There are restaurants where the cuisine is unappealable and Mae, recently opened in the upper Zone of Barcelona, is one of them. A gastronomic restaurant that proposes a syncretism of a round trip to Costa Rica, country of origin of two of the three founding partners. The local part is provided by Germán Espinosa, who comes from Martí Berasategui’s Fonda Espanya, making it clear that the school of the country’s most starred chef is also indisputable.
Thus, Mae (something like colleague in the Costa Rican country), offers a couple of tasting menus where you can enjoy starters that are a real masterpiece and that summarize the purpose of the restaurant, with dishes like the fried egg yolk with steak tartar and marrow, the 80-year-old sourdough bread with pejibaye butter (a Costa Rican fruit) or the crunchy peus de porc with shrimp tartar and tree tomato. Really, it’s a real feat.
The starters alone would be worth the visit, and it is worth insisting on the path they mark. The latter, all with impeccable elaborations, sometimes do not quite fit the purpose of this syncretic journey, but, as I said, they are still unappealable. The leek with smoked vichysoisse, black garlic and celery was very good, but we were more interested in the steamed hake in banana leaf for the journey to distant lands it suggested. A high-end experience.
📍C/ de Sant Elies, 22, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi.
💸60-80€