About

A small room that decided to skip everything but dessert.

Sobremesa is the Catalan word for the part of a meal that has nothing to do with eating, the hour you stay at the table once the plates are gone. We named the place after it because that is the feeling we wanted to cook for.

Nuria Bastida ran the dessert pass at two Barcelona restaurants before she got tired of sending out the same three plated desserts to people who were already full. The idea for Sobremesa was simple and slightly stubborn: a room where dessert is the meal, where you arrive hungry for it, and where a course can taste of sheep cheese and olive oil without anyone calling it strange.

We opened on Carrer de Verdi in 2016 with twenty-two seats and no a la carte. That has not changed. What changes is the menu, four times a year, because a fig in September and a fig in March are not the same fig and we would rather rewrite the dish than fake it. A menu takes us a few weeks of testing, often more than thirty ideas for the six courses that survive.

How we think about a dessert

Salt and acid do most of the work. Sugar is the easy part, the part everyone can do, so we spend our time on the things that keep a sweet course from going flat halfway through: a sharp granita, a bitter edge, a savoury base that gives the sweetness something to push against. If a course makes you want the next bite rather than a glass of water, it stays.

The team

Three people, one pass.

The kitchen is small on purpose. The same hands that write the menu are the ones plating it on the night.

Nuria Bastida

Chef and founder

Trained in pastry, spent eight years on dessert and bread sections around the city, and opened Sobremesa to cook the course she cared about most. She writes the sweet half of every menu.

Adria Vendrell

Head of pairings

Builds the wine and zero-proof flights, with a soft spot for Catalan growers and low-intervention bottles. He also decides what the kitchen drinks after service, which counts for something.

Lina Whitfield

Sous-chef

Came from London for a six-week stage in 2019 and never booked the flight home. She owns the savoury, salt-and-acid side of the menu and most of the arguments about how much is too much.

Come for the last course.

Twenty-two seats fill quickly. Leave your details and we will be in touch about a date.

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