Casa Cacao Hotel

Spain

The family behind the renowned three-star Michelin El Celler de Can Roca in Catalonia, Spain, serve up a 15-room boutique hotel with all the trimmings, including its very own chocolate shop.

Casa Cacao, a new boutique pad in Girona, comes from fine family lineage – it’s the same stock as the iconic El Celler de Can Roca dining room just 10 minutes away. Set in Catalonia’s heartlands, it offers much more than just a fine place to bed down. Opened last year and conceived by pastry chef Jordi Roca and sister-in-law Anna Payet (wife of Joan Roca), the four-storey Forties building comprises Jordi’s chocolate atelier, a café-bar and shop, alongside 15 bedrooms on the upper floors.

From the slim side street, the first thing you see through the window is the metallic glimmer of the factory, where Jordi works bean to bar on cocoa sourced from plantations across South America. The dark art subtly informs the project in its entirety, from the tawny uniforms, to the monikers of the spacious bedrooms. The calm design sentiment pulls together tan and ochre tones alongside mustard and green accents to emulate the cocoa-bean life cycle. Deep carpets, plush sofas and marble complete the look.

Of course, the food (and wine list by El Celler’s sommelier Josep Roca) is superlative. Joan’s guests-only fine-dining breakfast – the likes of poached eggs with a truffle-breadcrumbed béchamel – is served on the cypress-strewn rooftop backed by views across the sun-bleached old town. A Roca chocolate by the bedside each night sees the sweet note come full circle.

Doubles from £214. +34 972 905 905, casacacaogirona.com

Words by Blossom Green.

This review was taken from the March/April 2021 issue of Food and Travel.

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