There was only the smallest of gaps between the snacks finishing and the menu food starting. The first dish is brought to the table as a bowl covered by a glass dome like lid and inside, you can see only the outline of food given a haze of smoke waiting to escape.

The food itself is Escalivada which is a typical Catalan dish of grilled vegetables. The vegetables in question here are eggplant, pepper, onion and tomato, presented in this instance with anchovies and 'smoke of ember' (Escalivada itself means to cook in hot ashes). Traditionally, the vegetables would be sliced after the grill and served with meat but here they come as complete parcels of flavour.

When the lid is lifted, the smoke hits you giving you a big aromatic hit of the smoke from the grill. The consomee is pepper like but viscous rather than thin as its appearance might suggest while the vegetables themselves burst flavours in the mouth. We debate whether they used a spherification process of sorts to bundle the essence inside a skin. We're not sure, we don't think so but there's a lot more than just grilled vegetables going on here.

At this point we remain the only diners in the restaurant which feels a little strange. People start to arrive shortly after and the place does fill up with a mix of young to middle aged people, all with a very casual sense of dress (Marcus Wareing would not have approved) leaving us feeling quite smartly attired. Had it not been for some local politicos in suits, we might have even been the smartest people there. 

The paired wines are now also being served and we're feeling relaxed, happy but also excited. The quality so far has been exceptional and we're intrigued with what's to come.

Artichoke, foie gras, orange and truffled oil follow. The foie gras is a foie gras cream that can be seen filling the bowl in the picture below. It's not fully liquid, more mousse like in texture. The confit artichoke married remarkably well with the foie gras and we were surprised and delighted at how well this dish came together. 

Charcoal grilled king prawn with acidulated mushroom juice (with ginger and citrus) followed. We've so often said that prawn dishes are 'samey' with chefs struggling to do anything different with prawns beyond the grill but this was very different indeed. While the prawn physically dominates the bowl, it is the mushroom, ginger and citrus that provide real punch to the flavours (together with the smoking) providing something more than just a well cooked prawn. Again, lots of earthy flavours here which has been something of a theme going through the food so far. 

Our overall verdict of the king prawn was 'phenomenal'. As well as the flavours and textures, the dish had great 'length' with the flavours staying in the mouth long after swallowing. The ginger and citrus too wouldn't always hit immediately with each mouthful but would often kick in later in the tasting allowing the dish to evolve in the mouth.  

Our next dish is an onion soup with Crespia walnuts and Comte cheese. The plate as it arrives at the table is already a work of art. The onion soup is dark and intense at the base of the bowl with a treacle like texture, augmented with wisps of greens and walnuts. The Comte cheese is poured on top at the table. The nuts add more to texture than flavour but the flavours from the onion and cheese are intense and the length of the dish is again impressive. We're thinking that this could be our favourite dish so far.

What arrives next is yet another visual masterpiece, in some ways simple but utterly brilliant. Described as sole, olive oil and Mediterranean flavours, we're not sure what to expect but are blown away when it arrives. On a rectangular piece of marble, a sole fillet lines up parallel with one side with five emulsions smeared perpendicular to the length of the fillet. The five emulsion flavours are fennel, bergamot, orange, pine nuts and green olives; our waiter describes this combination as the Mediterranean light. We're advised to start with the fennel and work our way to the top.

The dish tasted as good as it looked. The emulsions were beautiful and with the fish of course perfectly cooked (over charcoal), what a delight this was. It's so memorable as a dish because it looks so stunning. A simple idea yet brilliant. And with the five emulsions, the flavour profile changes as you progress through the dish; genius. At the end of each emulsion smear is the smallest portion of the physical of what the emulsion is. On the olive emulsion however, it clearly wasn't a real olive and we assumed it was a was a spherification, it wasn't, rather, it was a crystalline candy casing with olive oil inside; stunning.

We're making good progress through the meal now, aware that we have had plenty of food but not obscenely full that hinders are our enjoyment of the prospect of more food to come. The environment continues to feel tranquil despite the fact that the restaurant is now mostly full. The trees are dropping their leaves on the ground and casting long shadows by the now low winter sun leaving us with a feeling of utter contentment as we await the remainder of the meal.

Baby squids with onion rocks follows (mixed with squid ink, potatoes and seaweed). Following our initial tastings of this dish, we both felt that this was our least favourite dish of the day thus far. As we progressed through, we both warmed to it more though given the brilliance of everything we had eaten, this was not not one we'll remember. I guess it just didn't offer the surprise or wow factor that almost every other dish so far had. We thought that our squid at Rafa's had been better (that was after all the best squid ever) but here the dish overall lacked the depth of flavour that we had up till now experienced on each and every plate. 

Red mullet stuffed with liver and served with suquet (Catalan seafood stew), potato gnocchi and lard followed. This was a fish that let you know it was a fish, tail still on and a pale texture to the flesh. We surmised that the fish was cooked sous vide given the transparent quality of the meat.

The lard meanwhile can be seen as a sheen on the soup. This dish took us right back to the deep flavour zone with not only the fish elements but the gnocchi too. This dish heaped with plenty of flavour worked amazingly well but in the kitchen of less skilled practitioners could have gone horribly wrong. 

Billed as steak tartare with mustard ice cream, we wondered what one of the world's best restaurant would make of a classic steak tartare dish: the answer is, something special. The menu we later received listed the full additions: spiced tomato, caper compote, pickles and lemon, hazelnut praline, meat bearnaise sauce, Oloroso-sherry raisin, chives, Sichuan pepper, Pimenton de La Vera (D.O.) smoked paprika and curry, small scoops of mustard ice cream and mustard leaves.

The result was again nothing short of phenomenal. You're advised to start with the chive and work down, and of course, as you do progress down the length of the tartare, the ingredients (and so flavours) change with every bite. By the end, you're hardly eating the same food you started. None of the flavours overpowered any other and the dish was balanced despite the range of contributory ingredients. We were both blown away.

The last of the savoury dishes was lamb with sweet potato and tangerine. The first thing you notice is how aromatic the dish is, something that had been true of almost all the dishes that day. Then, you cut into the lamb and see how easy it pulls apart to reveal the succulent meat inside. It looked and had the texture of confit lamb though were sure the cooking process was considerably more complicated than that and we commented at the time that this might have been the best lab we had ever tasted. We had already seen that we didn't need a knife to cut this and you hardly needed to chew it either, rather, just let it dissolve on your mouth. With the reduced lamb jus, this was again exemplary. The lamb crackling though didn't really work with more chew than crack but this little mattered when the lamb itself was such a masterpiece.

Having blown us away with the savouries, we wondered what the sweets would bring; the menu description 'Green colourology' offered few clues. This though was more of a pre-dessert, a little palate cleanser: avocado, Chartreuse candy and eucalyptus ice cream together with mint, basil and some green apple. Texture too: there's soft, crunchy and chewy all there and once again, hugely aromas. It did the job exceedingly well and shamed the mango-passion fruit juice cleanser we had been served at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay a few days earlier.

Penultimate dish, we have 'lemon skin-distillate sorbet' with lemon cake, lemon cream and milk ice. The milk ice was reminiscent of coconut sponge at El Bulli which there, counted as a course in its own right, and had the texture of snow, disappearing in the mouth to nothing. The lemon components offered interesting takes on multiple expressions of lemon and was as fresh and light as it sounds in description. 

The final dessert was also totally amazing being a vanilla reconstruction. In the picture below, you can see in the distance concentrated vanilla ice cream on vanilla cake. The idea of the combined ingredients in the foreground was to create the same taste without using vanilla. It's analogous to colour composition and the idea that red + green = yellow, so too does the kitchen work off flavour maps. Here we have caramel, cocoa, liquorice and black olive to equal the taste of vanilla. A genius dessert and possibly the plate of the year we thought.

Following the dessert, we retired to the lounge on the third edge of the triangle for petits four and whisky. Their after dinner drink range is impressive as is the bar itself, showcasing a floor to ceiling glass wall of bottles. We've rarely seen a bar this well stocked of whisky since i) home and ii) Scotland. They even had Glenfarclas 1992 and 1994 family casks at reasonable prices which we've rarely seen out and about. A truly comfortable way to end the meal. 

This was by any standard a truly great meal. There was no plate that failed to work. These were dishes that really engaged. The presentation of the food throughout was undoubtedly art, with the vanilla dessert perhaps a Jackson Pollock. There was almost always intense aroma too. On taste, the depth of flavour was astounding as was the length of taste, while the conception of most of the food was highly original. What's not to like?

What's more, they continue to have an a la carte menu and so thrilled were we by what we had eaten on the tasting menu that our immediate reflection was to desire all the things that were not. El Bulli was a fantastic and challenging meal but we would not want to eat it or there more than once a year, it's a food marathon. Can Roca offers a composed meal with the natural order of start to finish, light to heavy giving you something you can relate to while giving you food experiences that are totally original. We felt that we could eat the weekly and not get bored.   

In the San Pellegrino list, El Celler de Can Roca moved up from fifth in 2009 to fourth in 2010 (displacing Mugaritz) but on the basis of our meal there, we think it can move yet higher. Could it take the number one spot? Quite possibly. When we posted on The Fat Duck, we hadn't then eaten at Can Roca but it was what we had in mind when we said that if TFD doesn't move forward it will relatively slide backward. El Bulli of course has taken itself out of the running by closing down in 2011, so will it be Noma vs El Celler de Can Roca battling it out for the top spot this year and next? Book a table there while you still can for this is a remarkable restaurant now but surely a place with the best years still ahead of it.