Time to Saüc up the good life.

Saüc (the local word for Elder Berries) is a one Michelin starred restaurant in Barcelona and head chef Xavier Franco provides a menu which reflects Catalan cuisine using traditional, local flavours and ingredients in a fine dining setting. With several different options in tasting menus and a very reasonable fixed price lunch menu plus a la carte, you can have a great meal at a highly rated restaurant without breaking the bank.

I decided on the full five course tasting menu this also includes two appetisers, a cheese plate and two desserts.

Firstly, the service was excellent, the staff spoke English, were extremely helpful, described dishes clearly and answered any questions. Also one of the staff members was kind enough to provide me with a copy of the menu and mark the dishes I had during the meal. The fact that I accidentally forgot this in the taxi on the way back to my hotel is entirely my fault.

To start, along with the bread I was given a plate of the brightest green olives along with a cracker and a mysterious jelly cube.

These olives were very morish and the cracker was a cheese cookie which was rich and salty and the jelly was a black olive jelly. These make a great snack and would go well on a bar with a few glasses of wine.

The first appetiser was Mackerel with Dried and Marinated Tomato.

Unfortunately, this photo does not do this dish justice. The slight oiliness of the mackerel was balanced with the sweetness of the tomato.

The second appetiser was Roasted Catalan White Sausage with Parmentiere and Pea Cream.

The colour of this dish jumps out at you and while I went straight in and tried the sausage (and it was a couple of bites if meaty goodness) the parmentiere and pea cream was amazing. Parmentiere is a potato puree, but the potatos are usually cooked in butter instead of water.

So that was the appetisers out of the way, now for the first of the main courses. White Asparagus, Razor Clams, Almond Milk and Basil Mayonnaise.

It was great to see razor clams again and the texture of shellfish alongside perfectly cooked asparagus was a good combination and the asparagus certainly held it's own in the flavour stakes. The almond milk was thick and creamy and the vibrant, almost flourescent dash of basil mayonnaise brings the colour that this dish so obviously needs along with a sweetness that complements the other ingredients.

The second main course was Haricot Beans from Santa Pau, Prawn and Funghi Pil-Pil.

Here once again is the common Catalan flavour combination of seafood and beans. The earthy flavours are powerful, but not without finesse, definitely a combination I would love to work on when I get home. Pil-Pil is commonly a sauce made with garlic and hot peppers and this brightens up the dish quite well.

The next course is a "surf and turf" combination and is not on the main menu. Crispy Dewlap Pork, Baby Squid and Wild Mushroom.

More of those earthy Catalan flavours here, the baby squid which if you've been following the posts about Barcelona you will recognise as a common ingredient here combined with a meaty local mushroom and finger of delicious mystery pork. Dewlap is the fold of skin hanging under the lower jaw and from the neck of the pig and in this case is crispy, crackly goodness on the outside and soft melting pork on the inside. The mushroom is Amanita Caesarea or Ceasar's mushroom and has firm yellow flesh and an orange cap.

Next came the fish course, John Dory on Roasted Tender Wheat with Sea Urchin.


I'm probably a little biased here as John Dory is one of my favourite fish to eat and this was a wonderfully cooked example. The flesh was white and almost translucent and flaked very easily. The skin was crispy and slightly salty, but not overly so. The fish was sitting on a bed of roasted wheat topped with sea urchin roe. To me, the star of this dish was the wheat, I understand that it is roasted in fish stock until tender, but the wheat still retained plenty of chewiness and contrasted very well with the tender fish and ethereal sea urchin roe.

The meat course was the final main course and this one was certainly full of local flavour. Iberian Pork Secret, Jabugo Ham Curd and Beijing Green Beans.



I'm not sure what the secret is, but this is some of the best pork I have ever tasted in my life. Still slightly pink in the middle, this melted in the mouth and tasted like an amazingly tender bacon. This was intensely rich and to be honest was almost more than I could eat because of this, but with a little of the curd to cut through the richness, I managed to make it....:) The beans were nice too, but to be honest I used them more to space out the intensity of the pork than as a part of the dish (but maybe that's why they're there). I'm not entirely sure of the process of making the ham curd, but Jabugo ham is one of the best Iberian hams you can get. I believe the bones of the ham are cooked like a soup and then the soup is curdled somehow to produce a slightly sour, ham-flavoured curd. A memorable dish, but would have been just as memorable in a slightly smaller portion...but I'm not complaining!

The cheese plate was an assortment of Catalan Cheeses.


There are sheep, cow and goat's milk cheeses here served with a pumpkin marmalade, elder (Saüc) berry gelatin and some Strawberry, Raisin and Nut Bread. The first cheese on the left is a sheep's milk cheese with a blue-mold rind which was my favourite. Eaten without the rind it a mild flavoured cheese, but with the rind it gets all those blue mold tastes and becomes something very special. I can't recall exactly what the others were, but the marmalade and elder berry gelatine were a welcome alternative to the common accompaniment of muscatels or quince paste I often see in Melbourne.

Dessert time! The first one is a combination of dessert and palette cleanser. Melon and Ginger Soup with Watermelon Ice and Basil Gel.


Bright and refreshing, this was a great way to move from cheese into dessert. All the flavours were distinct and worked well together, a very summery dish.

Following after this came the Muskovado Cake, Tia Maria ith Mascarpone Cream.


Muskovado is a type of brown sugar and has a strong, syrupy flavour. The cake is a sponge soaked in tia maria and I believe the foam is a chocolate foam, but I'll hope for confirmation on that at some point. A refined, but gentle dessert, this is a great way to finish a good meal. Oh wait, I still need my coffee.

Along with coffee came another surprise:


Petit-Fours: Liquorice and Anise Scum, Almond Cake, Chocolate and Feuillet-Paulletine Rock and Cinnamon Biscuit. Scum is a bit of a strong word for a glass of lightly anise flavoured foam, but these are all wondeful little gems to send me packing back to my hotel for a siesta.

I had a great time at Saüc and seeing Catalan food in this way gives me a different perspective on the ingredients and flavour profiles of this unique region of Spain.