Sometimes you find a restaurant that makes such an impact, you know that it’s going to be hard to forget. RiFF was such a place. It was extraordinary.

RiFF is the Michelin-starred restaurant of Bernd H Knöller, who hails from the Black Forest. He moved around several restaurants in Europe, including in the UK, before settling in Spain 25 years ago, opening Riff in 2001. All this is explained in a slightly tongue-in-cheek biography on the restaurant website. It’s useful background because we sensed a restaurant that has been steadily developed in the image of its chef over a number of years and because the food seems to blend some Northern European influences with a Mediterranean foundation.

There’s an unprepossessing entrance: you buzz to enter and are led along a corridor to a white room. Perhaps because you feel you are walking to the back of the building, it’s as though you are entering a conservatory – a sloping ceiling adds to this feel. It takes a while to realise that there are no windows, but instead you are in a room completely covered in drapes, although not at all like a marquee. Instead, you are in a room that has a simple elegance, with sheer curtains further breaking up the space and affording some privacy; the whole is like a canvas for what is to come.

We had already made up our minds to go for the shorter of two tasting menus. At €69, it couldn’t be described as cheap, but it looked better value than similar menus in London and there was something about the description that drew us to it – clever marketing or a simple passion for what they try to do with the menu? On the basis of our experience, we’d probably say the latter.

Tasting menus have sometimes confounded us with complexity, drowned us in sensations or intimidated us with their ambition. RiFF was very different. Each course was a beacon for its key ingredient. Every plate displayed considerable complexity and a creativity grounded in years of experience, and yet this was all in support of the star of the dish.

This approach was underpinned by great staff whose enthusiasm in introducing the dishes was not at all contrived. And Bernd Knöller made a point of having a chat at every table during the evening.

There were supposed to be seven courses plus snacks and tapas plus petit fours. But the only way for that to work was to count SEVEN snacks and dishes before we got to the menu proper – little wonder that we didn’t leave until half-past midnight (although this was Spain…). And thank God we didn’t go for the Menu Grande!

There’s only one way to do this – dish by dish:

Snacks
Mushroom nuts, Dried rice with seaweed, Chickpea and sesame wafer, Olive oil, rosemary and salt bread
The nuts were dangerously moreish given what was to come, but the highlight was the delicate rice ‘wafer’ that was bursting with shoreline flavours. We could have eaten a whole loaf of the bread but knew that we mustn’t.

Tapas
Ricotta-type cheese with sardines and seaweed
Dried tuna with a marinated red onion and milk mayonnaise(?) and tomato soda
White fish tartare with beetroot and strawberry soup with soft cheese
We were not yet onto the menu! The tomato soda was a revelation – a glass (two in my case) of essence of tomato. But most extraordinary was the beetroot and strawberry soup. Quite how that worked with raw fish, we had no idea, but it presented a combination of complimentary flavours and textures that was  exceptionally beautiful and weird at the same time and somehow allowed the delicate fish to shine.

Dishes
Marinated sea bream with orange and orange blossom
This was like an orange-based ceviche, but with the added texture of the tiny orange blossom buds – zingy and refreshing.

Razor clam with camelina oil and Jerusalem artichokes
A stunning combination. I have cooked with scallops and Jerusalems and this was the same concept, but delivered in a way that turned the artichokes into a silky bed for the clams, which in turn yielded to the gentlest of bites. The camelina oil was presumably to add nuttiness; it can also be used as a biofuel, which may have helped us to keep going.

Valencian rice with artichoke, basil and tomato
On the face of it the least complex dish, but the ingredients were balanced to perfection – more a very light broth than a paella.

Red mullet with mussels and fennel in a fennel broth
The fish, encased in seeds, was a heavenly match with the fennel, but we did wonder whether the mussels were needed and may even have compromised the texture of this aromatic dish.

Sweetbread with aromatic herbs and celeriac
A dish that packed a sweetly earthy punch for something so delicate. The celeriac puree was a miniature plump pillow for the meltingly succulent sweetbreads, and the herbs, while simple, gave just the right flavour.

Beetroot with white chocolate and coffee crumb
Sensational. Simply sensational. How can a root vegetable as earthy and full of flavour as beetroot work in a dessert? The three ingredients were at the different points of a flavour triangle: a sweet-savoury-bitter combination that made it possibly the most comforting dessert ever created!

Dried orange and blood orange with chocolate ice cream
The dried citrus slices were lovely – very finely-sliced and dried to a brittle side of chewy. However, we thought one of the only missteps of the menu was the ice cream which seemed to need a darker chocolate bitterness to contrast with the orange, especially the blood orange. But that’s the most pernickety of complaints.

Petit Fours
I cannot even remember the petit fours, other than the fact that I didn’t think I would be able to manage them. But I did. Then a meringue that looked like a slice of cake was a fabulous very final taste: it melted, collapsed even, in the mouth, giving a honeycomb sensation of the lightest imaginable Crunchie bar.

For the remarkable quality and creativity of the cooking, the presentation and the whole experience – an elegant, informed informality that supported the menu – we thought the RiFF Menu represented much better value than many other tasting menus we have had. I haven’t mentioned the wines, but we went for the matching selection, which delivered six glasses – a cava, a sherry, two whites, a red and an off-dry – and was considerably more keenly priced than we would normally expect in a restaurant of this quality.

We rolled out of RiFF extremely happy with our evening. We had eaten a lot and there was so much to take in. But we weren’t overwhelmed and we could reflect on all the dishes. Three thoughts were crystal clear: the point I have already made about the starring role of each main ingredient; the fact that the two highest of many high points involved beetroot in the most unlikely combinations; and the idea that RiFF is the culmination of many years of experience and the inspiration of an ever-present chef, not a concept that can be contracted out to others.

For anyone interested in food, RiFF is a must on any visit to Valencia.