A family holiday – by train

The Lander/Robinson family’s attempt to save the planet – the 14 of us decided to travel from London to the Costa Brava in Spain by train rather than by plane – came to a grinding halt at Narbonne station when the train in front of ours hit something. As it was already 8.30 on a Sunday evening, expensive taxis were the only solution for the final 117 km to the Hotel Empordà in Figueres.

But this happened several hours after a decent lunch in a restaurant a five-minute walk from the Gare de Lyon, much of which, like so many railway stations today, is given over to places where you can eat and drink. The area round Paris’s gateway to the south is seemingly unchanged, with rather rundown cafés and brasseries, and it took a nudge from Google to set us on the path to Aux 2 Saveurs.

The name is a reference to the fact that, although the inspiration for the food is French, it is executed by Japanese chef Shin Maeda whose artistic eye strongly influences the food.

His menu is €55 for three courses, and we ate and drank extremely well. An elegant slice of a terrine of Landes chicken, foie gras and hazelnuts was followed by a Japanese interpretation of the French classic, beef cheeks braised in red wine. Here, half a dozen pieces of tender beef came topped by slices of carrots and green beans stylishly surrounded by a circle made of macaroni. 

JR much enjoyed her gravlax with dill cream and potato gnocchi with wild mushrooms and a perfectly poached egg. We shared a dessert of creamy rice pudding topped with strawberries and rhubarb as well as a charming bottle of 2023 Bourgueil from Domaine de Chanteleuserie (€30). My bill came to €148 and I would recommend this unusually spacious Parisian restaurant to those who have a wait for a train.

Fifty years ago the Hotel Empordà (once known as El Motel) and its sister establishment on the coast the Almadraba Park Hotel in Roses were the centre of the renaissance in Spanish cooking, according to chef Ferran Adrià, formerly the chef/proprietor of the world-famous El Bulli restaurant. Both are owned by the Subirós family with the father, Jaume, still in fighting form and working at every meal. He has wisely passed on his bountiful hospitality genes to his three sons: Jordi now resident in Figueres and Albert and Luis in Roses.

It was Jordi, wearing a chef’s jacket, who greeted us, tired and hungry, well after 10 pm in Figueres, and made us feel immediately welcome, helped by plates of thinly sliced Ibérico ham, tortilla, salad and, of course, pan y tomate. And to send us on our way to Roses, the excellent breakfast menu catered to diverse tastes.

I have written most enthusiastically about Almadraba Park since we first visited it in 2011. But even arriving on this occasion with high expectations we found it better than ever.

Perhaps it was the timing. The region had just experienced a wet winter and everything was looking green and lush. We arrived in sunshine and before the crowds of predominantly French people who arrived for the Ascension Day weekend. The beauty of the views from the restaurant remain unchanged: across the bay as the fishing fleet sets out from Roses harbour at 7 am; down on to the crescent beach, on which the first restaurant – the restaurant Santa Llucia, on the extreme left of the view of the bay below – offered a great meal of fried anchovies; tallarines, tiny clams in season only in May/June sauteed with plenty of garlic; and an excellent paella. 

But it was the originality of the cooking and the excellence of the wine list that most impressed us. There was a great deal of enthusiasm for the food on offer in the bar, with probably the most exceptional a dish credited to Ferran’s brother Albert Adrià simply described as a ‘tomato tartare’. This was a round of red tomatoes looking and tasting spookily like a well-seasoned beef tartare, as tall as a steak tartare, but here glistening with finely diced tomatoes, onions and gleaming with olive oil. Their pizza Almadraba, a rough pizza base topped with a soubise sauce and then generously layered with thick slices of raw tuna, was equally impressive.

Not to be outdone, the kitchen team in the hotel restaurant seemed to be on top form. On our first night, I began with a dish of sonsos with a fried egg and Mallorcan sobrasada. These, translated on the menu as sand eels, are in fact more widely known as whitebait: crisp, cleanly fried and perfect finger food. Then there was another dish called ‘tuna–raw tomato’ which arrived as a mound of tuna in the centre of a bowl around which our waiter poured a thick, cool soup of piquant tomatoes. An array of impressive main courses followed: black rice with squid; cleanly fried crystal prawns; and a very fine turbot with thin, crisp potatoes, with an old-fashioned trolley laden with cakes and desserts to finish.

The biggest and perhaps the most positive change of interest to wine lovers has been the transformation in the hotel’s wine list which seems to have been Luis’s priority before the hotel reopened at Easter. (Luis can be seen in the background of this picture of some of our family at dinner.) It has long had the double advantage of firstly being based in the region of Empordà, which has seen a vast improvement in winemaking over the past decade (See JR's article, Empordà revisited), and secondly being in Spain, a country where by and large restaurants do not mark up their wines as excessively as in so many other countries. Today, the (online and iPad) list contains almost 300 wines, all cleverly and clearly annotated. We began our stay with a bottle of the white 2023 Quinze Roures from Espelt Viticultors on the list for €25 and ended it with a bottle of thrilling Grenache from Sindicat La Figuera, 2022, for the extortionate price of €22!

Our only meal out of the hotel, other than our one lunch on the beach, was at the Restaurant La Barretina, the recommendation of the receptionist at the Figueres hotel who promptly added that its name is Catalan for beret, headwear once commonly worn across the region.

The restaurant, situated no more than half a mile from the harbour where all the fish are landed, has been trading for over 30 years and is run, very personally and personably, by Jose Jimenez Liñan and his wife Monica. Its interior has not changed in the intervening period. Thanks to the lighting it is a blueish white, the opposite of warm. It is cool. And the restaurant’s aim has not deviated: to serve the freshest fish as simply as possible.

The restaurant does have a menu but once you are seated, Liñan approaches your table carrying a tray of all the fish on offer that day. He then talks you through them and, once you have chosen, whisks them off back to the kitchen. I began with a dish of two perfectly grilled squid with lashings of olive oil. JR chose tallarines which, Liñan volunteered after she had left half of these garlicky little clams, were too gritty to charge for.

She had chosen giant red gambas (prawns) from his tray, and six meaty specimens arrived. I had chosen a small monkfish which was served topped with large quantities of diced garlic, red chilli and olive oil. Both were simply and perfectly grilled but equally impressive were the dishes that they were served in. Mine for the monkfish was the largest and heaviest I have ever been served. I believe I did it justice. 

We followed this with a traditional crema Catalana, an eggy local version of crème brûlée straight from under the salamander, and a bowl of turron ice cream that tasted home-made. With a bottle of forgettable white wine (the wine list here is decidedly skimpy), the bill was €179.

This was followed by another ritual. Liñan asks whether you would like a liqueur – a brandy, an armagnac or perhaps a limoncello – an offer I accepted. This appeared on my bill with the word Invitación next to it. Hospitality indeed.

Aux 2 Saveurs 6 rue Emile Gilbert, 75012 Paris; tel: +33 146 064 648

Hotel Empordà Avenida Salvador Dalí i Doménech 170, 17600 Girona, Figueres, Spain; tel: +34 972 500 562

Almadraba Park Hotel Avenida Diaz Pacheco, 17480 Roses, Girona, Spain; tel: +34 972 256 550

La Barretina Carrer del Cap Norfeu, 29, 17480 Roses, Girona, Spain; +34 639 343 895

Every Sunday, Nick writes about restaurants. To stay abreast of his reviews, sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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Paris Catalunya Spain food

Nick Lander