EL CELLER DE CAN ROCA (Rest.)

*****
El Celler de Can Roca is an hour back towards Barcelona in a quiet residential suburb of Girona. It's an unlikely place to find the fifth best restaurant in the world. Run by the three Roca Brothers it is in a fine contemporary triangular space of light, glass and wood with a wide light well filled a small grove of trees as its centre. It is the smartest dining space of the top five, which isn't saying much given the cramped English cottage of The Fat Duck, the kitsch of El Bulli and rugged warehouse feel of Copenhagen's Noma.

Can Roca has however always struck meas whiffing slightly of pretension with little brother Jordi famed for making desserts modeled of famous perfumes and big brother Joan distilling the flavour of autumnal earth to use in dishes! Strangely once there however it turns out to be the most conventional of the five. It's as if mum, who still runs the Roca family's traditional place up the road, has ambled down and delivered a few swifts clips with a wooden spoon across the thighs to knock some sense into her boys. Not that there is anything mundane about charcoal grilled candied eggplant as a dessert, or a sealed omelette unexpectedly gushing a smoky Herring caviar-spotted cream when burst.

After snacks like black sesame crackers or wonderful candy-crusted black olives madeusing - shock horror - real olives, the 11 course menu at Can Roca delivers the most compelling “lick-the-plate” moments of the trip for the woman I love. Whether it's a slice of sole or an amazingly life-like apricot that actually turns out to be a sugar ball filled with apricot ice cream, this is food that delivers the essence of these flavours as well as maintaining the integrity of the produce it aims to represent. The fish is especially fine, partnered by five splotches of restrained gel-like purees of green olive, fennel, orange, bergamot and pine nut. Each subtly changed the perceive flavour of the fish without overwhelming it.

The woman I Iove is in heaven. She also remarks that visiting the kitchens here you see real food breads coming out of the oven, sausages of goose meat being sliced something that she missed at El Bulli.

Can Roca is also home to the most consistently impressive wine and food matches thanks to middle brother Josep's encyclopedic cellar. These start with an 2005 Fleurie paired with a similarly cherry-stained almond gazpacho floating with delicate flanks of salmon-pink eel. Reds from the revered Priorat region west of Barcelona provide a crescendo paired with a goose sausage and again with the most spectacular idea of crispy and slightly fatty lamb skin sandwiching cubes of bread soaked with the sweet tang of ripe tomato.This play on the Catalans' traditional love of bread rubbed with tomato is one of my OMG moments.

Two Catalan places and now - after a short flurry of tapas, Picasso and Gaudi in Barcelona - we fly north to Euskadia and the almost grand English seaside town of Donostia - San Sebastian. Here Basque chefs like Juan Mari Arzak and Pedro Subijana birthed modern Spanish cookery and for the last ten years Andoni Adurizhas plied his trade in a converted farmhouse in the hills above city as the standard bearer of a new generation.