let yourself go
We do not say this because it has been nominated for 'Revelation Restaurant' only seven months after its inauguration, nor for obtaining four years later a Star in the Michelin Guide 2009 in his first restaurant, nor for receiving a Sun in the Repsol Guide …
But we warn you that, before making a reservation at the new restaurant ** Cinc Sentits **, you had better be prepared to a gastronomic experience that will literally leave you speechless.
Oddly enough, especially after having lived the experience of dining at his restaurant; at Traveler.es we still find it hard to believe that Jordi Artal wear today 15 years as a chef and before opening his own he would never have set foot in a restaurant kitchen in his life. How do you read it?
The traditional verdiell olive against the most daring version of Cinc Sentits of the arbequina olive
And it seems that his passion for cooking is born in the midst of the hustle and bustle of dishes and pots, where he begins to feel attracted to it watching his grandmother and his mother cook traditional dishes for the family.
Over time, Artal began to train in a self-taught way, experimenting with new avant-garde cooking techniques in his spare time; Y after ten years of career as Marketing Director in a technology company in Silicon Valley (California), –luckily for all of us– one day he said enough was enough and left everything to return to Barcelona and set up the Cinc Sentits restaurant with his sister Amelia Artal.
After 14 years since its first opening on Aribau street, the iconic restaurant Cinc Sentits has recently moved with an investment of almost 2 million euros, to the center of Barcelona's Eixample _(carrer d'Entença, 60) _, in what the chef and owner of the restaurant says is "a dream come true".
STIMULATING YOUR FIVE SENSES
Always starting from the best raw material as the protagonist, the renowned chef once again highlights his talent, technique and imagination in a new and modern space that reflects an avant-garde update of authentic Catalan cuisine where kitchen, cellar and dining room are integrated into a harmonious whole to cultivate – as its name suggests – your five senses even before you start eating.
Prepare your five senses: you will need them
In addition, for this new challenge the chef wanted that the new location is part of the gastronomic experience of the restaurant.
That is why the space, which occupies more than 400 square meters and has been designed by Zoo Studio and Destil Architecture, offers three different rooms with capacity for 40 people, which follow the chef's career from the countryside to the city of Barcelona, to reflect the culinary story of Cinc Sentits. Shall we start?
VIEW
Just enter you will be greeted by an elegantly uniformed waiter in a small, square, completely airtight reception area painted gray. Once there they will ask you if you want to leave your coat and, if you are ready, they will invite you to enter the next room.
Then what your eyes will see is a reproduction of the chef's childhood and his years growing up in nature: “The first space is inspired by the family fields with wooden cylinders and stone cladding, which capture the arid lands, the vineyard and the olive trees”, explains Gerard Calm, co-founder and designer of Zoo Studio.
after offering you an appetizer made up of three different dishes and a vermouth made exclusively for the restaurant, you will be invited to the third room, the private dining room, decorated with exquisite taste.
Magic in every bite
With capacity for 24 people, this dining room is inspired by the typical facades of the chef's hometown (La Torre De l'Espanyol, Tarragona), and is the ideal place for gastronomy lovers to experience a semi showcooking (show cooking) in first person both during special celebrations and to celebrate private events.
This second private space is inspired by the city, in the famous apartments of the Eixample with its 'volta catalana' roofs, pale cladding, and an interior courtyard/fireplace in the center of the space, which, apart from providing a feeling of being at home, transports the client to Barcelona in the blink of an eye.
And for those who want to live the culinary experience even more live, Cinc Sentits has incorporated a booth they call 'The Chef's Table', designed for eight diners with the best direct views of the kitchen.
Finally, once you are seated at the table and before they bring you the first of the starters that you are going to taste, you will realize, or rather you will feel, that what you are going to witness is a true show where the waiters are the actors and each table is a private stage.
Also throughout the lunch or dinner you will see a wonderful dance of dishes entering and leaving the kitchen, accompanied by a smile on the face of each and every one of the waiters that work there and authentic works of art on the table that will be carefully explained and served in front of you.
One of the rooms of Cinc Sentits
TOUCH
Don't be surprised if you feel want to touch everything It has happened to all of us. You will be surprised by the texture of the wonderful linen tablecloth ; the wall emulating the touch of paper; the finesse of the glasses when you pick them up –of course all of them different depending on the drink you choose–; the beautiful handmade ceramic plates in which they serve you food and change with each tasting; the mini cards that are left one by one on the table and in front of each diner to explain what each dish consists of and how they have prepared it; and the napkin – also linen – that they change if you need it and fold with great care with cutlery.
and without forgetting the wonderful copper colored kitchen the one piece marble table in the reserved room and the relief of the logo, or logos –because they have five different ones–, which you will see selected and distributed throughout the restaurant. Here everything is thought.
SMELL
this may be the first time you walk into a restaurant and you don't smell anything. But luckily it doesn't smell like air freshener, or the characteristic "Five Senses" smell, or even clean.
Which means when your food or the food from the table next to you approaches, you'll be able to enjoy 100% of its aromas, as well as the exotic smells of the wines when you try to guess what they smell like, of course if you ask for it or if you choose to make the pairing that we already recommend.
Chestnut mushroom, Jordi Artal's favorite mushroom
Also note that the wines offered here are wines of another level, incomparable with any conventional table wine, since the sommeliers who have selected them (and which we will talk about next), they explained to us that they can try up to 15 wines until they choose the perfect pairing for each dish. There is nothing.
EAR
We continue talking about wine. From the outset it is important to know how much Eric Vicente, maître and sommelier french, like Sandra Luna, second sommelier Catalan, are part of the experience and what an experience!
And it is that just as we told you that while you dine, the different waiters and waitresses will explain to you plate by plate and in great detail the lunch or dinner; the same goes for wines. If you decide to elevate the food by doing the wine pairing both Eric and Sandra They will explain to you the wine or wines that you are going to try, all of them national wines, little known and exceptional; which they have selected one by one and gone to look for them in each and every one of their wineries.
Furthermore, to record this, Cinc Sentits has prepared an elaborate wine menu where in addition to explaining the history, preparation and qualities of each of them, come accompanied by some photos of Jordi, Eric and Sandra and their visits to the wineries.
highlight too the space designed by Jordi between table and table, which allows you not only not to hear the conversations of others at the other tables, but also to have enough privacy to comfortably live your own experience and enjoy a private setting watching the other diners enjoy themselves.
Artal applies the Kaizen concept: where kai means "change", and zen expresses "for something better", and thus means "continuous improvement".
TASTE
get ready for an experience without equal and, fortunately repeatable if you wish, that will quietly last about two or almost three hours, although when it ends it will seem like it has flown by.
From the first bite you take in the second room with the appetizers you will be able to appreciate, whether or not you know about gastronomy, the passion that Jordi puts into his work and everything he does.
after appetizers, three starters, four main courses, one main dessert and two more desserts is what awaits you, and between courses they will serve you a wonderful rustic bread handcrafted in the house, freshly baked and accompanied by two types of oil (Arbequina + Picual) to prepare the palate so that you can better savor the dishes that follow.
In addition, as the chef himself explained: "The oil is ideal to prepare for important dishes."
At Cinc Sentits they look for dishes that are not only good, but that are out of series and all of them are thought out and prepared under the Japanese Kaizen concept, where kai means 'change', and zen expresses 'for something better', and thus means 'continuous improvement'.
The new Jordi Artal will leave you speechless
Furthermore, it is important to know that the restaurant menu changes two or three times a year, so if you visit the restaurant several times, you will see that its offer is always new, surprising and different, always depending on the ingredients and always gradually.
If you decide to try Cinc Sentits, it is worth knowing what they offer two tasting menu options: the long one (11 passes for 119 euros + pairing of national wines for 69 euros more) and a somewhat shorter one (8 passes for 99 euros + pairing of national wines for 59 euros).
When Traveler.es had the opportunity to test it and to give you an idea of its level, they surprised us with:
Appetizers
Faifó olives with rosemary + Grilled arengada with sautéed tomato, crunchy garlic and parsley powder + Beetroot tupina, sanfaina and pickled cabbage + Our Pla de Bages Vermouth.
Baked apple
first
Pularda with chanterelles, mashed potato, crispy chicken skin and ranci vi + Hedgehog with grilled avocado, radish infused with lime and chilli and garum + Grilled oyster with its emulsified water and lemon peel purée.
Wines: Levante, D.O. Manzanilla from Sanlúcar and A Poniente, D.O. Chamomile from Sanlucar.
Seconds
False black garlic stones, minced squid essence with onions + Trout with Padrón pepper, onion and tomato confit, fennel and phycoid + Scallop with sweet potato purée and escalibada onion sauce + Chestnut mushroom with confit yolk, mushroom, crumbs of thyme and pickled onion.
Wines: Murviedro Cepas Viejas 2017, D.O. Valencia; Rita 2017, D.O. Montsant; Name 2016, D.O. Ribeiro; and Picapoll Reserva Especial 2014, D.O. Pla de Bages.
Dessert
Ice wine with mandarin and saffron sorbet, candied orange, rose jelly and orange blossom cream together with red fruits with beet ice cream, rhubarb, lime effervescent and strawberry foam.
last temptations
Maple syrup with yolk mounted with cava and fleur de sel and cocoa sorbet with apple, muscovado sugar and raisins with rum.
Finally, and in case you hadn't had enough, Just before leaving the restaurant, Jordi will come out to ask you how the experience went. and he will give you a nice bag with a printed copy of the menu that you have tasted for the souvenir and snack the next day, in the form of a sample of perfume with the smell and flavor of cola-cao and Maria biscuit.
In summary, a true luxury for the senses... five specifically.
Out of this world desserts
Address: Carrer d'Entença, 60, 08015 Barcelona See map
Schedule: Open from Tuesday to Saturday. Sundays and Mondays closed.
Additional schedule information: Meals from 1:30 p.m. and dinners from 8:30 p.m.
Half price: 933 23 94 90