The Boat Show invites you to navigate with all your senses hand in hand with chef Rafa Zafra

To offer a complete experience of maritime passion and culture. This is the purpose pursued by the renovated Boat Show which, for the first time, is splitting into two annual events: an October version, as until now, which is also refocused to concentrate on a more professional, commercial audience with greater purchasing power, and a new recreational event in spring 2026, to attract a wider and more family-oriented audience, focused on maritime sports. A new model for the 62nd edition of the show that pursues a clear objective: to spread devotion for the sea to the largest possible number of people, and to do so through all the senses.

Because the sea can be touched, seen, smelled, and heard, but it can also be tasted. For this purpose, the event could not count on any other chef than the renowned owner of Estimar Barcelona, Estimar Madrid, and Casa Jondal, Rafa Zafra. Known for his seafood cuisine and his devotion to top-quality seafood products, Zafra has designed an exclusive menu for the Village, the new space of the show for its autumn event, which will be held from October 8 to 12. In a privileged setting, located in the heart of the event, this new 2,500 square meter area has been designed to offer a new meeting point for attending professionals and brands, fostering networking.

This new area will feature a menu designed by the renowned chef, who holds no less than two Michelin stars, a menu that aims to offer a journey through the intense flavors of the Mediterranean. An offer, in which the freshness and texture of seafood products stand out, which will be served in two totally differentiated culinary concepts: a tasting menu consisting of six savory dishes and a dessert, with a fixed price of 150 euros, and an Open Bar, with tapas starting from 5.80 euros.

The restaurant, which will only be open at midday following the hours of the Boat Show, will offer two sittings, with a capacity of 120 people in each. In it, a tasting menu will be served that pays homage to the sea and to the Mediterranean culinary tradition, reinvented and elevated to the maximum expression of gastronomy by the Sevillian chef, who already feels at home in the Catalan capital as if it were his second home. A menu that thus becomes "a celebration of the sea from tradition and flavor, but reinterpreted with elegance, with the purpose of offering an extra to the attendee of the nautical event," as its creator has expressed.

Thus, the event's public, in addition to observing the variety of boats available in the nautical sector, represented by more than 220 exhibitors and 200 boats in the floating exhibition, will also observe its richness of flavors. With a six-course pass designed exclusively for the event, diners will savor, for example, the explosion of flavors of the classic Murcian gastronomy tapa, "el matrimonio," which combines the flavors of anchovy and boquerón, accompanied by mackerel in avocado gazpachuelo and piparra.

There will also be nods to local gastronomy, reinterpreted with a marine perspective, offering a surprising and tasty stew of Iberian beans with tuna belly, or the traditional Catalan chicken, with spinach and plums, converted for the occasion into sea bass. Outside the menu, options will also be offered for those who are not devotees of the sea, with selected meats or vegetarian proposals.

That nod to local cuisine and the maritime past of the Catalan capital will extend to desserts, for which the chef has created a personal version of the classic pijama. A dessert that arose almost by chance, in the mythical 7 Portes restaurant, due to a misunderstanding. Sailors who docked in the port would go to the restaurant and surprise the waiters with a special request to finish their meals: a pêche melba. A French dessert based on peach and ice cream created for the opera singer Nellie Melba, which the local waiters, isolated from the trends of the moment and with little command of French, understood as 'pijama', and to which, without knowing very well what was being asked of them, they offered those sailors peaches in syrup, cream, cherries, ice cream, and flan. A reinterpretation of the French dessert which, again, Zafra turns around, with a creamy egg flan with candied peach and banoffee ice cream.

On the other hand, the Open Bar will serve a totally different concept, with informal tapas and sandwiches for visitors who want to make a quick stop before continuing to study boats or close business deals. With tapas starting from five euros, one can choose between traditional dishes such as tuna belly salad or sardine coca, as well as mini meatballs with ceps. For both proposals, Zafra will work with the Le Chef catering team, a catering company founded in 1995 by Laura Pi, who will be responsible for the integral production of the culinary offer of this new space. An offer that will seek to complement and deepen that love for the sea that the Salón Náutico has been propagating for more than sixty editions, now also through the palate.