It could all have been so different for Disfrutar, the Barcelona restaurant named the best in the world for 2024 by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants at a glittering ceremony in scorching Las Vegas.
“When we opened 10 years ago, in the first weeks we opened with a little menu, maybe around 65 euros per person,” says Mateu Casañas, one third of the chef team behind the restaurant, located in the Spanish city’s Eixample neighborhood, alongside Oriol Castro and Eduard Xatruch.
This quickly changed. After all, these are three chefs who ran the pass at elBulli, the legendary Modernist restaurant up the Catalonia coast in Roses.
“We understood in a few days that we were not there to do this. We have, inside our souls, one way to cook,” adds Casañas.
The success of Disfrutar is ultimately a story about sticking to your guns then, an inspiring tale for any budding chef or restaurateur not interested in following trends.
“When we decided to open Disfrutar together, it was not fashionable to open a restaurant with 30 plates in a degustation menu. But for us, it’s what we [wanted], it’s [what] we know. And we had one thing so clear in the beginning: that we do things [as] we want, and we never change. And today we are here.”
They are and the team’s emotion was palpable when the restaurant’s name was called out at the Las Vegas Wynn (the win was hardly a surprise, however: the restaurant has hovered around the top five for some years), with Xatruch being brought to tears on stage.
