Espai Sucre

Very belated, and going out of chronological order, but here it is: my Espai Sucre review!

Espai Sucre is an all-dessert restaurant of international acclaim. I think it has some sort of connection with El Bulli (the most avant garde restaurant in the world), like the pastry chef used to work there.

The space was very elegant but too dark and gloomy for me. Another strange thing was that our party of five was the only group in the restaurant all night. They were having a pastry school class in the kitchen/back room, so we heard them from time to time, but otherwise it was pretty much just us and the waiter.

We were given not just one but three amuse bouche, including this cracker with sweet corn atop soy mousse, flecked with a peppered caramel. It was delicious, as was the buttery parmesan cracker and pumpkin coup with toasted pumpkin seed and cream cheese. They were off to a good start.

The other dishes kind of varied wildly in their actual appeal. They were all super creative and visually interesting, but tasted downright bad in some cases. A soupy mix of tea, pineapple, green apple, green apple and honey gelatin, spicy fennel and verbena broth hit all the right notes: refreshing, crisp, sharp, sweet. On the other hand, a pineapple bread pudding with bacon ice cream was nothing but bacon, and not in a good way.

The most delicious things I ate included braised duck on a cocoa biscuit with caramel sauce and this dish, labeled red mullets fish with onion ice cream and buitfarra negra (sausage) rice. The only downside was the melting ice cream lowered the temperature of the dish so that the rice and fish were slightly cold.

The group's least favorite dish (evidenced by choruses of "Eww!" and "Yuck!") was a beet root sorbet with cheese tart, black beer foam and lemon marmalade. The cheese was really pungent and the ice-cold beet root did not taste good at all. Ditto on the black beer foam.

Equally bad: extra virgin olive oil cake with peach sorbet, green olive caramel and sauce, and San Simon cheese. The peach sorbet was great, but it was totally overwhelmed by the taste of green olive.

Somewhat controversial was the "signature dessert," layers of cocoa streusel, brioche, butter ice cream, hazelnut and black truffle. Some thought it tasted like spoiled milk, but I thought it was creamy and French toast-esque.

The petit fours at the end were very good, except for the bacon chocolate cream. (Too smoky and salty.) They included a bay leaf and apple granita, homemade marshmallow, verbena chocolate madeleine, citrus jelly candy, thin pistachio cookie, coconut cream lolly pop, coffee shortbread, and buttery regular shortbread.

It was a very neat culinary or dining experience, but I wouldn't go back, simply because the flavor was often sacrificed in the need to be daring and innovative.