Esperit Roca is the brand new project from the Roca brothers – the Spanish trio behind the legendary El Celler de Can Roca in Girona
Not only have they won three Michelin stars with El Celler and twice placed as the No.1 restaurant on the World’s 50 Best list, they’ve somehow found the time to open a bunch of other projects over the years – an ice cream shop, a boutique hotel called Casa Cacao, and Restaurant Normal to name a few.
Summer 2024 saw the launch of their biggest project yet; a new countryside hotel and restaurant located just north of Girona atop the St Julia mountain. Here there’s a 15 bedroom hotel, an exhibition space, a distillery, and a brand new restaurant, which gives you some idea that this is not just some small side project.
We checked in for a two-night stay soon after they launched. The hotel itself is very peaceful, with lots of space given the small number of rooms, and some incredible panoramic views over the surrounding countryside. Esperit Roca is actually on the site of an old 19th century fortress and you can see why it was chosen for such a purpose – you can see for miles around in every direction.
The hotel design is part-James Bond lair, part-Hollywood Hills mansion, with a sweeping concrete roof that hides behind an old stone fortress wall. Here you’ll find the bedrooms, each of which has its own private balcony as well as living area, big comfy bed and bathrooms with freestanding tubs. All the rooms open out on to a private garden that features an L-shaped swimming pool and plenty of sun loungers. Back inside, there’s lots of cool modern spaces with relaxing sofas, big piles of coffee table books (including many of the Rocas’ own cookbooks) as well as a small restaurant and bar that’s for hotel guests only.
On our first night though we opted to walk five minutes down the road to a brand new cider bar that we’d found by chance through Instagram (whatever you think of that app, it has it’s uses). Called Sacre Bar, it’s open-air bar with incredible views and a fridge packed full of local craft cider from Serps. There was great food too and we happily spent the evening sipping cider and looking out across the valley. Highly recommended.
The next day, we had lunch at the main Esperit Roca restaurant – this one is open to the public and is much bigger than the hotel restaurant. The menu features key signature dishes from the nearly four decades of El Celler de Can Roca, acting like a sort of greatest hits repertoire. The restaurant is unique however in offering two tasting menus – one which has a quite normal six savoury courses and two desserts; and the other that flips that on its head and offers just two savoury and then six desserts. This is definitely the domain of magician/pastry chef Jordi Roca, who you may recognise from his Chef’s Table episode.
We did play it safe with the regular 6/2 menu however, and loved all the dishes, including the ‘All the Prawn’ – Palamos red prawn marinated in seaweed vinegar and katsuobushi, prawn velouté, prawn head sauce, crispy prawn legs, citrus caviar and prawn coral distillate concentrate; and the langoustine with sagebrush, vanilla oil and toasted butter. The Poularde brioche with foie gras, seasonal truffle, poularde parfait and fresh herb sauce, one of El Celler’s most famous dishes, was also excellent.
If you’ve never managed to make it to El Celler, Esperit Roca is a great way to get a taste of the Rocas’ food (and is currently much easier to get in to). We ate at El Celler a couple of nights later and actually on balance enjoyed Esperit Roca more.
Esperit Roca is a very special place and well worth considering as a special trip or an addition to a Barcelona weekend (there’s an easy and quick train that runs between Barca and Girona all the time). You could just go by for the restaurant if that’s what you were most interested in but we can definitely recommend checking in for the full hotel experience too – who wouldn’t want a Roca brothers breakfast after all?
Carrer Major, Entrada 1, 17481 Sant Julià de Ramis, Girona, Spain
esperitroca.com