The Alchemix

Brioche between Barcelona and Bangkok

A toasted brioche carries Iberian pulled pork and sticky rice dipping sauce; Sergi Palacín cooks as chef at The Alchemix in Barcelona, where that bite sits inside a gastro-cocktail tasting menu rather than beside it. Palacín founded The Alchemix in 2018 after a route that began at Cambrils Hospitality School and moved through a stage at El Bulli in 2009, work on the R&D team at Gaggan Restaurant in Bangkok, a chef post at El Bulli Foundation, and the Head Chef station at Montbar in Barcelona. The line matters because this room asks the kitchen to think like a bar and the bar to think like a kitchen. Palacín’s work here is not fusion as a label; it is a method built from testing, tightening, and service. Mediterranean prawn curry, trinxat, and Wagyu sausage with ponzu show the register he returns to, with Catalan weight meeting sharper Asian seasoning. Since 2023, he has also cooked at HIU Restaurant in Cambrils, but The Alchemix remains the Barcelona bench where his founder’s vocabulary is most visible.

A tasting menu measured in pairings

The program at The Alchemix moves through a tasting format of small plates and paired drinks, with the kitchen and cocktail station sharing the pass. The venue’s own language calls it a gastro-cocktail bar, and the phrase is accurate because the drink is not an afterthought poured once the dish is finished. A course can arrive with a miniature cocktail built to answer it, as in the “From Barcelona to Bangkok” brioche with its False Beer, made from scotch, honey, apple, malted barley, and toasted foam. Other known plates keep the same discipline: grilled leeks with peanut sauce, Normandy oyster with imperial caviar and four sauces, smoked salmon marinated in beets with beer mustard and wasabi fish eggs, trinxat with escalivado pepper, and Wagyu sausage ponzu. Technique appears through smoking, marinating, saucing, and the table-side finish, but the stronger signature is sequencing. The menu asks a guest to move by contrast, from pork and sticky rice to oyster and caviar, from Catalan leek to Thai peanut, from curry warmth to the lift of a cocktail.

The pass and the counter in one room

The room in L'Antiga Esquerra de l'Eixample is intimate enough that the counter and the dining room feel close to the same station. Service carries a conversational pitch, with a sultry, compact room built for explanation rather than procession. That suits the work. A smoked plate needs the guest near the gesture; a pairing poured in miniature needs the timing of the pass, not the distance of a cellar cart. The Alchemix keeps its elegance in scale, in the small glass set beside a small plate, in the way a course can hold Barcelona and Bangkok without turning either into decoration. The food on the bench includes Mediterranean prawn curry.