Lodge Esperit Roca Would possibly Be Spain’s Finest Meals Lodge

Roca is the Spanish phrase for “rock,” however in European foodie circles, it’s additionally a reputation that carries a sure cachet. That’s as a result of husband-and-wife workforce Josep Roca and Montserrat Fontané opened a restaurant known as Can Roca in 1967 in Girona, about an hour north of Barcelona. It rapidly turned recognized for genuine, homestyle meals like arròs a la cassola, a rice casserole typically made with rabbit, prawns, and greens.

The couple’s sons added to the legacy in 1986 with El Celler de Can Roca, which at this time is a Michelin three-starred restaurant reported to have an 11-month ready record. Every brother has a specialty: the oldest, Josep, is a sommelier; Juan is the top chef; Jordi, the youngest, handles dessert and pastries. Collectively, the trio is synonymous with a few of the most creative expressions of Catalan delicacies.

Their most up-to-date venture, Esperit Roca, which opened final yr within the hills exterior Girona, consists of a 16-room lodge, a restaurant, and a distillery, and it’ll quickly embody a culinary analysis academy. Close to the French border between the Pyrenees mountains and the Mediterranean, this a part of northern Catalonia has a “nice cultural and gastronomic sensibility,” Juan advised me after I visited in November. The restaurant can supply Palamós prawns from Costa Brava and lamb from native farms within the Ripollès area. Crops like mugwort, gentian, and pine are grown on website and used to supply gins, fortified wines, and different spirits and liqueurs.

Esperit Roca occupies Castell de Sant Julià de Ramis, a army fortress from the nineteenth century. By day, company can go climbing within the mountains and go to close by websites just like the Sant Julià church and the ruins of the traditional city of Kerunta. 

However dinner is the primary occasion. I entered the restaurant—which was awarded a Michelin star in late 2024—by way of an enormous dome that homes an 80,000-bottle wine cellar, then sat all the way down to an eight-course tasting menu.

I first had a mussel-and-sea-urchin salad with carrots, candy potatoes, and yellow beets, wearing an orange French dressing. Subsequent, I attempted Mediterranean turbot ready 3 ways: as loin, fin, and carpaccio, with kalamata olives, semi-dried tomatoes, and a pil-pil sauce made with oxalis flowers. 

I additionally had mar y montaña, a preferred Catalan dish that interprets to “sea and mountain” and is often a mixture of fish and meat; this plant-based model was made with plankton, algae, asparagus, and basil.

A number of the most memorable moments got here from culinary methods and wild aromas. Succulent purple prawns have been made punchier with “prawn-coral distillate,” a liquid extracted from the shellfish that was reintroduced as small droplets to infuse the dish with the prawn’s essence. An enchanting dessert, bosque lluvioso (wet woodland), was made from black chanterelles and powdered pine needles, infused with a distillate of soil. It tasted just like the earth itself. 

Touches of theater continued till the ultimate course: a plate of madeleines, served with a lemon, cinnamon, and Earl Gray custard and delivered with a worn copy of the 1932 play Blood Marriage ceremony, by Federico García Lorca. It’s a passionate, and in the end violent, story of a bride torn between a former lover and her husband-to-be, the person her household desires her to marry. Barely gimmicky? Certain. However I leafed by way of the textual content simply as hungrily as I dug in to the dessert, moved by the spirit of drama and taste that the night had stirred.

A model of this story first appeared within the April 2025 subject of Journey + Leisure beneath the headline “The Good Earth.”