“Cooking here is like being on a boat,” chef Jerome Quilbeuf jokes. He’s not wrong. The tiny kitchen at Gracia, Quilbeuf’s pocket-sized restaurant that opened late last month, would be considered tight anywhere, even on a yacht.
There’s nothing unusual about chefs in Japan operating in kitchens the size of closets. Indeed, Tokyo has a whole parallel universe of tiny counter restaurants, ranging from sushi to kappō (traditional Japanese cuisine) and elegant "dining bars” serving French, Italian and other cuisines.
Now add Gracia to that number. In homage to Catalonia, the region he called home until moving here, Quilbeuf terms his new restaurant a “gastrobar” — serving the kind of casual fine dining embraced in Barcelona, especially in its upmarket Gracia district. This is the perfect showcase for his pedigree.