Disfrutar’s Inspirational Dishes

Disfrutar in Barcelona, owned and run by three El Bulli disciples, Oriol Castro, Mateu Casañas and Eduard Xatruch is a hub of creativity and joy. The name itself means 'to enjoy' and has become synonymous with high-level fine dining and the next wave of Ferran's molecular gastronomy. We spoke with the team about their Inspirational Dishes and why they are so important at Disfrutar.

Which dishes do you consider most representative of your cuisine and why?

We have chosen four dishes because they mean something for Disfrutar. The four are representative in our cuisine in a creativity way.

Multi spherical tatin of corn and foie @Francesc-Guillamet

Multi spherical tatin of corn and foie – It was the first dish we made with the multi spherification technique (the technique allows us to prepare a lot of dishes and now it’s spread all over the world). This dish seems a tarte tatin (cake); the corn multi spherification could remind the tatin apple slices, it’s not the same, but it’s in a conceptually way.

Panchino filled with beluga caviar @Francesc Guillamet

Panchino / filled with beluga caviar – it’s one of Disfrutar iconic dishes. It started with a technique we create in 2016, consisting on a fried dough on a siphon. This allow us to obtain a brioche texture, an “aerial” texture, but it could be filled at the moment with fresh products, as we do with caviar, for example.

Without this technique it would be impossible to do it because if we use a brioche dough and we fermented it, inside of the brioche, we can’t put a fresh product because it would be “ruined”. But, with this new technique, with just 20 seconds, we could cook a brioche filled with a fresh product (caviar, tuna, fruits sorbet…).

Black cauliflower with coconut and lime bechamel @Francesc-Guillamet

Black cauliflower with coconut and lime bechamel – we also want to talk about OC’OO. Black cauliflower with coconut and lime béchamel is another of our iconic dishes. It’s one of the most representative dishes that we are made with the work we have developed with the fruits and vegetables “darken” technique from the OC’OO machine.

The OC’OO is a Korean cooking machine that allows us to cook with pressure, but controlling temperature and time. It is possible because the machine allows to make long cooks which we get very surprising results. It’s a new way of cooking that open a big range of possibilities.

Flour free mille fuille of 'sobrassada' @Francesc Guillamet

And finally, although you ask only for three dishes, we want to mention our flour-free mille-fuille; another new technique that could change a lot of things for people that could not eat gluten.

Can you describe one of these dishes in full to our readers?

The multi spherical tatin of corn and foie is a salad snack that we make at Disfrutar with a very thin corn crispy base, then we add a foie terrine with Pedro Ximenez and on the top, we put the corn multi spherification. It’s also a “game” with what the duck eats…

It’s a small snack where we find a very interesting texture combination because we have crunchy (with the crispy base), we also have creaminess with the foie and, at the end, we taste a liquid aspic, that seems like gelatin with a lot of liquid particles that explode on your mouth.

Are you working on any other dishes currently? Can you share something about it with our readers?

We are always working on different dishes. We have to try a lot of dishes, because sometimes the idea we have, does not work and if we want to create new dishes, we need to test a lot.

Nowadays, although people say that we are a “technical” cooks, we are studying different product. For example, these days we are trying some dishes with green figs, just before their maturation. We are also testing what we can do with the leaves of the fig tree, because they have a very interesting aroma. And they are in that point only for some days or weeks and we have to make the most of during this period. 

We are also doing a detailed work about fats… We are trying to obtain different textures with fats that could seem chocolate, for example, something fluffy.