“Be good, won’t you?” The spokesman for Barcelona’s Hotel Palace warns before sitting in the private room of his Amar restaurant to speak to us. We stare at her. “No, that’s not for you,” he specified. “It’s up to him,” he concludes, referring to Rafa Zafra (Seville, 42 years old), who is in charge of this space, which opened in spring 2022 in Barcelona’s oldest hotel. He learned in the kitchen from elBulli, of whom he was chef. Barely 26 years old, Zafra later worked with Albert Adrià in the group El Barri and at Heart Ibiza, among others, until 2016 when he opened Estimar, a small restaurant in the Born district of Barcelona that focuses on fish and seafood. It combined respect for the products of the classic fish restaurants with a mix of sophistication and lightness that made it modern and unpredictable.
It was a success. And of course the press wanted to know who this guy was who, together with his then-wife Anna Gotanegra and her father, who from Roses Fish Market (Girona) supplied the restaurant with fresh material, revolutionized the way they ate seafood and did so without to cook. “I’ve learned to only answer what they ask me,” jokes the Sevillian. “Every time he read me in an interview, I felt like an asshole. “I’m a bit more self-controlled now, sorry,” jokes the chef, whose empire has grown so much over the past two years that it’s sometimes hard for him to list all the projects he’s involved with. “I think there’s seven restaurants, some consulting firms… more or less… I think.”
12/9/2022 – Report with Rafa Zafra, Chef of the Amar Restaurant, at the Palace Hotel in Barcelona – ©Vicens Giménez —-PEEPPHOTO—- A decorative showcase of the room with three pieces of fish by Vicens Giménez
Estimate in Barcelona and Madrid. Mar Mía at the Ocean Drive Hotel in Madrid. Jondal House in Ibiza. Feeling dizzy at the Hotel Tayko in Seville. Per Feina in the 22@ district of Barcelona. And this Amar en el Palace, which became world famous on April 27 for giving him a dinner on the eve of Bruce Springsteen’s European tour; his wife, Patti Scialfa; Steven Spielberg, Kate Capshaw, Barack and Michelle Obama. Prices range from under 20 euros for Per Feina to over 120 euros for Amar.
“This restaurant was born out of the block felt by the palace management when it came to completing the refurbishment with a new restaurant. Albert Adrià, Alain Ducasse and Dani García were proposed to take on the project. They contacted me personally, as I don’t even have an email address, and we agreed in no time and with a handshake,” he explains to Zafra. “There has been a paradigm shift in the last 15 years when it comes to gastronomy in hotels. The property has already informed us that it does not wish good food. I agree that hotels are no longer looking for Michelin stars for their restaurants, but are instead focusing on offering them concepts related to the hotel and the city it is in. Fismuler do that very well.”
12/9/2022 – Report with Rafa Zafra, Chef of the Amar Restaurant, at the Palace Hotel in Barcelona – ©Vicens Giménez —-PIEFOTO—- ; Teardrop peas, cod tripe, sea urchin and truffle.Vicens Giménez
12/9/2022 – Report with Rafa Zafra, chef of the Amar restaurant, at the Palace Hotel in Barcelona – ©Vicens Giménez —-PIEFOTO—- Sea urchin with shrimp tartare and caviar. Vicens Gimenez
Amar is a kind of transformation of the contemporary spirit of Estimar into the Catalan bourgeois soul, so practical in some things and so eccentric in others, permeating the walls of the palace and the part of the Eixample in which it is located. Xavier Cugat, who stayed at this hotel, would certainly be a fan. “I’ve written many letters in my life and I love writing them, but none have been as enjoyable as this one,” Zafra interjects and relates refers to a letter structured more like a short novel than a typical menu. It’s a fabulous read that’s intellectually enjoyable. It’s the restaurant equivalent of real estate porn. If there was a Pulitzer or a Nadal in restaurant menus, he would take them. “I can assure you that I see it and think, ‘What a letter we left here.’ Dani García recently told me that he had never seen a specimen as beautiful as this one in his life. There are seven different cards in one: love the aperitif, love the classics, love caviar, love and mountains…”.
12/9/2022 – Report with Rafa Zafra, Chef of the Amar Restaurant, at the Palace Hotel in Barcelona – ©Vicens Giménez —-PIEFOTO—- The Amar Restaurant. Vicens Gimenez
The restaurants of Zafra, a chef who affirms that at this moment in his life he prefers to cook to the minimum, stand out above all for his ability to compose menus whose creativity is not so much in the composition of the dishes he proposes , but more in the way they all form an original, personal and attractive set. “For Jondal in Ibiza he wanted a good, good beach bar. I did a poll of 20 friends and asked them what they would like to eat when they go to a beach bar. From what they said almost everything came together, you know, squid, anchovies, shrimp, I removed the squid and tuna because I don’t like working with them and because I’m the boss [ríe]. And I just presented them in different ways: fried, raw, grilled… and with different sauces. Now we ship 60 pieces of fish a day and I don’t know how many kilos of shrimp,” he recalls. In the case of Per Feina, his commitment to valorize the concept of the menu of the day in the Poble Nou district of Barcelona, he opted for 12 starters and 12 seconds of classic cuisine for 18 euros. “How much does bread with butter and caviar cost in our restaurants? The idea was to offer a complete, simple and rich menu for the price of a refined dish.” The Andalusian hopes that the whole army of digital nomads and young leaders from half the world eating sandwiches in the area’s parks will discover what the Escudella, the Manchego Ratatouille or the Cap i Pota.
12/9/2022 – Report with Rafa Zafra, Chef of the Amar Restaurant, at the Palace Hotel in Barcelona – ©Vicens Giménez —-PIEFOTO—- Rafa Zafra photographed in his Amar Restaurant, at the Palace Hotel in Barcelona. Vicens Gimenez
The Sevillian’s next destination is a meat-themed space in Madrid, where chef Alberto Pacheco and sommelier Juanma Galán will be his partners. “Meat restaurants in Spain are the typical more or less modern steakhouse, the Argentinian grill or the traditional Spanish grill. I want a translation of the universe to love the world of flesh. For Zafra, these projects are more than an economic or selfish goal, but a way to keep your team, give them opportunities to grow, face new challenges and even be a partner in their new adventures. “Look, I went into the office the other day and there were six people. Six in the office, a lot. I think we now have almost 300 employees. And a biologist! We hired a biologist to help us with the seasonality and gender of the pieces… It’s giving us a little dizziness. At New Year’s Eve dinner 2022 I went to Albert Adrià’s house and he told me that my glory years were coming. I don’t know, I’m not as creative a person as he or Ferran, from whom I not only learned cooking but also management. Thanks to him and a zeal for the statistics I copied from him, I discovered that 60% of Madrid’s clients were in Estimar and I decided to open the company in Madrid in the middle of the process, leaving the name in Catalan. I insist that I am not creative. I have the ability to reflect and analyze. And you can get a lot of new things from there.”
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits