Agust
After years as a working chef, a culinary instructor at Barcelona’s prestigious Hofmann hospitality school, and a restaurant consultant, French-Moroccan Hicham Houmidide thought it was time to mount a project of his own. Trained in fine dining kitchens around Europe, chef-proprietor Houmidide, along with business partner Jean-Christophe Burgy, decided in 2015 to break down the global barriers of elegant and modern cuisine. With influences from Mexico to Japan, Agust serves food without borders—no visa required.
Upon first entering this intimate space on the popular Carrer del Parlament, you instantly appreciate the casual but refined atmosphere that the partners have strived to achieve. Upstairs is a lofted dining room, but we were happily seated on stools at a high table, practically within arm’s reach of the petite open kitchen.
The team at Agust is just as international as the food, with young chefs from Peru, China and France, among other nationalities, composing delicate dishes like ‘La Mexicana’ oyster spiked with aguachile and pico de gallo, and the smoked sardine loin with pistachio ajo blanco, beetroot, yogurt and raspberries. I love oysters and couldn’t find a fault with this briny and herbaceous first bite, and the smoked sardine was one of my favourites of the night, though the raspberries—at their peak of ripeness and laden with sweet acidity—clashed a bit with the fish and were only made more tart by the yogurt. Perhaps a touch more fat would have held these powerful berries in check.
Next came a Korean-style fried squid sandwich and a bowl of tempura-fried chunks of creamy avocado. The bocadillo de calamar with kimchi sauce was wrapped not in bread but in a steamed bun, with tender nuggets of squid slathered in a slightly spicy mayonnaise and cloaked in cilantro. This little starter checks all the boxes of a good bar snack and was an enjoyable few bites, but it was actually the tempura avocado that won the round. The taste and texture of warm, cooked avocado is always a pleasant surprise when prepared correctly, and these thick, ripe hunks had an almost meaty character that was even better when dipped in the accompanying hoisin sauce.
One dish I found very strange when reading the menu, but was happily surprised by, was the aged veal loin carpaccio with Parmesan cream and berberechos (cockles). The earthy umami of the cheese with the brine and salinity of the cockles made this one of the more intriguing beef carpaccios I have ever tried. The meat itself was shaved ultra thin and, with 21 days of dry ageing, had just enough flavour to stand out while not overshadowing the cockles, its oddly compatible partner.
Our last ‘middle course’ was a house-made terrine of foie gras with sweet and citrusy mandarin gelée, an intensely sour kumquat sauce, and some crunchy sesame tuiles as garnish. The mandarin gelée was made in the style of the classic Spanish membrillo (quince paste)—a fruit purée with pectin added to create a gelatinous and sliceable fruit paté. I’ve consumed a lot of foie gras in my life—terrines or otherwise—and I’m beginning to think that, though nearly always enjoyable, they all start to taste sort of the same. Rich and fatty liver plus sweet/acidic fruit is a winning combination, but it’s also hard for this ingredient to stand out and be remembered. The presentation and execution of Agust’s foie gras terrine was splendid and will make any foie lover happy, but it also made me ponder whether I might need a break from this popular dish.
When the main courses were delivered, a plate of 24-hour sous vide Wagyu paleron de boeuf (chuck steak)—an ‘off menu’ item—draped in snow peas and shiso leaves arrived to one side of the table, and a Thai prawn curry to the other. The beef was fork-tender (though in reality, any meat cooked gently sous vide for 24 hours would be) and truly decadent, but I do think that the unique character of the Wagyu beef was hard to distinguish after so much cooking.
The curry was not what I expected, but in the end delivered a ton of flavour. Instead of a coconut curry broth, this was a bowl of gently poached prawns with a foamy prawn-head emulsion infused with curry, kaffir lime leaf and Thai basil—a final punch to the taste buds to end the meal.
Looking back over what we ate at Agust, the recurring theme here (where the menu spans genres and continents) is without a doubt, finesse. The skill and creativity that goes into each dish is apparent at first bite. We let the kitchen surprise us with dessert, and it did not disappoint. All talking at the table ceased abruptly as a cartoonish mojito tequila mousse, infused with mint and shaped like a cactus (complete with a real terracotta pot and edible chocolate ‘soil’) arrived, ending our Agust experience with one final, odd-yet-exquisite culinary spectacle.
Open Mon-Thurs 7pm-2am, Fri-Sun 2pm-4pm and 7pm-2am.