MAE Barcelona

This restaurant occupying the erstwhile Freixa Tradició features a designer-inspired interior and brings together the expertise and dreams of three friends (the name MAE is the Costa Rican Spanish word for “companion” or “colleague”): manager Mariella Rodríguez (from Costa Rica) and chefs Diego Mondragón (from Colombia) and Germán Espinosa (from Spain). The cuisine here is built around the concept of “syncretism” which can be described as the “combination of different theories, attitudes and opinions”. When applied to MAE’s cooking, this translates into a surprising fusion of ingredients from around the world showcased in dishes such as Galician clams or the legendary Tarta de Santiago paired with, for example, chilli peppers or tepache from Latin America. The à la carte is complemented by two impressive tasting menus (MAE and Gran MAE), featuring superb dishes such as “molluscs with dried cherry tomatoes, seaweed and yellow chilli peppers”.

• A three founder project that mixes Barcelona and Latin American sensibilities under a single syncretism idea.
• A menu that is explicitly built to combine products from different origins, clams and molluscs with aji amarillo and tepache being the clearest example.
• The legacy bread course, an 80 year old sourdough starter carried over from the space’s previous life at Freixa, now reframed in a new tasting context.

• 80 year old sourdough bread course, inherited from the former Freixa kitchen
• Galician clams and other molluscs
• Aji amarillo
• Tepache
• Tomato and seaweed accents that keep the menu salty and bright

A one star Barcelona restaurant built around syncretism, local cooking powered by a global pantry. Service centres on two tasting menus, MAE and Gran MAE, plus an a la carte option, with dishes that splice Spanish staples with Latin American ingredients such as aji amarillo and tepache.