L'Eixida

Stone Walls, Open Minds: Dining in Peratallada's Medieval Core

Peratallada is one of the few genuinely intact medieval villages in the Baix Empordà, its sandstone alleyways worn smooth by centuries of foot traffic and its central square framed by a fortified tower that dates to the eleventh century. Restaurants here occupy former stables, grain stores, and courtyard spaces; the architecture does much of the work before any food arrives. L'Eixida sits on Carrer del Form, its patio opening off one of those narrow lanes, and the name itself signals something about the restaurant's disposition: eixida is Catalan for exit, a word that quietly frames the act of leaving the familiar behind.

That framing is not accidental. The kitchen here works from a premise that the Empordà's ingredient supply, coastline, market gardens, inland producers, is strong enough to carry a menu that doesn't stay within Spanish borders. The result is fusion cuisine that draws on Asian and South American reference points, applied to local produce rather than imported ingredients. This is a meaningful distinction. In the broader conversation about fusion cooking in Spain, the serious practitioners treat local sourcing as the anchor that keeps a globally-referenced menu from floating adrift. L'Eixida operates from that same discipline.

Why the Empordà Larder Makes This Kind of Cooking Possible

The Baix Empordà has the ingredient density to support ambitious kitchens. The Costa Brava coastline to the east brings seafood, razor clams, sea urchin, small local fish, while the interior provides vegetables, game, and the rice-growing areas that feed into the Valencian and Catalan rice traditions. Proximity to France, roughly an hour north on the AP-7, means access to cross-border produce relationships that Catalan chefs have used for decades. El Celler de Can Roca in Girona built a three-star reputation partly on this regional supply chain; the principle scales down to smaller kitchens like L'Eixida with equal logic.

When a kitchen in this region commits to local sourcing as the base layer of a fusion menu, the ingredients carry authority that imported produce cannot replicate. A Baix Empordà vegetable treated with a Japanese seasoning technique or a local fish prepared with a South American-influenced marinade reads differently from the same combination assembled from generic supply. The specificity of the place matters to the taste of the plate.

The Menu Structure: Rice as a Serious Category

L'Eixida's menu organises around a substantial à la carte, with multiple starter options and a dedicated section for rice dishes, alongside two tasting menus: the Menú del Arroz and the Torre de las Horas. The separation of rice into its own category is a considered editorial decision, not decorative. Catalan rice cookery has its own distinct tradition, arròs a la cassola, arròs negre, and their variants, and treating it as a standalone programme signals that the kitchen regards it as primary rather than incidental.

Rice is also a category that travels well across culinary traditions. The grain appears in Japanese, Korean, Peruvian, and various Southeast Asian contexts with different fat content, liquid ratios, and aromatics. A kitchen drawing on Asian and South American reference points has genuinely productive material to work with when rice is the structural element. The Menú del Arroz format takes that logic to its conclusion. For the comparison, Quique Dacosta in Dénia has made Valencian rice the conceptual centrepiece of a three-star programme; L'Eixida occupies a different tier and a different register, but the underlying respect for the grain as a serious subject is recognisably part of the same Levantine and Catalan rice culture.

The Torre de las Horas tasting menu operates as the kitchen's longer-form statement. Both menus sit within a restaurant that asks guests to arrive with an open mind, a request that functions less as a warning and more as context-setting for a cooking style that doesn't resolve into a single national identity.

Where L'Eixida Sits in Spain's Fusion Conversation

Spain's most decorated fusion cooking tends to operate at the high end of the price spectrum. DiverXO in Madrid holds three Michelin stars for a format that combines Spanish technique with Asian influence at €€€€ pricing. Arzak in San Sebastián and Azurmendi in Larrabetzu represent the Basque creative tier, again at €€€€. Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa María and Cocina Hermanos Torres in Barcelona occupy similar positions. L'Eixida operates at €€€ in a village of under five hundred residents, which positions it as the accessible entry point for this style of cooking in a rural Catalan setting, a different competitive set entirely from those city-centre flagship restaurants.

The Michelin Plate recognition in both 2024 and 2025 places L'Eixida in the guide's recommended tier: not a starred restaurant, but one the inspectors consider worth seeking out. In a village the size of Peratallada, that designation carries particular weight, because the pool of visitors is self-selecting. People who find their way to Carrer del Form are generally there because they chose the village deliberately, and a fusion menu at this level is a productive combination with that kind of audience. For further context on the fusion category in Spain, Ajonegro in Logroño and Arkestra in Istanbul represent the style across different geographies.

The wider Spanish table at this level includes Martin Berasategui in Lasarte-Oria, Mugaritz in Errenteria, Ricard Camarena in València, and Atrio in Cáceres, all operating at higher price points and in larger urban or semi-urban contexts. L'Eixida does not compete in that tier; it occupies the space where serious cooking meets genuinely rural medieval setting.

Planning Your Visit

L'Eixida is at Carrer del Form, 4, in the centre of Peratallada, a village roughly forty minutes southwest of Girona by car. Peratallada has no train station; driving or organised transfer from Girona or the Costa Brava coast is the practical approach. The village draws day visitors throughout the summer, which means the patio fills quickly on weekend lunchtimes from June through August. Booking ahead is advisable, particularly for the tasting menus. The €€€ pricing sits below the flagship tier of Catalan fine dining, which makes it a reasonable planning point for a longer Empordà itinerary.