The art of living well: fine dining in Girona

Edurnyx is a content creator with 3.1 million followers on TikTok and more than 700,000 on Instagram. This influencer has specialised in an increasingly fashionable niche: culinary travel. That is why, if you browse her social profiles, you will find countless TikToks in which she sets about tasting the delights that Girona’s restaurants have to offer.

More and more people, like Edurnyx, want to stop being run-of-the-mill tourists and start enjoying great experiences on their trips. And gastronomy is an essential part of that: it helps you get to know other cultures and experience at first hand the real life of the places you visit.

That must be why we are so fascinated by infinite scrolling while the algorithm shows us more and more videos of strangers recommending restaurants and filming themselves eating all manner of food on their travels.

In fact, foodies — the name that lifelong gourmets now give themselves — have created a new fashion that is spreading en masse through every eatery in the world: photographing the dishes they are about to eat.

Watching Edurnyx’s videos, you might conclude that her social media posts are acts of ostentation. But, as Arthur Schopenhauer rightly observed in his essay The Art of Living Well, a human being’s greatest wealth lies in their own sensibility and in what they are, not in what they own or represent in the eyes of others.

On that premise, travelling to Girona to eat — just as Edurnyx does fairly often — is not an act of ostentation, but a very refined way of cultivating the spirit.

True luxury on this side of the Mediterranean is neither displayed nor flaunted; it is experienced intimately, as you savour the refined dishes served in Girona’s starred restaurants.

Before you embark on this incredible culinary experience, you should know that the province of Girona has become a gourmet microcosm of the first order worldwide. Not only because of the sheer number of “starred” restaurants (Michelin-starred, that is), but also because Girona has become the land of slow travel. And that means, quite simply, travelling without rushing.

In this article we explain how things like valuing disconnection, living in the present and understanding luxury as authenticity — rather than as ostentation — are all part of the art of living well.

The olympus of haute cuisine: the Michelin-starred restaurants in Girona

The province of Girona is considered — as well as the mecca of golf tourism — one of the areas with the highest density of “starred” establishments. And that is no coincidence. In this part of the Iberian Peninsula, where the Mediterranean Sea and the Pyrenees converge, there is a virtuous combination of exceptional raw ingredients and overflowing culinary creativity.

Visiting Girona is, essentially, setting out on a gourmet pilgrimage, immersing yourself in a whirlwind of top-level sensations.

El Celler de Can Roca, the living legend

“El Celler de Can Roca is a gastronomic temple of innovation and creativity,” says Roger Villaplanas, a food critic who has been a direct witness to the evolution of this celebrated restaurant.

“If your palate is not used to new flavours and textures, if you are not going to let yourself be carried away by an explosion of sensations, if you do not like surprises every time they place a new dish on your table, you had better not come, because the magic of this place lies precisely in the sensory impact of the menu.”

What began as a family business serving traditional food in a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Girona has been transformed into a living myth in which the very finest produce, signature cooking and the most uncompromising culinary avant-garde all come together.

“You don’t come to El Celler de Can Roca to eat, you come to taste dreams made real,” explains Luis González de Haro, a Madrid lawyer who booked his table eleven months in advance to enjoy the Menú Festival experience (which consists of 15 appetisers and 16 main courses).

Getting a table can become mission impossible, since bookings open at midnight on the 1st of each month and within 5 minutes every available table is gone. This means that visiting El Celler de Can Roca requires organising your trip well in advance.

In fact, if on your trip to Girona — whether to play golf at Camiral or simply to rest in one of its luxury hotels — you are planning to eat at this restaurant, it is essential to arrange your booking at least eleven months ahead. But do not worry: at Girona Tours we can make things easier by organising an unforgettable gastronomic experience for you.

A curious fact: this legendary establishment, one of the best restaurants in the world, holds three Michelin stars and a green star for its commitment to sustainability.

If you want to open your mind to new flavours, savour emotions with every mouthful and let yourself be carried away by textures that defy gravity, start organising your diary now, because for that alone Girona is worth visiting.

More Michelin stars in Girona than fish in the sea

Although El Celler de Can Roca takes the attention of the major media, all the food experts agree that in Girona there is a whole world to discover of Michelin-starred restaurants that tend to go rather more unnoticed.

Girona has a great variety of establishments worth visiting on a stay of several days, although many of them go unnoticed because the brilliance of El Celler de Can Roca takes some of the limelight away from them.

Here we want to highlight some of the “starred” restaurants that have been dazzled and hidden by the enormous glow given off by El Celler de Can Roca:

• Restaurant Miramar: perfectly integrated into the rugged setting of Cap de Creus. At Miramar, chef Paco Pérez offers a tasting menu that is a pure immersion into the soul of the Mediterranean. Here, native shellfish and rock fish take centre stage in signature dishes that are pure poetry.
• Restaurant Les Cols: housed in a seventeenth-century farmhouse in the Garrotxa region, this restaurant — run by chef Fina Puigdevall — is characterised by a minimalist proposal based on local produce (buckwheat, Santa Pau beans or the treasures of its own organic vegetable garden) that has earned it two Michelin stars entirely on merit.
• Restaurant Bo.tic: this restaurant is set in an old carriage workshop in the heart of the Baix Empordà. Albert Sastregener and Cristina Torrent have put together a signature menu rooted in their Catalan origins, but executed with the avant-garde style typical of this kind of restaurant. Do not miss its wine cellar, with more than 400 references to delight wine lovers.
• Restaurant Massana: in the centre of Girona you have to visit the enduring classic, if what you want is elegant, timeless signature cooking, with standout dishes such as foie gras, game and the typical rice dishes of Girona.
• Restaurant Divinum: if you are not sure where to eat in Girona, you can wander around and find plenty of charming places. But if you want a sure thing, of proven quality, with a Michelin star, the best option may be Divinum in Girona. Only they know how to fuse local produce with theatrical staging of the highest order.

Girona’s natural larder of local produce

Although so far we have been showing you the most avant-garde proposals among Girona’s restaurants, you should be clear that the gastronomic excellence of Girona’s cooking is not achieved solely in laboratories of culinary experimentation.

The key to Girona’s restaurants shining in their own right lies in an element that is unrepeatable and can occur nowhere else. We are referring to the fields bathed by the tramuntana, to the volcanic vegetable gardens caressed by sea salt and to the abrupt canyons that make up its underwater coastline (home to the most exquisite products the sea can offer).

Following Schopenhauer’s theory as set out in The Art of Living Well, a human being’s greatest wealth lies in their own capacity to perceive and delight in the purity of what surrounds them. In Girona the produce does not travel: it belongs to the land. Thanks to that, Girona’s cooking has reached the very highest levels of quality.

For that reason, the time has come to delve into the most exclusive raw ingredients. Only by understanding what these authentic works of natural art are like — turned into exquisite mouthfuls thanks to the creativity of these alchemists of the stove — is it possible to better understand the essence of Girona’s gastronomy.

The Palamós red prawn, the treasure hidden beneath the waters of the Costa Brava

If you are keen on active tourism and premium sports, we recommend you go diving in the crystal-clear waters off the Girona coast. That way you will be able to see the place where a unique, unrivalled delicacy grows in the wild: the Palamós red prawn commands reverence in any dish that reaches the table.

In fact, the unanimous recognition among the great international chefs for the Palamós red prawn is explained not only by its organoleptic qualities — a firm texture and a perfect balance between salinity and subtle sweetness — but also by the respectful, artisanal techniques of controlled trawling.

It is no accident: the red prawn grows in marine caverns more than 600 metres deep. And it shows, since the absence of light, together with the nutrients it takes on, mean that this prawn produces unforgettable emotions in the diner, ones that stay with you over time.

Eating one of its heads, just one, grilled, with the barest touch of heat and seasoned with a few grains of coarse salt, is part of the ritual in the great restaurants of the province.

The produce of the interior

If the sea dominates the gastronomy of the coast, as you move inland in the province of Girona the landscape changes and the cooking mirrors its surroundings to offer unique products.

If you go on a hiking route — in the Garrotxa region, for example — you will come across soil of volcanic origin, extremely fertile, porous and packed with minerals and nutrients. Thanks to this very particular soil composition, we can find products as excellent as:

• Garrotxa black truffle: gathered in Girona’s woodlands during the winter with the help of trained dogs, its intoxicating aroma lends enormous personality to game dishes, to free-range eggs and to the sophisticated creations of the area’s “starred” restaurants.
• Santa Pau beans: grown directly in ancient craters, these tiny pulses stand out for their fine skin, their creamy texture on the palate and their extremely delicate flavour. These beans have become the basis of the celebrated “volcanic cuisine”.
• Girona apples: covered by their own PGI, these apples are crisp, juicy and very balanced (neither too sharp nor too sweet), thanks to the warm breezes that blow across the Empordà, together with a steady, temperate climate all year round.

And if you fancy contemplating this region from another perspective, from a bird’s-eye view, we can organise a balloon flight over the Garrotxa for you, ending the aerial journey by tasting some of these products.

Liquid gold with a designation of origin: Empordà olive oil

To speak of delicatessen products and not mention a liquid elixir such as Empordà extra virgin olive oil would be a crime.

This is an oil made from native olive varieties such as argudell and corivell. These centuries-old olive trees produce an oil of great character, with herbal notes of artichoke and green almond, keeping a restrained peppery kick and a minimal bitterness at the back of the throat that give it its characteristic touch of elegance.

“I usually buy this oil at the Harrods food hall,” says Jordi Planas, CMO at a London multinational, born in the Empordà, “which is the only place in London where I can find it. And you can imagine the price… That is why, whenever I go back to my homeland, I fill my suitcase with as many bottles as I can fit in my luggage. This oil is unmistakable. It reminds me strongly of home and makes me feel a little closer to my own people.”

Slow travel in Girona: eat, feel and connect

At Girona Tours we believe in a different way of travelling. We specialise in premium trips, and our know-how tells us that people no longer enjoy hurriedly amassing images snatched on the run, or rushing past monuments, or collecting receipts from fashionable restaurants (to feed their ego by posting pictures of them on Instagram).

Instead, our clients want to enjoy the new luxury, which is essentially nothing more than a conscious conquest of time. They believe, as Arthur Schopenhauer said in his essay The Art of Living Well, that only the present moment is real and constitutes the only possession a person holds with absolute certainty.

If you no longer want to be a tourist and your goal is to become a “wise traveller”, what you have to do when you travel is inhabit the “now” with calm and presence.

By this we do not mean you have to start meditating — or doing yoga — before every excursion. If you want to, you can. In fact, we know some wonderful places in Girona to enjoy that kind of experience. But the idea is that you immerse yourself in slow travel. Think of it as an invitation to slow the pace of your trip and enjoy what really matters.

Because going to eat at a gastronomic temple in Girona is doubly enjoyable when you do it calmly, savouring every dish, without rushing, without obsessing over photographing every plate they serve you. The key is to savour the food while you delight in each conversation, in the atmosphere you breathe, in the peaceful energy these places give off.

Our aim is for you to connect more authentically with the surroundings, with people and with flavours, so as to be transformed in an intimate way. Only then — eating in spectacular places or savouring, for example, a cocktail on one of the best rooftops in Girona — will you feel you are truly living in a better way.

A visit to the Mercat del Lleó

One of the unmissable routes for slow travel in Girona is based on taking the city’s morning pulse. And there is no better way of doing so than by witnessing at first hand how the heart of Girona starts beating each morning. That is why we want to take you on a visit to Girona’s fresh produce market.

However, we recommend doing it differently from the way conventional tourists do. Immerse yourself in the bustle of the aisles first thing in the morning, when the market is full of local characters. The homemakers doing their shopping, the chefs who come looking for the best produce, the stallholders who set out their counters with care and attention, and so on.

And if you can do this walk accompanied by one of our experts, you will manage to decipher the workings of the Mercat del Lleó even better. With their help, you will learn to spot the secrets of a rock fish’s freshness (by the shine of its eyes), or to choose the vegetables that have just been harvested in the market gardens of the river Ter, or to talk with traditional butchers who will show you, for example, the subtleties of curing the prized espetec.

That way, you will turn the shopping experience into a cultural and sensory dialogue, where each ingredient chosen has a story, a name and a producer behind it.

Rural immersion in inland Girona

We also propose another slow travel route, beyond the city limits.

If you let our experts guide you, we will take you to the plains of the Empordà or to the hidden valleys of the Garrotxa, so you can discover the farm-to-table concept:

• Private visits to seventeenth-century farmhouses: old stone manor houses where craft work is still carried out in the same way as centuries ago. There you will be able to see for yourself how artisan cheeses are made, and then sit down to taste these products with a loaf of country bread, in the shade of a vine, on a Gothic-style porch.
• Signature wineries: visiting a winery with the winemaker themselves notably improves any wine tourism experience, since it lets you connect far more with the story behind the vineyards, with all that hidden heritage of vines that have been facing the tramuntana for more than a century. The winemaker will explain to you at first hand how respect for the soil’s biodiversity has a decisive influence on the personality of each bottle. There is no rush, there are no large groups; only silence, a glass of grenache and an unhurried conversation about wine and culture. That is slow travel.

These are just a few examples to help you understand that gastronomy is better enjoyed from a place of stillness. To connect more deeply and, in short, to live well, we will accompany you in this exercise in mindfulness that raises the diner’s perception by several degrees and gives incalculable value to every dish served at the table.

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