A three-star like no other
DiverXO occupies a room inside the NH Eurobuilding in Madrid, remade into something between a restaurant and an art installation, flying pigs and all. Dabiz Muñoz, its chef-owner, is the most restless figure in Spanish cooking, and the room runs at his pace.
Courses are called canvases, not plates, and arrive at speed. It is Spain's wildest three-star, and nothing about it is quiet.
Global, loud, precise
The food is global and ferociously technical: dim sum, Iberian pork, spice and provocation drawn from across Asia and back, delivered with a punk energy. It should not cohere, and somehow it does.
Not for the faint-hearted, and not trying to be. What holds it together is real skill under the noise.
Courses are called canvases, and arrive at speed.
Maximalism done with genuine skill. Whatever you make of it, there is nothing else quite like it.
VANE selection. Chosen with a critic's eye and judged independently. It's here because we judged it, not because it paid. This is a researched profile, not yet a first-hand VANE verdict; where we have eaten there, the review says so.
Image: Photo: City Foodsters, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
