El Disparate — Andalucía, With the Windows Open

On the Alameda de Hércules, north of the city's most heavily visited streets, chef Nacho Dargallo serves a menu that can move from Jerez to Thailand in the space of a few lines.

There is chicken-liver pâté with Jerez brandy. Red tuna with coconut ajoblanco. Squid with green curry and coconut milk. Fideuà with cuttlefish and white prawns. Oxtail, boneless, with parmentier and mangetout.

It shouldn't necessarily hang together.

Somehow, that's rather the point.

A Different Side of Seville

El Disparate occupies the ground floor of The Corner House on Alameda de Hércules, one of Seville's great public spaces but a very different proposition from the streets surrounding the Cathedral and Alcázar.

The Alameda is long, open and lived-in. Roman columns stand at one end, bars and terraces run along either side, and the neighbourhood around it has spent several decades moving from somewhere many visitors barely encountered to one of the centres of contemporary Seville.

El Disparate fits that version of the city.

The restaurant has appeared in the Michelin Guide for several consecutive years, but doesn't behave much like somewhere chasing the conventions of fine dining. Much of the menu is designed to be shared, and there is a tasting menu for those who would rather let the kitchen decide.

Even its name helps. Disparate can mean something absurd, nonsensical or unreasonable: an idea that doesn't quite conform to what is expected.

It turns out to be a useful description of the cooking.

The Chef Who Kept Moving

Dargallo's career helps explain why.

He trained in Barcelona before working at Michelin-starred Gaig under Carles Gaig. Further work in the city followed, as did time with José Andrés on the Spanish television programme Vamos a Cocinar.

There was also a year as second chef at Hotel Hacienda Benazuza near Seville, working under Rafa Morales. Its gastronomic restaurant was closely associated with Ferran Adrià and the El Bulli team and would go on to receive two Michelin stars.

That distinction matters. Dargallo is sometimes loosely connected with El Bulli, but he wasn't a chef at the restaurant in Roses. His connection came through Benazuza and the wider culinary world around Adrià.

Dargallo eventually established himself in Seville, becoming associated with El Gallinero de Sandra before El Disparate.

The interesting part isn't the collection of names on the CV. It is what moving through those different kitchens appears to have done to his idea of what belongs together.

Andalucía, With the Windows Open

El Disparate describes its cooking as Mediterranean, based around local and seasonal produce.

That's true, but it doesn't quite capture it.

The ingredients frequently bring you back to southern Spain: sardines, cod, red tuna, Ibérico ham, Jerez brandy, white prawns and oxtail. The kitchen then allows them to go somewhere else.

Ajoblanco, one of Andalucía's oldest cold soups, appears with coconut beneath red-tuna tartare. Sea bream becomes ceviche with green gazpacho, pico de gallo and jalapeño. Ibérico pork arrives with edamame. Squid gets green curry and coconut milk.

Then the menu swings home again, towards cuttlefish fideuà with white prawns, oxtail and Spanish artisan cheeses.

It would be easy to describe this as fusion, but that makes the cooking sound more self-conscious than it is.

This is closer to an Andalusian kitchen with the windows left open.

A Wine List That Travels Too

The same idea carries into the wine.

Andalucía is particularly well represented, as it should be. Palomino, Pedro Ximénez, Tintilla de Rota and Zalema all appear, alongside wines from Jerez, El Puerto de Santa María and Huelva.

But the list doesn't stop at the regional border.

There are more than 200 Spanish and international references, and the tasting-menu pairing can move through Rioja, Lanzarote and La Mancha as well as southern Spain.

Again, the point isn't to escape Andalucía.

It is to put Andalucía in conversation with somewhere else.

Why It Earns Its Place

You could spend several days in Seville eating extremely well without encountering anything like El Disparate.

That is precisely why it belongs here.

The city's culinary identity is strong enough that restaurants don't need to look very far beyond it. Dargallo does anyway, without losing sight of the ingredients that tell you where you are.

Red tuna and ajoblanco remain. So do Jerez, Ibérico, white prawns and oxtail. But Thailand can walk into the kitchen. So can Mexico, France or Italy.

The result doesn't feel like a rejection of Sevillian cooking. It feels like the confidence to stop protecting it.

The windows are open.

Seville is still underneath. The rest of Edit No.29, Andalucía, From the Field Up, begins an hour and a half south at Casa La Siesta.