November 2012 - Barcelona

Food & Drink
TEN’S
IVAN GIMÉNEZ
BLACK
awarded a Michelin star – back when
he was 25 – has become the first
Michelin-starred chef in Barcelona to
offer an all-in fixed price lunch menu.
It costs €39, at Caelis at the Palace -
the most solemn dining room in the
city (with the possible exception of
Via Veneto). ‘We have to move with
the times,’ says Fornell, ‘if we were
only serving two covers at midday, I’d
rather shut up shop.’ It’s not an
arbitrary decision: Fornell has just
taken over ownership of the
restaurant with Alan-Pierre Benteo
and Eric Basset, and placed his stamp
on the whole business, with a new,
contemporary interior that makes a
refreshing contrast to the bourgeois
gravity of the hotel.
The third Michelin chef to shake
things up is Jordi Cruz, after winning
back his second star at l’Àbac. He’s
returning to his roots with Ten’s, a
tapas bar on the site of the original
Àbac, opposite the Estació de França
– maintaining the original
restaurant’s green tiles. His
CAELIS
ambitions go beyond reproducing or
reinventing classics like croquettes
and patatas bravas, but he hasn’t
gone overboard on the design. ‘I
didn’t want to create anything too
showy. I just wanted to transfer the
concept of quality dining to the
world of tapas, even if we’re serving
dishes that never existed before,’
explains Cruz.
It’s unostentatious, functional and
immaculately presented, with a select
menu of only 20 tapas. Here’s a
challenge: spend €120 between two
and you can try them all.
BLACK CAVIAR LOUNGE
Pl. de Camp, 5. T. 691 403 599.
€20 to €100
CAELIS
Gran Via, 668. T. 93 510 12 05.
Set lunch menu: €39.
TEN’S
Av. Marquès de l’Argentera, 11. T. 93
319 60 00. About €30.
November 2012 Time Out BCN Guide 15