Barcelona restaurant Moments launches Dalí-inspired surrealist tasting menu

To mark the 50th anniversary of Salvador Dalí's illustrated cookbook "Les dîners de Gala" (1973), the restaurant Moments at the Mandarin Oriental in Barcelona has created a tasting menu inspired by the artist's surrealist recipes. The menu was devised by acclaimed chef Carme Ruscalleda and her son Raül Balam. Priced at €215 per person, the thematic journey begins with surprise mussels and stuffed potatoes "à la charcuterie," paying homage to historic French restaurants that influenced Dalí, such as La Tour d'Argent and Maxim's. The menu continues with quail eggs with caviar, truffled chicken soup, and stuffed pigeon cabbage with Alexandre Dumas salad. The aesthetic also evokes Dalí's surrealist genius, including edible mustaches that complete the dessert. The cookbook, originally published by Felicie in New York, contains 136 recipes divided into 12 chapters, with comments and suggestions from Dalí, who believed "the jaw is the best tool for philosophical knowledge." The recipes range from thousand-year eggs to veal cutlets stuffed with snails, frog pâté, and pine cone candies. The illustrations in the book come from a series of lithographs published by Draeger and Bellini in 1971, which were later included in the cookbook. A complementary text, "Los vinos de Gala," was published in 1977. Dalí, who as a child claimed he wanted to become a chef, dedicated the work to the pleasures of taste, rejecting dietetic recipes.