My husband and I decided to splurge when we were in Barcelona and try Jordi Cruz’s renowned restaurant. We ordered the 14 course menu with wine pairing. It was easily one of the best meals in my life, from the welcoming glass of cava, to the kitchen tour with an amuse bouche to the table. The creativity and subtlety of flavor makes it no surprise this chef has received so many accolades. It was one of the first times, I felt like a meal could easily be a spiritual experience. I left with an experience of bliss and joy I have never experienced since. I can only hope to return on my next trip to Spain.

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This place was my second 5 out of 5 rating since I've been to Spain. Everything was on point. I really enjoyed standing during the appetizer stage. That was a very different experience for me. Come hungry because you get a lot of food.

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Went sole for dinner on a summer 2023 Thursday. The restaurant is located in a lux hotel in the up,ark et part of the city. The experience starts with a tour of the kitchen where you try the first few dishes and the accompanied to the table in a luxury set-up. All dishes were amazing in terms of idea, ingredients and presentation. I also tried the wine pairing which was very well thought out. The service matched the high standards of the dishes. It would be great if Jordi Cruz is sometimes present since this is the anchor of his empire. As expected from a 3 starred Michelin it was pricey but worth it.

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Wonderful hotel. Limited rooms but spacious with designer inspired details everywhere. 45 person staff for their 5 star restraunt complete with famous chef. Expect a 300 euro cost for dinner. Extensive wine selection as well as exclusive liquors. Great service, very clean, and professional staff. Enjoy! Gary F

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Of course, expectations were high - 3 Michelin stars and 435 € per person for tasting menu with wine pairing. From the savory kitchen we had a number of extraordinary and extremely delicious dishes. A lot of true genius there. My tooth isn't that sweet, and for me there was a little too much from the sweet kitchen and maybe slightly less genius. However, fellow eaters with sweeter teeth did not mind at all. What spoiled the fun for me was the ridiculously small offerings of wine. There was hardly enough wine in the glasses to allow proper enjoyment of the grapes. No extras were ever offered. My advice to future guests would be to order wine by the bottle from the extensive list. One should not have to leave an otherwise wonderful meal entirely sober.

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Not worth it. Bad peoples. Horrible service. Just run to the other three other Michelin star in the city! I have eaten in Michelin star, 3 Michelin stars from different continents, this place treats colored people differently. Sometimes you let those fly by, but now, in splice of the European culture you believe is more evolved than perceived, this restaurant bears no importance to the movement of culinary arts than subjugate our taste buds into nothingness and the service into the reduction of baseless inhumanity than to promote a gastronomical experience. Bad.

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The experience starts in the kitchen. And because a kitchen is timed, it is important to arrive a little bit in advance in order not to disturb the mechanic of precision that a kitchen is, especially when guests are asked to get their pre-starters in the kitchen. The experience surely is a one of its kind. Never seen before, it has its effect! You are being accompanied in the room by professional servers who are mastering several languages and are perfectly at ease to greet you and, across the meal, to explain it all. The tabes are interesting in their design: they are asymmetrical. They also each have an individual lighting which is very sculptural. Many of the dishes are around the smoke and are smoky based. You get all aspects of the cuisine, from traditional (ham and tapas) to the most sophisticated nitrogen and molecular. Many dishes are extremely complex and the list of ingredients is extensive, thus making it hard to embrace your plate fully. The most surprising thing is in the wine pairing. Our sommelier went as experimental and daring as serving a beer; and the result was remarkable. But the best was yet to come with a wine being served that will change its taste again and again at each mouthful, to come back to what it was at the beginning of the dish. Never heard of, never seen before. Overall very demonstrative as a young chef can be, you feel the passion and strong will that is driving the chef and his team. One thing to note: you might want to double check your bill...

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From front to back a disillusionment unparalleled. It already started wrong when we waited in the (not heated) garden for 20 minutes without even looking back to see if we wanted a drink. It continued in the kitchen where we got the first amuses prepared live. These were good but whether a 3-star label can be attached to them remains in the middle. Once at the table, the qualitative disaster began in the form of poor etiquette, disinterested staff with poor explanations of all dishes. Something can't be your taste just the construction of the menu doesn't hit the mark. From front to end, everything was mediocre and flat and unspoken in terms of taste. This is an eternal shame because of the fact that it does use nice fresh produce. For instance, the beef wellington-inspired course was cold and poorly flavoured, making the meat totally disappear from the other flavours. The soup that preceded the last 'hot' dish was downright disgusting and other guests seemingly left it all out. There was also only one really hot dish, which made us think the chef wanted to play it safe. Normally, I would describe the above as a cynical pissing piece, but at a 3-star Michelin restaurant everything has to be right for 1200 euros, which you pay for the three of you. In all honesty, I would advise Michelin to reconsider what a ballpark this is. Good luck with your business.

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*Short-Version* The experience was an enormous disappointment and deceiving because of: 1. the failure to balance flavors of saltiness & acidity 2. the failure to perform a gradually richer sauce consistency as the menu proceeded 3. the failure to accommodate my dietary restrictions of reduced salt content and of low sucrose diet 4. assigning physically unwell employees to serve the customers, yet no hygienic procedure was taken after every cough/sneeze covered by the employee's hand and before continuing to serve the customers Moreover, the manager on duty broke his promise to offer me a complimentary revisit to ABaC again as compensation by simply ignoring my email. Multiple phone calls were made to me, and although the front desk has made another promise that a reply will be made, but after more than 2 weeks of my experience, there was no direct reply from them. *Feedback on Non-Cuisine Aspects* Before I provide my thoughts on ABAC's cuisine course by course, I would like to readdress that during my dinner, one of the employees (name unasked) was consistently coughing and sneezing throughout the entire service. This imposes not only my concern about his health condition, but also, the health concerns of me, other customers, and other employees, as he did not perform any standardized hygienic procedures after every time his hands contacted his nose and before serving customers. Cleanliness and sanitization safety are always considered as a priority, regardless of the level of cuisine in every restaurant as supposed, particularly in a three-starred one, where executions are expected to be made beyond perfection. *Course: Bread w/ Hazelnut Butter & Caviar* The caviar was served independently, and hence, A mother-of-pearl spoon was requested by me. I understand that if the kitchen could not provide so, since only a few two-/three-starred restaurants would, it is even rarer to provide the spoon proactively. However, the issue is that the kitchen never answered my request, even till the end when I did not wish to continue my dinner because of the accumulation of disappointments. *Course: Sundried Tomato, Parmegiano R., and Green Tomato Drink* This course had a large piece of tomato served as a whole, embedding a layer of Parmegiano R. cheese and bread crumbs below. Because of the concentrated, sun-dried flavor, the acidity dominates the flavor. Consuming the lower half of the tomato can be combined with other complimenting ingredients. But, the entire upper half of the tomato can only be consumed on itself, leaving the palette overpowered by the sourness. Moreover, the green tomato drink pushed the acidity boundary even further (unenjoyable). I was told that the chef even added vinegar to the green tomato, leaving me unable to understand the purpose of why making the sourness eliminating all other subtle flavors. *Course: Scortched Roots Ice Cream* The ice cream included in this course demonstrates that the kitchen failed to adapt to my low-sucrose diet per their promise. *Course: Dorade Sea Bream Ceviche con la Salsa Leche de Tigre* The second course is killed by the overdosage of acidity. In multiple cuisines, citrus/tomato/vinegar acidity is commonly used to counter-balance the “fishiness” of seafood. The fish on its own has rich umami and zero fishiness, thanks to either its freshness or slight maturation. Its texture was well contrasted with the pumpkin seeds. However, the leche de tigre sauce was significantly much more sour than the most I had tasted before, and the sauce came in an abundant quantity. Why would the chef smolder the opportunity of letting excellent ingredients shine with their natural flavors? Lastly, as a menu proceeds, the flavor always shifts from appetizing to rich & sophisticated. But till now as well as the next dish I am about to discuss, were all paired with clear broth/sauces instead of creamy-consistency sauces. *Course: Smoked Egg & “Gnocchi” in Chicken Broth* The last nail on the coffin was again, the combined, overwhelming sodium content of the chicken broth and the “Gnocchis”, which were only made into a gnocchi-reminiscent shape and burst when bitten -- so did all the extreme saltiness exploded out into the mouth. On the other hand, the repeatedly used clear-broth-consistency sauce did not compliment the silk-like texture of the poached egg. Instead, it demoted the dish as if it was drinking a pond of salty soup. Interestingly, although I was informed that no additional salt was added in this course, I have chewed and tasted unrendered salt flakes on the egg white, contradicting to the kitchen's words. *Course: Hake, Clam, Fried Kale Chip, and Fried Rice Chip in Pil-Pil & Ajoverde* The sous-vide hake was seasoned prior to the cooking at the salt content level of “right at the point if consumed individually”, and so is the pil pil sauce. But when multiple ingredients already well-salted combine, the entirety becomes oversalted because of the flavor accumulation, and unfortunately, these two were the least salty items in this course. Regretfully, the ajoverde paired in this course was a salty-tasting decoration in the bowl. Furthermore, the fried kale was essentially a salty flake, completely eliminating the fried flavor that was always associated with the enjoyable browned, fried surface due to the Maillard Réaction. (Menu was halted and unfinished from this point.)

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Let me start by saying I think that Michelin should reimburse me for all the money I spent going to this restaurant. From start to finish, without hesitation i can say this is the worst Michelin rated restaurant i have ever been to. I sincerely hope that Michelin takes away its stars and this chef learns not to be so arrogant. When you are paying this much money for dinner, you should expect good service and good food neither of which we received. I will try to relate the experience as i remember it so anybody else who thinks this is a good idea can rethink their plan. I didnt mind that you cant use a front door to this restaurant and had to be buzzed in at a gate to the hotel but this should have been some sort of an omen to me. We were “greeted” and i use that term very lightly by the master d’ and another unknown woman who argued whether they should be the one who “told” us about the theme of the evening. We were told that Jordi Cruz, the chef, had a friend who was an artist and that the artist had drawn a picture of a woman with a huge bubble coming out of her rear end and that the meal would be focused around “the heavenly wind.” I said that was disgusting and i already didnt want to eat there but my husband who is more tolerant of potty humor said that it would be fine. So we proceeded to be seated in a dining room that at best looked like a hallway with a table on each side of the hallway. No decoration, no music, just a plain room with approximately 8 or 10 tables. There were three “waiters” working as a team for all of the tables. None of them were professional waiters. They looked like a bunch of kids who were trying to keep it all together. Upon sitting, we decided to start with a cocktail and were told there was no bar and no bartender but maybe they could find someone to make us a drink.another bad omen, but hey they have your money at the reservation, so we figured we were stuck we should probably stay. The ambiance and food were bad but the food probably rated the worst part of the experience. The bread was rock hard and when we complained that we would break our teeth if we tried to eat it we were told that this is the chefs specialty and that we just don’t know quality bread making. The meal from start to finish was really bad. Some plates were served to look like poop on a plate others had a dome with a gas we had to smell. One dish was served with a perfume to smell—in my world kind of a no no if you want to taste the actual food. We left,without finishing, when the dessert was served with a helium balloon to inhale. Good lord i have never felt so ripped off in my life. We live in New York and i guarantee if a restaurant tried to get away with this pass this off as elegant food they would be closed in a NY minute. Michelin, if you ever read these reviews take notice. This was truly bad!!I want my money back!!! Barcelona is so filled with great food do not waste your money!!!!!

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.. one of the most memorable and special gastronomic experiences of my life. We were welcomed for a reservation and invited to join the staff in the kitchen for some super special appetizers and a killer bloody Mary. Once we finished a number of wonderful treats in the kitchen, we moved onto our table where our server walked through the tasting menu. The restaurant has a clean, modern vibe, very minimalistic which allows you to focus on the food and the choreographed service We decided to go all in and participated in wine pairing. It should be noted that we were invited to utilize any choice from their extensive wine menu rather than the wine tasting. Just for fun, we checked out the menu and it even included a number nice selections from USA Napa Valley. All of the food was delicately prepared and well thought out. Wine pairings were all Spanish wines, and not one style; we enjoyed wines from all over Spain, most notably from their Rioja region and north. Selections included a nice variety that included white, reds, cider, and Sherries. Each of the wines was well paired with the wonderful array of foods that we experienced. Many of the courses lean towards fish, which you would expect being so close to the Mediterranean. A wonderful squid dish, a flight of tomato based dishes, the absolute best hake may have ever had the pleasure to taste, just name a few. Wonderful lamb protein course towards the end of the meal, followed by several rounds of dessert, each whimsical and delicious at the same time. Honestly, everything was wonderful and the only thing I didn't care for was really an aside for fun a candle of coconut oil that melted bread dipping, fun but it wasn't my favorite taste Our meal, lasted more than 3 1/2 hours, and it just flew by! The service was impeccable, wines, varied, and fun, food, absolutely one of a kind. A must if you ever have the opportunity to be in the Barcelona Spain area to experience Chef Cruz absolute genius. Reservations are a must, in advance, to secure a spot at this restaurant.

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