Can Marlau
Catalan / Esmorzar de Forquilla · Eixample, Barcelona · €€
Open since 2022
The Delekta Review
Ferran Soler put in twenty-five years through elBulli, El Celler de Can Roca, Saúc, Tickets — and finally as head chef of Albert Adrià's Bodega 1900. Before he opened his first solo room at Carrer de París 161 in October 2022. The name is the two halves of his daughters' first names — Maria and Laura, Mar and Lau, Can Marlau — and the project is built around the rhythm of a chef who chose to protect his family time: lunch service only on weekdays, dinner on Thursday and Friday, closed Saturday and Sunday. The cooking is cuina de xup xup with elBarri technique laid on top — fideus a la cassola with galera and red prawn from his grandmother's Palamós recipe, an ensaladilla rusa Philippe Regol called restrained, capipota with white beans, croqueta de jamón at €3.50 with perfect cracker, calamar a la plancha with papada lacada and touches of soy and kimchi, the flan at the end. Toni Díaz, twenty years of cocktails at elBarri, runs the floor and a wine list with nearly nine hundred references. Tier-1 coverage from Time Out, Macarfi, Ara, El Nacional and Observación Gastronómica.
What works
Real elBarri-school technique applied to working-class Catalan plates — capipota, fideus a la cassola, ensaladilla rusa — rather than to gastrobar gimmicks. Twenty-five years through elBulli, El Celler de Can Roca, Saúc, Tickets and Bodega 1900 show in the rigor, not in the staging. The €35–40 average ticket is unusually fair for the technical level; the nine-hundred-reference cellar is unusually deep for the room. Time Out, Macarfi, Ara, El Nacional and Philippe Regol's Observación Gastronómica all came out within the project's first eighteen months. Esmorzar de forquilla is genuinely better here than the genre norm.
Before you go
Service hours are weekday-skewed and load-bearing for the editorial angle: lunch only Mon–Fri, dinner Thursday and Friday only, closed Saturday and Sunday — a deliberate work-life choice, not a flaw, but you have to plan around it. No tasting menu; this is à la carte, sharing-plate cooking, not a degustation room. Small room and a weekday-only schedule mean the Mon and Tue slots disappear early in the week — phone ahead. The dining-room aesthetic is functional rather than designed; come for the food and the wine, not for atmosphere.
What the critics say
- Can Marlau — Time Out Barcelona
- Can Marlau — Macarfi
- Can Marlau (Barcelona)
- Can Marlau, la família d'un xef discret i talentós
- Casa de menjars i esmorzars de forquilla — cuina catalana per llepar-se els dits
- Can Marlau — Ajuntament de Barcelona
Visit
- Address
- Carrer de París, 161, L'Antiga Esquerra de l'Eixample, 08036 Barcelona, Spain
- Phone
- +34 938 35 29 30
- Website
- canmarlau.com
- Reservations
- Book a table