Saint Otto is the patron saint of, among other things, mad dogs and rabies. Perhaps this mildly unappetizing association is why the otherwise forthcoming wait staff at Ot, a restaurant we hit on Thursday with Paul and Denise, declined to tell us about it, even in the face of questioning delivered in no doubt flawless Spanish.

Me: What does “Ot” mean?
Waiter: It is a saint’s name. In German it is…it is…um…
Us: Otto?
Waiter: Otto, yes.
Me: And he is the saint of what?
Waiter: A saint, you know, like a holy person.
Me: Yes, I know. But the saint of what?
Waiter: Like at church.
Me: Does he…represent anything?
Waiter: (looking puzzled) You know, a saint. A person, from a church.
Me: Ok, thanks.

I looked around quickly for the old woman with six teeth, but she was not on the premises. He was working alone on this one. But he hadn’t been during dinner. The tasting menu at Ot requires a team of explaining, carrying, and clearing specialists. First, they set out a little tray of olives, and then poured us olive oil from Girona in one small bowl and Tarragona in the other. Girona, in case you were wondering, was better.

Next a small cube of buffalo mozzarella on a toothpick appeared in front of each of us. It was covered with a little tomato confit and sitting in a pool of vanilla oil. After having something that tastes like vanilla, most people enjoy a little octopus, and so we were overjoyed to see the next course: guacamole with octopus sashimi. It was served in a spoon the likes of which you have seen in bowls of wonton soup. It was, as Denise pointed out, nice to be told exactly how to eat these curious courses. Both were excellent.

A salad of squid cut into noodles, grilled calçots, romesco sauce, and fancy lettuce then led us to a cold asparagus soup with a ball of lime granita and an – quick, what goes with lime ices? – an oyster. Ot was still batting 1.000. Who knew squid made such a nice noodle? One could make a case that the point of going out to dinner is to eat things you are unlikely to prepare for yourself at home. If so, this was well on its way to being worth it.

Another kind of thing we usually don’t cook at home is the meat-from-pig-heads family of food. And so the next course kept the streak alive. A slice of porgy, grilled and laid on line of celery mousse, covered with a sauce of reduced red wine, shared space with a capipota ravioli. Cap means head, and pota means foot, and those are parts of animals that we prefer to leave in the market. But again it was all delicious. The celery mousse was very…uh…celery-y (Can you think of an adjective that describes the taste of celery?) and the head scraps and feet scraps went nicely with the red wine sauce.

Next came the traditional Catalan combination of rabbit and snails. Yet again, we were in no danger of finding this course inferior to how we might have made it ourselves. They were served in a sort of stickless shish-kebab style, small bits arranged in a nice neat row. Among the bits were cubes of baby garlic polenta with soy sprouts on top of them. Another hit. For a couple of garden pests, rabbit and snails are pretty good.

Next they brought out a cheese course – we were instructed to begin San Felicien, which is a mild French raw-milk cheese that had the sweet taste of stickin’ it to the FDA. Next, muenster, followed by some kind of fruit jelly, to get ready for the last cheese: tupi. This one, sitting in the bottom right corner of the plate in a small schmear, looked pretty unthreatening. However, one of our four waiters warned us that it was to be saved for last, to be eaten with jelly, and, essentially, to be feared. It contained milk, olive oil, and aguardiente, which is some sort of liquor about which everyone disagrees on the matter of ingredients. It was strong, as we had been warned, but not too strong that it couldn’t be overcome by…

…watermelon soup, of course. With some kind of fresh cheese in the middle. This one, we all agreed, we had made at home: cut up a watermelon, put the pieces in a container, wait a few days. This marked the beginning of dessert. Next came ginger ice cream with a sort of banana chip wedged in the middle of it, thin broiled orange slices, things called “clouds” that I can only describe as tiny homemade marshmallows, and tiny chocolates with curry. All that and some pineapple foam as well. The whole lot was neither too sweet nor too adventurous and took us home nicely. We were left not too full but not hungry either, in that rare way that you can sometimes think about how good food has just been but also definitely not want any more of it right at that moment. It was a feeling of satisfaction that we agreed could only be compared to knowing that, as we ate, we had also been completely protected from both angry dogs and rabies. Thanks, Saint Otto.