Quick Bites: Nobook

UMA restaurant just moved from Sants to Eixample, and though it’s fully booked for months in advance (due to them having only a handful of tables and one service per night), their new, more casual, faster-paced dining option next door doesn’t take reservations and is aptly named Nobook. In fact, the website revels in a blaring lack of information and leaves curious diners with no choice but to come and experience the food in person. 

Dinner at Nobook is not only an explosion of flavours that bombard the taste buds, but also a full-on visual assault, as the striking orange decor matches the vibrant orange, prison-look jumpsuits worn by servers, cooks and the chef. The menu at Nobook can feel overwhelming at times due to the variety of eccentric dishes, so let your waiter guide you and don’t miss the chance to try a couple of their equally weird cocktails while you’re at it. The Pearl Jam, for example, is a laboratory flask full of gin, cucumber, apple, lime and plankton, sea blue from special tonic water, with wispy clouds of liquid nitrogen billowing out.

Of the many dishes of the night, the stand  out was definitely the incredibly tender, roasted lamb with pumpkin, crunchy plantain chips and merquén (smoked and ground Chilean chilli peppers), served on a banana leaf with green branches and a smoking hunk of red-hot charcoal. The lamb melted in my mouth and had a pleasing hint of spice. Next came a barrage of culinary creations, from fried, Cajun-spiced, crispy Soft Shell Crab Burgers and a finger-licking good riff on the classic, westernised Chinese dish General Tso’s Chicken, to Mexican tacos of cochinita pibil with crunchy pork rinds and Braised Oxtail with waffles.

Nobook has over 15 speciality cocktails and an entire page of their menu dedicated to explaining cocktail and food pairing suggestions—apparently Samosas and the Sherezade cocktail of vodka, apple, rose petals, vanilla and clove are a perfect match. Prepare to dish out a little more money than you would for a typical ‘small plate’ kind of restaurant, but the creativity and surprises in store are well worth the price. Note: I ate at Nobook just days after their opening and had some issues with several dishes (mainly in seasoning/flavour balance), but am confident that my next visit will be an even more impressive experience. 

Nobook. Provença 310. Opening times: Monday-Thursday, 6pm-11pm. Friday-Saturday, 1pm-3.30pm and 7pm-11am.