Compartir: the other (delicious) face of the Castro, Xatruch and Casañas trio

A couple of weeks ago, we told you about Disfrutar, the Barcelona restaurant led by the trio of chefs Oriol Castro, Eduardo Xatruch and Mateu Casañas, which this year came second in the World's 50 Best 2023. On that occasion, we also reported that the three Catalan chefs have demonstrated their ability to excel in multiple restaurant formats. In fact, while today Disfrutar is the group’s flagship, after the closure of elBulli Castro, Xatruch and Casañas - who had worked in Adrià's kitchen for almost 20 years - had started over from another restaurant.

Not in Barcelona, but in Cadaquès, not far from the Gulf of Roses, at the easternmost tip of Catalonia and the Costa Brava, with a project called Compartir. Exactly one year ago, it also opened a second location in the Catalan capital. The first Compartir, when it opened in April 2012, was a way for the three chefs to start over with a completely different restaurant from the one in which they had established themselves. It would have been very risky to take on a creative, avant-garde proposal immediately, with the elBulli comparison ready to prove a boomerang.

Compartir means 'to share', and the explanation of this concept can be read on the restaurant's website: 'The gastronomic offer is based on dishes to be shared at the centre of the table, but the concept of sharing goes beyond the simple act of placing a dish in the centre. The whole team works so that we understand the deeper meaning of the verb: to experience experiences, moments, conversations, memories and sensations; but also to work as a team, to engage daily and to enjoy the way the cuisine is interpreted, and then to pass it on effectively.’

After that first step in 2012, at the end of 2014 the three opened Disfrutar in Barcelona. They wanted to resume the path of innovation, invention, and experimentation with new techniques, which was a fundamental part of their way of understanding cuisine, but they were also aware that in a town like Cadaquès they could never count on a stable clientele throughout the year. Nevertheless, Compartir has continued to reap great success in the following years, with its modern, bourgeois we might say, restaurant formula in which the link with traditions and raw materials is essential.

At the end of June 2022, the self-baptised CXC trio, using the initials of their three surnames, opened the Barcelona location of Compartir: the restaurant is in the heart of the elegant Eixample district, a few steps from Passeig de Gràcia. It is indeed beautiful, and cosy, retaining a little of the Costa Brava location's seafaring spirit, which blends perfectly with a ubiquitous and cosmopolitan soul one can notice at first glance. There are two large and airy rooms, one of which can be isolated from the rest of the restaurant to accommodate private events.

For the kitchen, they chose Nil Dulcet Padrós as executive chef. Born in 1989, at a very young age, he met the three chefs thanks to a one-year internship at elBulli between 2010 and 2011. "I was lucky enough to be able to experience first-hand that cuisine that is so important for the history of world gastronomy," he told us as he showed us around the rooms of the new restaurant. Having seen in him a future promise, Castro, Xatruch and Casañas took him straight to Compartir in Cadaquès, and then entrusted him with the role of first chef de cuisine when Disfrutar opened.

"Compartir has a very different offer from Disfrutar," he told us, smiling, "this is, we could say, a 'normal' restaurant. Here diners come to eat dishes that are not to be deciphered, where the techniques serve to enhance the raw materials and where they can find familiar flavours, familiar recipes.”

This is all true and no one can explain this difference better than Nil Dulcet Padrós, but we should also point out that the quality of Compartir's dishes has little to do with normality: it is always about excellence, from starter to dessert. There is no tasting menu, but a very extensive and articulated menu: starting with oysters, served either cold, with five variations in addition to the natural service, or warm, in three different declinations. We tasted one with jalapeño aguachile, mango and avocado, a seductive encounter for the fragrant freshness that envelops the star of the bite.

Were we to highlight the strong point, the keystone, of Compartir's dishes, we would not hesitate for a moment to call into question the sauces, as is fitting in a restaurant with a solid traditional anchorage, however contemporary. Glossy and clear, they make each dish delicious to the eye, even before tasting. For example, the carrot, purple carrot and coconut sauces are incredible. They are served with the sardines in escabeche, softening their acidic and savoury edges. The almond cream shows absolute softness. Mixed with the fragrant green olive juice, it provides the base for the red tuna cannellone with Mediterranean flavours, one of the signature dishes of Compartir in Cadaquès, which of course cannot be missed in Barcelona. The chicken sauce accompanying the Catalan scallops with confit potatoes is delicately savoury and rich.

Looking beyond the detail of the sauces, all of which we could mention for their goodness and technical perfection, Compartir's dishes are striking in the way they always manage to propose a pleasantly unexpected, gently surprising element which never spoils the harmony and immediacy of the tasting, but succeeds in making even what may be seemingly known, something new. Gluttony then takes over, forcing one to leave aside any thoughts about the dish’s composition. It culminated with a dessert that this writer, although not a dessert aficionado, will remember for a long time: the Hazelnut Coulant with apricot sorbet is another Compartir classic and it could not be otherwise. Intense and seductive, truly a knockout.

Below are the photos of the dishes we tasted, with an important note: the portions you will see in these pictures are about half the size of those usually offered à la carte. As for the average price, oysters are offered at 5.75 euros each, appetisers are between 14 and 20 euros, and main courses are between 22 and 40 euros. Finally, the desserts are 10 euros.

Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso