Creative Comerç 24

Plumpjack's Parmesan foam and fig sorbet amuse bouche may be so 2001 (get one of my NYC cook friends started on the subject of foam, and you'll never hear the end of how overdone and over the hill it is now in 2007), but I've had so little of it (probably for the aforementioned reasons) that I dug it at Plumpjack, and I really went for it in Barcelona at Comerç 24 by one of Ferran Adrià's very own disciples, Carles Abellan. After all, when in Rome ... So, indulge me in a little walk down memory lane. It was only last year that I enjoyed the 7-course tasting, plus dessert tasting, at Comerç—a wonderful respite from the tapas (delicious though they were) I'd been having day in and day out for a week traveling with my sister, who was and has always been my ever-willing foodie partner in crime.


1st course.
Bottom, left to right: rice chips with nori dust, whipped aioli, home-made potato chips.
Top, left to right: macadamia nuts in gold dust, deep-fried cauliflower with raspberry sauce, anchovy-stuffed olives.


Half of the 4th course (other half was a cod brandade in a teacup with truffle oil, etc.).
Potato foam on top of egg foam drizzled with truffle oil


Dessert.
Bottom: creme brulee, fruit coulis/shake.
Top: strawberry-flavored white chocolate mousse; chocolate mousse with a toastette, sea salt and olive oil (a traditional Barcelonan kid's snack).