Sublimotion: The Musical Experience of Food, in 20 Courses and 12 Seats

First published in FNL-Guide in June 2025

When I first began writing about how music intertwines with food, I never imagined I’d find myself wondering whether I could taste an entrée in the rhythm of jazz fusion. Yet here we are. Because if there’s one restaurant in the world that takes music as seriously, perhaps even more seriously, than its cuisine, it’s Sublimotion.

Writing about a place like this isn’t easy. It’s like trying to explain David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era to someone who’s never heard music before. Sublimotion is a kind of gastronomic mixtape, an immersive composition of light, sound, and taste, aiming to translate fine dining through the language of music. Here, food isn’t the main act; it’s the sound that carries it on its shoulders.

The restaurant opened in 2014 at Ibiza’s Hard Rock Hotel, returning every summer with an experience that feels more like a psychedelic festival of flavor than a fine dining performance. With two Michelin stars under his belt, chef Paco Roncero joined forces with directors, DJs, and virtual reality artists to create what the team calls “the world’s first gastronomic performance.”

The experience, needless to say, isn’t for everyone. Twelve seats per night, a twenty-course menu, and a price tag of around €1,650 per person. The obvious question would be: Is it worth it? But that’s not the one I’m asking. I wonder instead whether it’s worth throwing the very notion of a restaurant out the window and surrendering to the madness of a show that invites you to dine inside a virtual submarine, a circus, or even a cave.

At Sublimotion, every dish comes with its own soundtrack. The sound quite literally directs your taste. It cues you when to take a bite, when to set down your fork, and when to look up and see what’s happening around you. You might start with an amuse-bouche to the ambient atmosphere of William Basinski, move to a sorbet with a funky Daft Punk beat, and finish with a dessert orchestrated live by the in-house DJ.

It’s not uncommon to see guests remove their VR headsets and look around, stunned. Reality at Sublimotion bends and warps. The table ceases to be a table and becomes a stage. Lighting changes with each course, as do the scents in the air.

This year’s edition is titled Heritage, a tribute to tradition, sharing, and the evolution of food as a cultural act. A dish of olives, bread, and olive oil appears to the sound of a Gregorian-style chant. The rhythm feels ceremonial. Later, when the “world risotto” is served, the speakers blend traditional sounds from Peru, India, and Morocco, giving the term “musical geography” a literal dimension.

Wine pairing doesn’t apply here. This is emotional pairing. Every dish on the menu is designed to make you shiver, the taste almost secondary to the sensory charge. It’s not unusual to cry, and not because something is movingly delicious, but because the conditions around you are engineered to lower your emotional defenses.

Paco Roncero doesn’t see any of this as excess. He sees it as an expansion of his role. He often says that the chefs of the 21st century must be storytellers as well as cooks — and it’s clear he means it.

Yet the philosophical question remains: does Sublimotion have substance, or is it simply a circus of the senses? Here things get complicated. Strip away the spectacle, what’s left? The dishes are technically flawless, but would they linger in your memory without the performance that frames them? A frozen flower atop a dessert may be exquisite, but do you remember it because of its flavor, or because you ate it in a virtual garden of light and sound to the strings of Max Richter?

At the end of the day, Sublimotion isn’t something you dine at, it’s something you witness. A live set that happens to serve extraordinary food. A DJ set by Richie Hawtin, translated into taste. And no, I wouldn’t recommend it to my father, nor to anyone simply searching for “good food.” I’d recommend it to someone who thought Metallica concert tickets were cheap, to someone who believes food is art, but music, the most necessary of all arts. Sublimotion is a temple: expensive, eccentric, often incomprehensible, excessive, but perhaps also deeply moving.