When El Bulli closed, its three head chefs had the whole world to choose from. Oriol Castro, Eduard Xatruch, and Mateu Casañas had spent fifteen years running the most influential kitchen on the planet, Ferran Adrià's, in Cala Montjoi, on the other side of Cap de Creus. They could have opened in Barcelona, in London, anywhere they wanted. They chose Cadaqués. In 2012 they opened Compartir on Riera Sant Vicenç, and the name was a statement of intent: dishes for the middle of the table, cooking meant for passing things around, the long lunch as a format. That one of Spanish cuisine's most anticipated projects was born in this village says a lot about the three of them, and about the village too.
Fifteen years in Adrià's kitchen
Castro, Xatruch, and Casañas didn't just pass through El Bulli: they were El Bulli. Fifteen years as head chefs at Ferran Adrià's restaurant, meaning fifteen years executing and pushing forward, season after season, the cooking half the world was trying to decode. When the Cala Montjoi restaurant closed its doors, the three decided to stay together, which is already a rarity in a trade full of egos.
And they decided to stay close. Cala Montjoi lies within the municipality of Roses, on the other side of the Cap de Creus massif; Cadaqués is a handful of winding kilometres away. They didn't leave the area that had trained them: they crossed the mountain.
2012: opening in a village, not a capital
Compartir opened in 2012 on Riera Sant Vicenç, the dry streambed that serves as a street in the centre of Cadaqués. The choice of village wasn't the obvious one: the industry's logic pushes chefs with that résumé toward capital cities, where the press, the conferences, and the paying public are. They bet on a place reached by a single mountain road.
Time proved them right. Compartir became one of the reference tables on the Costa Brava, and years later the trio would also open in Barcelona, by then with their reputation firmly established. But the flagship was born here, and it's still here.
Cooking for the middle of the table
The concept is in the name: dishes designed to share, with rice dishes and fish as the backbone, exactly what this sea calls for. It's not a tasting menu of ritual and silence; it's a table where the platters go in the middle and everyone reaches in. El Bulli's technique is there, but put to the service of a meal that feels more like a family celebration than an exam.
For the visitor, it's a double stroke of luck: high cuisine of extraordinary pedigree, in a relaxed format, in a village where after dessert what awaits you is a ten-minute walk by the water, not a traffic jam.
Booking with your head
A restaurant with this history in a village this size has a predictable consequence: in high season, you have to earn the table well in advance. If your trip to Cadaqués has fixed dates and Compartir is on your list, book before you pack, especially for dinners in July and August.
Off-season things ease up, and that's — once again — the best version of Cadaqués: the village empty, the low autumn light, and a great table without a fight to get it. If you can pick your dates, you already know which ones.
A village that sustains this kind of cooking
That Compartir works here isn't an isolated miracle: Cadaqués has more than a hundred food and drink establishments, an unusual density for its size, and several have spent generations proving this crowd knows how to eat. El Marítim has served rice dishes facing the beach since 1935; Es Baluard has cooked its suquet inside the wall since 1967; Casa Anita has been sharing tables since 1969. The three El Bulli chefs didn't land in a culinary desert: they joined a tradition.
For the visitor, the result is a happy one: within a ten-minute walk, Compartir's pedigreed avant-garde cooking coexists with the old fishing-village tables. Few meals explain a place better than having one of each during the same stay.