Miramar – Llançà (Spain) (**)

Food: innovative fish- and seafood
Address: Passeig Marítim, 7, 17490 Llançà. Girona (Spain)
Phone Number: +34 972 38 01 32
Website: restaurantmiramar.com
Guide Michelin: 2 stars
What I paid: 250 € (tasting menu per person, including water and wine)
Visited: September 30, 2017

The MIRAMAR story is the story of Julia Cisneros and Alfons Serra. In 1939, they moved to Llançà and built a humble beach-side restaurant. In the post-war years, a traveler asked if they rented rooms, and without hesitating, Julia said yes. That night, Julia slept on the beach, and the Miramar Inn was born. The Inn continued to grow. It started serving food and had a total of 45 rooms.

Chef Paco Pérez grew up in Llançà and in the 1990s he fell in love with the granddaughter of the Miramar founders. Together, they converted the restaurant into a 2-star Michelin venue, and the Inn become an exclusive five room hotel.

Miramar is located on the beach, facing the Mediterranean, in Llançà, a small fishing village on the Spanish North Costa Brava coast.

The restaurant serves an avant-garde cuisine with a dedication to both the Catalonian land and sea, but with a focus on latter (i.e. fish- and seafood).

Paco Pérez discovered his appetite for cooking at the age of 12, when he start helping out at his family’s tapas bar, during weekends. Later, he combined studies with summer trades in numerous local restaurants. After his studies, Paco worked in many different restaurants, for instance in France, training under Michel Guèrard , one of the founders of “nouvelle cuisine”. Back in Catalonia, he joined Ferran Adrià at El Bulli in 1993. Here, and over the next five years, Paco formed and developed much of his base and ideas in regard to his modernist cuisine.

Paco Pérez is, apart from heading the 2-stars Miramar, also running the 2-stars Enoteca restaurant in Barcelona and the 1-star restaurant “5” (Cinco) in Berlin.

We opted for the 34 courses (or so…) tasting menu (called “2017 short stories”) and this what we had:

2017 SHORT STORIES

Romeo & Juliette

… Prologue …

Autumn soup and leave

… 11 Stories …

Sea “bonbon”; sea urchin; octopus

Oyster iceberg

“Levante”

Bottarga

“Bouillabaisse”

King prawn with crest in “suquet”

“All i pebre” eel

“Kokotxa” in green

Red mullet with seaweed dressing

… 5 Stories …

Pomegranate; spinach and tender chickpeas

Almond vs Pistachio

Pumpkin

Wilson

… 6 Stories …

Bone marrow; duck with pear; fritters from the woods

Iberian little tail

“Tocino de cielo” to the ground

Pigeon Beijing

… 3 Stories …

Brie

Pillow

Nutella® mochi

… Epilogue …

Glamour

The end of the party

In summary: The cooking, modern and avant-garde, but with its roots based on tradition and a respect for the fine local products, is a very attractive and successful concept. Not just beautiful, but more importantly, very tasty dishes, made this a very appreciated dinner for me. Highly recommended!