At Cónclave you can eat in four different places, and each tells the house in its own way. At La Barra | Parrilla Experience, facing the grill, with the chefs serving and talking you through each dish. On the ground floor, among wooden tables, long benches and the wine in view. On the upper floor, under the beams and by candlelight. And at the end of the staircase, Sancto Quorum: the private room that is not booked, but asked for.
A few seats at the counter, facing the grill, with the cuts hanging in view and the embers at work underneath.
The chefs themselves serve, and tell you what each dish is, where the produce comes from and why it is done this way. It is not another room: it is another way of dining here.
Downstairs the room runs lengthwise: wooden tables, long benches against the wall and the wine in view.
At the back, the kitchen pass.
Upstairs the ceiling opens into beams and the walls grow paler. The tables draw apart and the light drops: candles on the wall, candles on the table.
The windows let in the colour of the glass and little else.
At the end of the last flight of stairs, the house keeps a room it does not show. It is not booked: it is asked for. And when it is granted, the door closes and the rest of the world stays outside until the end of service.
Cavallers is not just any street in the Carme. It is the decumanus of Roman Valentia: the east–west axis on which the city was founded, still exactly where it was. Its name is documented from the fifteenth century, when the families who shared out the Kingdom of Valencia lived here and competed by raising Gothic palaces face to face. Fuentehermosa, Castellfort, Malferit, the Counts of Oliva and Centelles. At one end, the Palau de la Generalitat.
