MAE Barcelona

This restaurant, which occupies the premises of the now defunct Freixa Tradició and now featuring a designer interior, brings together the knowledge and dreams of three friends (hence the name MAE, which can be translated as ‘companion’ in the Costa Rican dialect): Mariella Rodríguez (Costa Rica, in charge of management) and chefs Diego Mondragón (Colombia) and Germán Espinosa (Spain). The whole proposal is built on a concept, Sincretismo, which according to the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy, the official institution responsible for overseeing the Spanish language) is the ‘combination of different theories, attitudes or opinions’. It is surprising to see that they combine products from very different origins, which leads us to see how Galician clams or the legendary tarta de Santiago work with, for example, Latin American chilli peppers and tepache. The menu is rounded out with two good tasting menus (MAE and Gran MAE), where we found a wonderful course called Pan (80-year-old sourdough, inherited from Freixa) and fantastic dishes, such as their molluscs, tomato and aji amarillo.

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