A gem in L'Eixample?

Just like on a first date, I get very excited when a new restaurant opens up - it won't get better than this, I tend to think! The chef will be wanting to prove her/himself and therefore she/he will be full of motivation and ideas, the waiters will be inspired with the newness of the project, the place will be bristling with freshness and the food...ahhhhhh, the food....

Let me introduce you to Alvart, a small restaurant which recently opened up in my neighbourhood. I went in Feb, a few months later. The chef is around 26 but has an impressive resumé of having worked in some of the best restaurants of Barcelona but this is his first restaurant as owner and chef.

I went in with a friend to try their lunch menu. This is what we had:

A hummus aperitif which was beautifully presented in one of those cans which seem to be such a popular way to present food nowadays. Lovely mouthful which definitely made us eager to try more!

My first course consisted of a pea soup - the peas were so lovely and sweet! with a poached egg topped with laminates of pancetta. I must say that the pancetta with its fatty flavours, though looked beautiful on the plate, didn't add much to the flavour. But the soup itself was wonderful!


My main course was divine - hake pan fried to perfection, lying on a bed of mashed potatoes, with a demi-glasse sauce poured over. The flakiness of the fish was complimented with the lovely sauce and you know that mashed potatoes go well with any protein. And finely chopped chives are a compliment to fish dishes...



I suck at eating desserts - the sugar makes my face scowl unhappily so it's a once monthly ritual which has to do with the tides of the moon. It so happened to be that time of the month and so I tried the dessert and was so very disappointed! Just a normal vanilla ice cream over some sort of orangey tangy, demerara -sand mix (scowl scowl)..

Hmmmmm....so what do I think? This chef is like a nerd chef - he knows ALL his lessons very well -  but, definitely needs more time to let himself loose and stops trying to show off what he knows vis-a-vis what he can create out of his own imagination.  I will go again soon and see whether he has become more creative but my instincts say that he will!