Wednesday, May 1, 2013

El Celler de Can Roca is 'World's Best Restaurant 2013' by Philip S. Kampe and Adam Lechmere


El Celler de Can Roca is 'World's Best Restaurant' 2013


This June I have reservations at what is considered the 'World's Best Restaurant'. I am traveling with a select group of Washington D.C. and New York restauranteurs and chefs on a wine and food journey through Catalonia, sponsored by AVC (Avinicolacatalana) and export manager, Nuria Ruiz i Mila.
I was fortunate enough to interview Josep Roca, sommelier extraordinaire at El Cellar de Can Roca last year and learned about the 'Family' restaurants success and unbelievable wine cellar.
El Cellar de Can Roca has knocked out Copenhagen's 'Noma' off the top spot as the 'World's Best Restaurant'
Celler de Can Roca
World's Best Restaurant 2013 is Calalonia's " Celler de Can Roca"

The restaurant, in northeastern Spain, is a stone’s throw from the internationally-celebrated El Bulli, five-times winner of the World’s Best award until its closure last year.

El Celler de Can Roca is run by the three Roca brothers – head chef Joan, pastry chef Jordi, and sommelier Josep Roca. It is renowned for its comprehensive wine list – the cellar holds some 60,000 bottles, and the list itself, in two telephone directory-sized volumes, is delivered to the table on a porter’s trolley.

‘Head chef Joan is alone a cook of the very highest order,’ Restaurant Magazine, the publisher of the 50 Best list, says. ‘He helped pioneer the widespread use of sous-vide cooking in the ’90s via his Roner machine, and is a technical maestro.’

Roca is known for combining local Catalan cuisine with avant-garde and experimental dishes – starters of caramelized olives hung on a bonsai tree, or Iberian suckling pig with pepper sauce and garlic and quince terrine, ‘the maximum expression of the low-temperature vacuum cooking technique’, as he puts it.

Another dish aims to capture the essence of bergamot, one of Roca’s signature flavours. The Adaptation of the Eternity fragrance by Calvin Klein captured ‘the volatile soul of a perfume, deciphering the formula and adapting it to an edible reality’, he says.

The World’s Best Restaurants is a well-regarded ranking, based on the votes of some 900 figures from the restaurant world.

Noma in Copenhagen has taken the No1 position for the past three years and now slips down to second place, with Osteria Francescana, in Modena, Italy, in third place.
One British restaurant made it into the 'Top 10' list – Heston Blumenthal, with his new London restaurant Dinner in at No. 7.

It is Spain, with three restaurants in the Top 10, that shows its culinary pedigree. In the Top 10 are Can Roca, Mugaritz (4) and Arzak (8) in San Sebastián.

France has six restaurants in the Top 50 but none in the Top 10. Its highest entrant is L’Arpège in Paris at No16.

The US also has six: Eleven Madison Park (5), Per Se (11), Le Bernardin (19), Daniel (29), all in New York, Chicago’s Alinea (15), and The French Laundry in Yountville, Napa, scraping in at No47.


I look forward to reporting my findings after my June visit to the Roca brothers restaurant.


PHILIP S. KAMPE
ADAM LECHMERE (Decanter)

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3 comments:

Henry R. said...

Spain and its culinary world is the Best in the World.

Bernie G. said...

You are so lucky to look forward to an unmatched culinary experience. I look forward to your follow-up article after visiting El Cellar de Can ROCA.
I envy you!

Anonymous said...

You are extremely Lucky..

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