as well as that they were “most normal people” to the one who liked to look at the menu and try everything possible.
But this time they let themselves be advised and tried the Zafra classics, from the bikini with truffle to the brioche toast with butter and caviar, clams, anchovies, Palamós prawns or macerated oysters, in homage to Albert Adrià . Nor was there a lack of lobster carpaccio in homage to El Bulli (Perelló told them that it was a dish that José Andrés prepared when he was working in Cala Montjoi), sole a la meunière and waguy meat cooked in Josper.
Perelló was personally in charge of attending what he describes as “a dinner of true friends”, in which they drank a Spanish white and a red, he points out the sympathy of all of them, who appreciated the fact of being served after midnight. Before leaving, a little after two in the morning, Obama himself asked the six friends to take a photo with the entire team. .
