Four years later and Barcelona has, if not a ‘Little Scandinavia’, then at least an emerging scene inspired by the cold North, and it was surely only a matter of time before food became a part of that. Enter Matti Romppanen and Tero Siltanen of Routa, two enthusiastic and talented young chefs from Finland. I hope, with both hands on my heart, there are enough of us out here to sustain them, because what Barcelona really needs in order to gain the repute of gastronomic hotspots like London and New York is variety. New bistros, Catalan molecular gastronomy, even a spot of sushi, it’s all 10-a-penny these days, but something really new and exciting, now that’s a rarity.

Friday night, mid-April and we’re alone in a stark, white dining room, but the maitre’d is delightful and brings us a glass of cava over cloudberry syrup. Lovely. It is accompanied by a trio of taste teasers including a sweet, hot, shot of roast onion consommé with a flicker of caraway providing Scandinavian warmth; scrambled eggs topped with a dill cracker and a spoonful of lumpfish roe (lumpfish is a hideous Arctic creature with tasty, mild, pale peach-coloured eggs); and a vegetable croquette that would have been fairly pedestrian were it not for the bright caper purée that it came with.

A glazed veal sweetbread with beetroot risotto, a drizzle of liquorice sauce, a side of beetroot mousse and a beetroot fruit pastille was fantastic. As my friend observed, we felt like our taste buds were being woken up after a long sleep.

And then bread, because bread is important in Scandinavia where bakeries routinely offer 20 or 30 different types ranging from dense rye loaves to perky carrot buns. At Routa tonight the choice is sesame, onion or rosemary rolls, alongside an undulating dish of unsalted Normandy butter, Spanish butter with chervil and black pepper, and a gelatin sphere of arbequina olive oil in which a pansy leaf is suspended: the first proper nod to the molecular revolution.