Jordi Artal, self-taught chef and one of the founders of the Cinc Sentits restaurants
In a very difficult year for the restaurant sector, the cuisine of the restaurant Cinc Sentits in Barcelona has been awarded a second Michelin star.
Conceived as a tasting menu restaurant, the Cinc Sentits is a family business that offers contemporary Catalan cuisine made from local products and was opened in 2004 by Jordi Artal and his sister Amelia. Well-known in Barcelona for its signature cuisine, a year ago the restaurant moved from Aribau Street to larger premises in Entença Street.
The pair received their first Michelin star in 2008 and have just received their second one, an award that Jordi Artal was not really expecting; he started out as a chef almost unintentionally not so long ago, having been a gourmet foodie before becoming a professional chef.
Long before he donned his cooking gear, Artal lived in Silicon Valley where he spent 10 years in the 1990s working as a senior manager in a digital company. Every year he organized a party for Christmas, the Tapas Party, at which he joked with his friends from the sector about the idea of setting up his own restaurant in the future.
The tasting menus are the best way of experiencing the creativity of Jordi Artal, while a wide range of wines is on offer to accompany the menus. There are more than 250 types of wine, many of them from small bodegas with limited production that use forgotten and rescued varieties or native grapes and come from less well-known wine-growing areas or those not known at all by the general public.
A capital of gastronomy
Despite the fact that the restaurant sector in Catalonia is undergoing one of its worst periods ever due to the Covid-19 crisis, it boasts tremendous variety, and Barcelona, which has the most Michelin stars in Spain, is recognized by gourmets from all over the world as a leading center for gastronomy. The sector is continuously evolving, as it is reinforced by a spirit of innovation and a uniquely enterprising restaurant scene.
