Dining

Ibiza

39 High St.
New Haven, CT
(203) 865-1933
ibizanewhaven.com

Ever wonder how manager Juan Gonzalez and chef Manuel Romero decide to put an item on Ibiza's rotating menu? Take, for example, the restaurant's new lobster fideua, a Catalan-style noodle dish with fresh lobster. First, says Romero, "I work on new dishes and we try them to see if we're happy." If it passes muster, the dish may show up as a special, like lobster fideau did on the Valentine's Day menu. It's now graduated to being on the regular menu.

There's a lot of behind-the-scenes tinkering and a lot of thought that goes into being both traditional and experimental at the same time. Spain is on the world's culinary cutting edge and Gonzalez and Romero are paying attention, though they don't follow the trends too faithfully. "We try to show what's happening in Spain, but a lot of people here might not be into the textures and foams they're doing there," says Romero. He's more of a traditional guy, but he puts a spin on the tradition, taking an age-old recipe and changing the ingredients around. In Spain, one of the current trends is to use a lot of Asian ingredients, so Romero has taken to cooking scallops with coconut milk, instead of cooking them in the traditional way with saffron.