Miramar de Paco Pérez

What began more than seven decades ago as a beach bar is today a true temple of gastronomy. Miramar (Llançà, Girona) is not just the epicentre of a culinary empire that has amassed five Michelin stars… It is also the restaurant where Paco Pérez masterfully combines Memory, Surroundings and the Avant-garde, putting them at the service of flavour through a torrent of creativity.

Montagud publishes Miramar. Paco Pérez. Across its 320 pages, the chef from the Empordà examines which of his creations have been the most significant over decades of work. The book also documents — step by step — the most important techniques used to execute all these dishes, as well as the sources of inspiration the chef has drawn on to create them.

“The path of the avant-garde is a hard one because it isn’t commercial. And also because of all the avenues you have to exhaust before reaching the one that ends up on the plate. There are plenty of ideas, of course. Whether they work is another matter. They all have their own world of fantasy. Carrying it successfully over into the Miramar universe is the hard part. The best weapon for making that migration into the real reach a safe harbour still lies in each person’s head. It is about thinking of food. Paco and his team do it constantly, almost every day of the year. They all think and think about food. In the way a small child does: trying to do things in the simplest, most enjoyable way possible.”

Javi Antoja de la Rosa

Invernadero | Greenhouse

We approached this dish with the idea of recreating everything that can be hidden beneath a greenhouse. Under the delicate dome hide strawberries, jellies, emulsions, ice crystals, flowers…

As well as his most important creations, techniques and sources of inspiration, the book captures the chef’s culinary philosophy and unpicks everything that stirs in his head – and his heart – when he cooks. The ultimate aspiration is the diner’s enjoyment, through pure, sparkling flavours drawn from the Llançà that watched him grow up or from any corner of the world that has given him something. All of it with the avant-garde as a way of life. “At Miramar we only want to create gastronomy as we understand it,” says the chef. His new book with Montagud is a faithful reflection of all this too.

“The winds of the place where Paco Pérez was born do not blow over the Mediterranean, but over the Atlantic. Yet all his creative whirlwind breaks free and blows hard, very hard, in Llançà. That is where Miramar is. It is from there that all his overwhelming cooking comes. Energy, profusion and the avant-garde at hundreds of kilometres per hour. Constant reinventions while everything around remains sharp and intense. An erosive force that, with the passing of the years, transforms places through nothing but meticulous work and obsessive perfectionism. It does not matter whether it tastes of deep tradition or of sparkling street food from the other side of the world. Or whether it has a pure, delicate form or the sharp edges of something from another galaxy. Paco Pérez’s dishes come from a setting and reflect its consequences. Paco Pérez’s dishes are Paco Pérez and his circumstances.”

Lúa Monasterio

The chef from the Empordà holds five Michelin stars across all the establishments he leads, among them Enoteca (Hotel Arts, Barcelona) and Cinco (Hotel Das Stue, Berlin). Two of them belong to the Llançà restaurant. Miramar.