A Taste of Spain - BCN

For a belated celebration of M's birthday, we decided on BCN (short for Barcelona), a Spanish restaurant that does only tasting menus.

On this night we were given a choice between two menus -  "Trip to Spain" ($628) and "Summer Chef" ($708). As we were first-timers here and being pork lovers we went with the "Trip to Spain" to sound out their suckling pig... 

We began our meal with our own platter of goodies. My favourite was hands down the ham but the Manchego with a drizzle of honey and thinly sliced spicy chorizo were delicious all the same.

 

3 small pintxos tapas

From left: octopus on fondant potato and Spanish EVOO, egg yolk with red prawn and leek foam, meat ball.

As I informed them ahead of dinner about my allergy, they kindly subsituted the above "broken egg" tapas for the cod fish croquette that was on the original menu. All three tapas above were executed well and enjoyable, though I wouldn't say mind-blowing or particularly memorable.

Gazpacho - iberico ham, cherry tomatoes, croutons

The above is actually a photo of a friend's as mine had no croutons. This cold soup was deliciously refreshing - perfectly seasoned and thickened without bread! I am going to attempt to recreate this one day as it was amazing - smooth and thick, almost creamy texture with a sweet tomato taste and the garlic was very mild (i.e. no garlic breath post-consumption; yes please!). THIS is what summer should taste like!

Red Prawn and Squid Paella

Perhaps it was the strong air-conditioning right above us, but our paella went stone cold just several minutes after we were served... Temperature issues aside, the rice was tasty from the seafood broth it simmered in, although lacking the wonderful slight chew of the Spanish rice I had recently enjoyed at Viva Ana... The pretty red prawns sitting on top were nicely done but lacked any apparent shrimp flavour... perhaps they weren't in season?

Slow cooked suckling pig with onion apricot jam & orange syrup

We saw the making of this dish from earlier on - BCN has a hot plate grill that sits outside the kitchen facing the seating area and hence we were able to see the chef cooking the pork and finishing it off skin side down to crisp the skin before plating. The hunk of baby pork meat was luxurious and definitely the star of tonight's dinner. Fork-tender and juicy, it went very well with the orange syrup with a hint of cinnamon... Although they advise you to have the onion and apricot jam with the pork, I could only manage a few smears as it was cloyingly sweet, even with the pork.

Chocolate orange truffles

Given my allergy I was very disappointed I was unable to try the churros which came cinnamon and sugar dusted and with a dark hot chocolate dip. As a substitute, I was given two truffles that looked very... ordinary. However as a chocoholic, I'm happy to say these truffles were surprisingly very enjoyable and satisfying - the combination of chocolate and candied orange peel was lovely and inside the dark shells was a very thick and dark ganache which meant two was plenty at the end of my meal.

Overall, a splendid Spanish meal with excellent company to boot!

Food: ♥♥♥♥♥

Service: ♥♥♥

Price: HK$700 pp incl service and without drinks.

BCN
G/F, 37 Peel Street, Soho
Central, Hong Kong

T: +852 2811 2851 (dinner only, book well in advance as they only have 12 seats)