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Barcelona


Joe H

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Arguably (my favorite word these days!) Barcelona and San Sebastian where they have "eating societies" are the two of the most exciting places on earth to dine. eGullet has several extraordinary threads with detailed photos of numerous restaurants and tapas bars in both cities. Past issues of Saveur have also had excellent articles featuring both cities as well as Madrid and others. (http://www.saveur.com/destination_search.do lists several of these) This is one of several recent threads from eG on Barcelona:

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=59553

There are two schools of thought on El Bulli, by the way. While many people have raved about it (including Phyllis Richman) there are others who have found it disappointing. There was a 100+ page thread on eG which in part discussed this.

If you've never been Barcelona is a fantastic city. Whether Ramblas, the Old Town, the topless beaches around the harbor or Tibidabo which is a 100 year old amusement park at the top of a mountain and reachable only by tram-it overlooks the entire area with a 100 km view on a clear day-this is a wonderful destination, maybe my favorite of any large city in Europe.

This is Tibidabo's website-it is in English. There is also a small photo which shows the view from a 1920's era Aeroplane Swing where riders can look out over the mountainside, the city several thousand feet below and the Meditarranean encircling and fading in the distance beyond it. This is not so much an antique amusement park as it is a "Twilight Zone" type of experience which truly feels surreal and unlike any other.

http://www.tibidabo.es/eng/coneix.htm

There is also a very special city about 90 minutes south of Barcelona called Tarragona. It has a 2000 year old crumbled coliseum, exquisite bathing beaches, a walled Old Town worthy of exploration and excellent restaurants. South of Madrid is Rando which is built on the side of a sheer cliff. Literally looking out the window of a particular hotel room might have you looking straight down the wall of a cliff to the bottom twenty stories below! This is one of the most interesting and visited cities in Spain, also worthy of a daytrip if you are in Madrid.

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The legendary tapas bar Cal Pep in Barcelona is not to be missed. Might be tough to get a seat, but once you do, just let them start serving you whatever they want. One of the best meals I've ever had.

Also in Barcelona, stop at the pastry shop Escriba on Las Ramblas.

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[cross-posting on egullet's Spain section]

I returned from Barcelona two or three weeks ago. Beautiful city, wonderful food! My friends and I were looking for quality, budget meals and we found them easily.

Here are a few places we liked

One friend and I enjoyed a visit to La Champagneria (Carrer de la Reina Cristina; Barceloneta?). Really crazy tapas experience. Wall to wall people, however it's a convivial bunch. We found the locals were very eager to help when our Spanish lapsed. They helped us get sausage (butifarra) on a roll (2) and a bottle of cava rosato (it was what everyone else was drinking so we figured we'd give it a try), all for about eight Euros. Very fun. No web site as far as I can tell.

A place we liked in L'Eixample (Left?) was Raco d'en Balta Bar. Here's a link to a brief review that sums it up:

Click aqui

El Raco d'en Balta (tel 93 453 70 44; Carrer d'Aribau 125; open Monday to Saturday) spreads out over three floors and it has a cool bar next door where diners will be offered a complimentary chupito (shot) after their meal. Food offerings include hearty meat mains and dreamy desserts.

We enjoyed a great appetizer of fried Camembert with a non-cloying blueberry sauce (as well as hummos), and I had a pork entree (sorry, details are fading fast). Portions were reasonably sized (e.g., not Cheesecake Factory, but not meager either) and we had a bottle of rioja. Two appetizers, three entrees and wine would up costing about 85 Euros divided by three people.

The bar next door was very cool, IMO. I chose Crema Catalana for my free chupito, while my friends had something stronger.

We also loved Irati Taverna Basca (Cardenal Casanas, 17). Such a classy pintxos bar. Diners of all ages, all personable and helpful when asked "Que es eso?" (what is that?)

Another good spot: Espaseria Degustactions (Carrer de L'Espaseria; El Born). Pintxos bar. Alas, no web site.

I made a note to myself to write about Café Saula. Unfortunately my memory has faded and googling the name has turned up no results. Argh. Anyone know it?

We didn't enjoy La Pizza Nostra near the Picasso Museum. I heard you can get good pizza when you exhaust tapas in Barcelona, but this place served a pizza suspiciously similar to frozen!

On our last night in Barcelona before departing for Mallorca, we dined at Restaurant El Cafeti (c/ Hospital, 99 (passage's end) or Sant Rafael, 18; El Raval). We found the space and service warm and charming; the traditional Catalan food, delicious and reasonably priced (similar prices to Raco d'en Balto). Unfortunately the neighborhood was a little scary, even to three city dwellers and on our way to the cheesy-fun Rita Blue, we saw someone get mugged. :sad: It wasn't eight feet in front of us....

Restaurant El Cafeti - web site

Rita Blue (Placa Sant Agusti, 3; El Raval)

Rita Blue - web site

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I forgot to mention a really interesting place in Barcelona, Le Quinze Nits (on Placa Reial), which was/is something of a sensation there. It's part of a group of extreme budget restaurants, providing higher end fare and atmosphere at rock bottom prices. The lines to get in started forming an hour before it opened. I had to check it out one night and was pleasantly surprised. The appetizers were like $3 and the entrees were about $7 (this was a couple years ago). For those prices, it was really quite good. A total zoo in there, though (obviously they make whatever thin profit they must make on volume).

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A meal at el celler de can roca may remind you of some of the flash lessons you half learned at minibar, but the food doesn’t come to your table in the quick bursts of creativity, tentative nibbles and gasps of the long-running, six-stool entertainment upstairs at cafe atlantico, an anomalous restaurant industry equivalent of cats on broadway, but for a few. if tickets for the two seatings a night for minibar are fairly easy to come by these days, at least on weeknights, maybe it’s because the novelty is wearing a bit thin, and after they smash your check -- a gesture with a muted shock value because the two industrious cooks and your server/guide have actually been coddling their customers all night to keep anyone from freaking out, especially at $100 an eater and up -- where do you go for your next cutting-edge dinner? if your appetite for culinary adventure has been whetted, you are unlikely to find it at the logical place -- the comparatively restrained cafe atlantico that has been working smoothly all night behind your back. katsuya fukushima spent some time hanging around ferran adria at el bulli (opening roughly now for some seven months and already fully booked for the year), and his kitchen can scoot out such unusual garnishes as corn sprouts (a mouthful will satisfy your curiosity, these are bitter with a vague texture of corn silk; still, it is a sublime touch to surround foie gras with variations on the feed that is used to fatten the duck‘s liver, as they do here). But what’s in the center of your plate is apt to be fairly traditional fare. pop rocks for dessert? i didn’t notice any last time we were there, but didn’t we start doing those decades ago, a cheap sugar high that, like other acidic candies, can make your mouth sore if you don’t know when to quit. (bob kinkead was dispensing raisinets or goobers in his desserts during the good old days of 21 federal, so much for the novelty of mixing the sacred and profane.) local hero jose andres, if you can believe what you read in travel magazines, will eventually move on with the minibar approach, incorporating cutting-edge spanish cooking into a full-scale restaurant, which sounds like the right idea to me, but let’s hope he doesn’t take it to new york. looking back, isn’t minibar too much of a simon-says experience: eat this in one bite, take this in two, inhale, use your spoon, don’t shovel the wine jelly or you’ll never catch the butter dab? does foie gras cocooned in cotton candy really deserve the oohs and ahs? it’s the appearance of sugar, but mostly air. if you were confronted with six olive oil bonbons -- olive oil in a thin sugar shell -- would you finish them? (if the answer is yes, score yourself a bottle of fine olive oil and start swigging away.) considering how good the zucchini in textures or clam chowder turn out to be, wouldn’t it be nice to find the circumstances that would allow more normal portions? as much a rapid-fire introduction to new juxtapositions of ingredients and a sure-handed display of what you can do with unconventional equipment and an eye for color, minibar is low-key satire, epic ambition played out on a small scale, a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the long succession of steps and the almost mechanical precision required for this cooking -- but it ultimately invites skepticism that the end result has been worth the excessive effort..

el celler de can roca is in girona, a pleasant hour-and-a-half train ride into a semi-mountainous landscape from barcelona’s estacio de sants. (rosa, home of el bulli, is further up the tracks.) unless you plan on staying overnight, you’ll have to go for lunch, which begins at 1:30 but doesn’t swing into full gear until after 2:00. we found the lunch and dinner menus in spain to be similar. to work up an appetite, girona is well-worth wandering in the morning as the fog burns off, and one of the altars at the town’s gothic cathedral depicts a battle that was decided by poisonous flies, although considerably more people come to drool over “the tapestry of the creation,” an appropriate reaction because it was woven during a period when western art was still in its infancy. the restaurant is no more than a half-hour walk from the cathedral, but you may never find it without ducking into one of the information centers. they were so friendly and short on tourists the day of our visit, in early february, that they waved us in from the street. practically everybody around knows this restaurant, but it’s not easy explaining how to get there, so your best bet is to grab a cab. el celler is found in a nondescript suburb, where there are no beet tumbleweeds rolling down the street, and although it’s not exactly berkeley, from the outside it bears some resemblance to chez panisse. if you arrive the way we did, you will be surprised at the dining room, which looks ordinary, even drab, with a sturdy waitress rushing to tables of hungry construction workers, some of them with mud on their boots or plaster in their hair, with first courses that look like they were grabbed from a salad bar. there is also a problem with our reservation, and we are then directed next door. we made a common mistake: the restaurant on the corner belongs to the parents of the roca brothers, who have opened shop one house over in a space that says fine dining, though to your right on entering is a small homey parlor resembling the place where you wait for your doctor to see you now. there are perhaps a dozen well-spaced tables inside, fairly typical of the restaurants in this part of the world. (the restaurant’s web site, just fixed after being on the fritz for quite some time, mentions that 125 diners can be accommodated; maybe so, but we sure didn’t see where.) we were seated (if you were writing into tom sietsema for a complaint on his weekly chat, you would probably say “we were sat”) in the back, passing the kitchen and modern glass walls along the way, our big table up against glass patio doors looking out onto a mini, faux david hockney swimming pool in the center of a bright grass lawn. there are some worthwhile landscape paintings on the wall. the furniture you are likely to remember the most is a rolling stand carrying wine menus that are as big, though not as hefty, as the stone tablets god gave moses on top of mount sinai, all covered with special effects (i hope i have my bible studies right, they started and ended with cecil b. demille.) during our roughly two-and-a-half hours on the premises, we never saw a copy of the sous-vide cookbook co-authored by joan roca, but judging from the price tag ($180?!), i imagine that it too might be about big enough to fill a small doorway.

our server observed that spain is proudest of its white wines and helped us decide upon a “strong” bottle of do ferreiro albarino, which comes from grapes on old vines and successfully accompanied most of our food, no easy assignment. what on earth someone as squeamish as my wife is doing with a bowl of apple juice poured over large berry-ish clusters of tomato seeds, “snow,” fat anchovies and anchovy ice cream (sopa de poma) is beyond me, and what was even weirder than the combination was that she liked it. in this case, mixing sweet and savory turned out just fine, and in capable hands, at least, anchovy and apple can make for a happy marriage. (maybe hard to believe, but i tasted it and it’s true. mustard ice cream was also on the menu, which runs long, except for desserts, and includes a recitation of the chef‘s hits.) on my side of the table was a more than generous serving of pig trotter carpaccio, strewn over a wide plate. gruelish in color and texture, mouth-coating with a semi-gelatinous feel, the carpaccio was accompanied by beans and a thin sugar timbale filled with bitter frisee. you might not quite expect it to carry you there, but this dish is transportation to hog heaven. next up, pigeon with risotto-styled rice was the meal’s closest encounter with sous vide. not to envy the homeless, but i happily remember the evening a pigeon was roasting on an impromptu spit in the daniel webster park across from the australian embassy (the one where ginkgo nuts are gathered in the fall and you don‘t want to get them stuck on the soles of your shoes), and it smelled spectacularly good. by comparison, the pigeon emerging from its warm bath at el celler is not especially aromatic. it’s soft, slightly bland, worked into a tootsie roll-ish presentation that incorporates candied orange peel and, from what i was told, gingerbread; otherwise, you would never know it. the pigeon was good, well worth the chef’s trouble, but the pigeon in the park might have been better. for your final course, you will find desserts gone wild at el celler de can roca. my wife went the perfume route. an assortment of ices and gels and who knows what was supposed to taste approximately how calvin klein’s envy smells. a perfume card is provided for testing, and she said they nailed it, though refusing to dab some of this concoction behind her ears. i don’t recall seeing any men’s cologne on the menu, wouldn’t have wanted it on my breath anyway and was still mildy jet-lagged, so i went for some chromatherapy -- blood-orange puree and apricot on a clear glass dish with a neon orange tube running underneath. as i was finishing up my therapy, three men at a nearby table, as instructed, were leaning into their plates as the server removed their cloches to reveal an aroma that all involved found amusing. was it rank? i wondered. tables of business hombres were lighting up their cigars, which can be ordered off the menu, and our young waiter was cracking the picture window door to dispel the building haze. along with the rest of the staff, he seemed more than capable of antic behavior, but it is clearly not tolerated in front of the customers. every nuance of the service was exceptional. there appeared to be quite a few regulars, and they are not coming here because they think that the preparations are outlandish. spaniards appear to have remarkably reliable radar when it comes to knockout cooking. on the languorous stroll back to the station -- during siesta time, looking into pet store windows at napping parrots, crossing brooks, traversing parks -- running the meal through my mind, i realized you would have to visit here several times to truly get the lay of the land, which provides

familiar signposts even as your imagination is being stretched. you can experience it almost like literature (whatever that is supposed to mean).

back in barcelona, abac proved to be a reliable source of foam and snow, both of which shimmer in a large wood-paneled jewelry box of a dining room. with the doors shut and the shades drawn over the large windows on a lower gothic area street that’s not much wider than an alley, you may wonder where the kitchen of chef xavier pellicer has gone, it doesn’t seem to be around, and you may feel trapped in a pocket of stark, post-modern opulence. abac is within walking distance of the picasso museum, through some back ways, and closer still to a custo boutique, where for roughly $100 you can walk out feeling like drew barrymore in a body-fitting size 3 rock-and-roll tee shirt that someone is sure to think is inappropriate for your age (if you are older than drew barrymore). the snow is ginger on tuna with white rhubarb. next up, for me, is baby goat wrapped in crisp skin with scallions (i don’t know where they came from, but they were special), chard and root vegetables and, for her, pasta tubes stuffed with bolognese lobster. foam is pomegranate on baked apple with pine nut nougat and grenadine. we ran into some deliriously good cheese in spain, and the cheese course here was the best we found anywhere. the wine was fine, as well, one of only 12 rare bottles the sommelier said he is able to snag in a year, but not too rare for us: another round of albarino, do ferreiro cepas vella 2004. and there was also some pea foam along the way. the food here is as good as it sounds. this was the only place we encountered female servers; in spain, where the gender roles appear to be more narrowly defined than americans are accustomed to, maybe that’s chic. (in the winter, at least, leg men -- a la “the man who loved women” -- may be disappointed by their trip to barcelona. the women were all wearing pants, unless they were past 60 and then their skirts were down around the ankles, though not quite long enough to sweep the streets. if you just packed skirts, that’s okay. the people here are tolerant of foreigners, but they may think you are loose or loco.) there’s a lot not happening on sundays and mondays in barcelona. abac had only three occupied tables on the monday night we dropped in. it’s a find.

the aspirations of el raco den freixa, a bit uptown, are also on the cutting edge, the most memorable manifestations a small white tube of honey, not glue, accompanying potato chips and purple potato powder with hake and onions. (come to think of it, they also employ female servers here.) at its heart, however, the food is traditional. apple and corn were teamed up with pork, truffles and beans at some point on the tasting menu, which seemed to be the best alternative since this was our one stop not offering an english menu and it would have been all night before my wife finished translating from her yellow-striped marling menu-master, which will get you only so far. at the outset, the service here was flustered (there was something going on behind the scenes about the language barrier), but the situation smoothed out fairly quickly and remained mellow the rest of the night, at least until chef ramo freixa swung by at the end of the meal for accolades and insinuated that our hosannas were insincere. i hope he believed us, i think he was playing. this is one of those restaurants where the son’s cooking is an attempt to break away from his father’s.

veering from what’s new to the tried and true, neichel is off the avinguda de pedralbes, two blocks from the finca guell, a lodge and stables designed by gaudi, and is on the ground floor at the end of a modern mid-rise apartment building. people rave about this place, and they are right about the food, but not about the dining room, which is conservative fancy pants to a point, but also stirs in kitschy decoration: stacks of red michelin guides, ostrich eggs and fairy-tale mushrooms cluttered up the deep sills in our vicinity. the dining area is set off from the kitchen by small bars stacked with shelves of liquor bottles and dozens of spoons dangling from the ceiling. to keep it all clean, somebody must be doing a prodigious amount of dusting. michelin man jean-louis neichel himself looks like he’s ready to cuddle when he warmly welcomes you on the way in. the staff here is mature, professional, kind and not stuffy. after a few amusing introductions and samples of the day’s appetizers, a five-course tasting menu starts with foie gras, spider lobster and crab tartare, and moves on to a brown-sauced rice with huesca truffles and peas, scallops and chicken with wild mushrooms and couscous, and braised beef cheeks in vilajuiga wine with cinammon, quince and potatoes with chorizo. here is where the french rub shoulders with the spanish, who tend to be more direct in their approach to cooking. the food keeps on coming, but it’s not more than you can handle. the cooking is light, the flavors are clear. after choosing your desert from a cart, you waiter composes it on a plate decorated abstractly with daubs of colorful fruit sauces. our cheese course consisted of six tastes from spain, eaten clockwise, building in strength and ending in blue. wine pairings are a good choice: sr. da folla verde albarino from galicia (i don’t know how rare it is, but it is as good as any albarino i have ever met), villa narcisa verdego, rueda; rene barbier chardonnay, catalunya; biga-tinto tempranillo from rioja (two glasses); and tres pasas pedro ximenez, montilla morices. neichel is a quiet master, he could probably make the tablecloths delectable.

if you like bars, you shouldn’t miss the long and dark one in the front of botafumeiro that is full of characters. we were led to the back dining room, up a half-flight of stairs. This is where they seemed to be taking the english-speaking tourists. don’t worry, you won’t get ditched there. this place is bustling, with some swagger, providing more of a social scene than the small places on our list, so you can really relax. the octopus was the best, the tenderest, most coddled i have ever had, and the serving is easily enough for two. sea cucumber is on the menu, but at a price that makes you think twice about ordering it. sea bass and rolled sole were excellent, cooked just a notch or two above raw, which was the standard wherever we went. it was not a good night for celebrity watching when we were there. one table over, you could only conclude that a may-september couple had had too much to drink when they started diluting their wine with water. their waiter clearly regarded this as a sacrilege, but allowed them to continue.

tram tram -- another small place off the beaten track uptown in the “village” of sarria, about as remote as tenleytown is in washington -- seats non-smokers up front and takes smokers around the bend, which is innovative for this country. (sarria is easily accessible by the underground metro. however, changing to the fgc line at catalunya station requires exiting the system through the turnstiles and re-entering some distance away. we noticed that we weren’t the only ones reluctant to do this, as the signs directed, but you don’t need to worry about being charged for two separate trips. your fare card takes care of it. this would be like exiting the orange line at farragut west and walking over to the red line at farragut, all in one trip. metro’s fare cards won’t allow you to do this, but maybe figuring it out would be an alternative to digging more tunneling for those who want the stations to connect.) the short trip on the fgc, however, was not without incident. sitting opposite from us was a nun returning from a work-shoe shopping spree, all beatified and sucking hard candy. we hadn’t noticed that she tossed the wrapper on the floor of the car, but became aware of the transgression immediately after she deboarded at her station when her accomplice, a primly dressed middle-aged woman with madness burning in her eyes, rushed over to our seat, picked up the litter and began accosting us with accusations we could not understand. somehow we were able to thwart the scheme, otherwise i am dead certain that the contents of my wife’s purse would have ended up in a convent fund earmarked for garments and accessories. when you do exit the station, the street you want is above you, so climb the stairs and then make a left. (keep this in mind also when you are looking for l’impero in new york off of 42nd street. before you get to the united nations, you need to climb the stairs to the playground and the road above you.) tram tram is so welcoming, even soothing, that it was no time before our unpleasant encounter with some of barcelona’s clever ruffians was only a distant memory and we were engaged in light conversation with our waiter, who was born in the philippines and hopes to come to washington, d.c. soon. in his only visit to the states, he went to ohio, which he liked very much, so we assured him he would like our city just as well. chef isidre soler’s cooking is the epitome of simplicity, although the menu suggested there is enough going on that i felt that perhaps i was missing out on something with my cod, which was almost raw and a decent dish, but not up to a big plate of spanish ham, another big plate of sardines, and a lobster entree, all of which were extraordinarily delicious. a plate of potato chips dusted with anise sets the mood. dessert doesn’t get any simpler than a really good pear when you order it prepared naturally; it comes peeled, cored and sliced. our waiter steered us to a nice, reasonably priced bottle of bernat oller merlot. (in general, i would say that wines are not as marked up in spanish restaurants as they are here. also, the only water you will be drinking at your table will be bottled, and when you empty one bottle, they will open another, without asking you. however, you don’t feel like you are getting taken when they do it, so maybe this is something american restaurants should study. i believe it starts out with keeping the water bottles reasonably priced, and not trusting the tap water.)

go to silvestre and hope baby eels are on the menu, served over mashed potatoes with a poached egg and dark garlic. this is transcendently wonderful comfort food. runners up included shrimp ravioli and rabbit with rice sauce. a fondant de avellana streams molten hazelnut sauce into a pool of orange, but if you don’t have much of a sweet tooth, head for the fresh fruit. a full lunch for two runs under $125, roughly half the cost of the other places on this list, which are in the $200-$300 range and are comparable to prices in washington, some relative bargains, others somewhat more expensive than you would pay here. you can get away with $180 or a tad less at botafumeiro.

for coffee and a bit to eat in the morning or mid-day, you can’t beat the riccota cheese with honey at granja m. viader. it’s not exactly easy to find, but it’s only a hop, skip and a jump from bar pinotxo in the mercat de la boqueria. you could almost skip eating out in barcelona if you’re worried about the expense, by shopping at this market. toasted ham and cheese sandwiches, or bikinis, are also available at granja m. viader, but you will get a bigger one, with three slices of bread and more cheese, on the other side of the rambla, at cafe schilling. it’s a bar and a place to eat, the decor half modern and half venerable. it also puts you within striking distance of el ingenio, the place to find toys and incredible papier mache parade masks that are too enormous to carry home easily, although i found a nice pointy-nosed rat that just managed to fit into the overhead bin. la manual alpargartera, also nearby, almost makes espadrilles seem feasible, and they had my wife convinced that she should walk out of the store with a dozen muy elegante pairs until a cooler mind rode to the rescue.

practical imperatives: you may have come to this vibrant city for gaudi, picasso before he started having his periods, medieval art or roman walls, but dining is going to consume more of your time than you expected. our barcelona list is haphazard, and we were left with the impression that you could spend the rest of your life here finding good places to eat, just like in paris. you need to make reservations at most places, no matter how busy they are, and this can be accomplished by e-mail, or leave it to your hotel if you don’t speak spanish. we squandered our time and money on long-distance calls; in most cases, english is the last thing the person answering the phone wants to have to deal with. we hadn’t expected it, but the people of barcelona have to go to work in the morning, even the pickpockets and shell game scammers, so dinner didn’t seem to be as busy as lunch during the week. all of the restaurants were easy to find using the subway and a good map, but crossing barcelona by cab is no more expensive than it is in washington, and the drivers are responsive and don’t expect much of a tip. we left 10% in cash at the table at restaurants, but nobody is forcing you to. for men who face a long trek back from a restaurant to the subway and have expanded their bladders with a couple of bottles of wine and water, i would not recommend copying the native practice of relieving yourself at the far end of the platform on the tracks, with your back discretely turned. While it is true that the security details can pass infrequently, this is not how you want to meet a large bomb-sniffing alsatian. many of barcelona’s best restaurants are away from the bustling city center and off tight streets climbing hillsides north that are dark, crooked and lonesome at one in the morning, but most of the criminals you are likely to run into stick to crowded areas where the attention of patsies can be more easily diverted and there is more scenery to fade into during the getaway. barcelona’s near-legendary fagin’s girls and boys are furtive and expert at running their hands through your pockets or purse rather than confronting you like a bandit, so the uptown passages are not as mean as they would appear. however, in the event of a confrontation, the best response is probably what you were taught in yellowstone about close encounters with grizzly bears: drop to the ground and roll into a ball with your hands behind your neck and hope the attacker isn’t good at playing soccer. if you paid for your dinner in cash, chances are that you have already been cleaned out by the restaurant. the attackers tend to know this, which is another point in the post-prandial tourist’s favor. they would much prefer having their run-in before your meal. but don’t let concerns over personal security ruin your foodie vacation. your chances of something bad occurring are no greater than they would be wandering through shaw on a spring evening looking for vegetate.

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I might need a different moniker now. But more on that later.

We just returned from two extraordinary weeks in northeastern Spain, about which I will say more later, after I've returned home-home, after I've had time to download my gazillion photos and dwell upon the experience for a while. This isn't a travelogue, so I'll stick to the food-related bits. We ate a narrow but convoluted swath across Barcelona. We went bar-hopping for pintxos across Donostio (San Sebastian) for several days. We caught up with a dear old Catalan buddy of mine who hauled us up and down the Costa Brava in pursuit of snails, anxoves, and shellfish to die for (in Roses, just one hill short of El Bulli). I was reunited with my favorite Spanish digestif, absent since the Taberna del Alabardero lost their hookup a dozen years ago. And we found some spiffy books, in English even. But more on those later, much later. Maybe just a peek now.

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An entire country that eats on the same "oops, I forgot to eat" schedule that I do? Lunch in the afternoon, dinner late at night - 9:30 most restaurants are just seating their first diner, but come 10:30 all of the better casual options are packed to capacity. The combination of leisurely dining with the complete absence of "early diners" leads directly to another phenomenon - among the fine-dining establishments, we never saw a table turn. You came, you ate slowly for one to three hours, and the place closed for the night.

José Andrés is a foodie celebrity in his native country, thanks to his short-lived television show, the time he spent with Ferrán Adrìa, and the success of his empire here in DC. It's not available on DVD yet, but apparently he has many novel tricks and techniques for the home kitchen.

Leaping ahead a bit to the fine dining, it was a bit surprising to realize that while here in the US the champions of "molecular gastronomy" are relatively young chefs, the vanguard of Cuina Català Contemporània are mainly older, established chefs, whose fluency in the region's more classic cuisines tends to lead to an inclusive approach to their science-project technologies, instead of the daring postmodernism of Achatz and Dufresne. We dined very well at Abac and Colibrí in Barcelona, and more variably at Akelare near Donostia, but one of my favorite meals ever was the tasting menu at Saüc Restaurant in Barcelona's Eixample. It was creative, vibrant, technically wonderful and also well-orchestrated - three hours later and we were amazed that the final four courses (cheese, plus three desserts in succession) had left us perfectly sated instead of saturated. This was after two amuses, three seafood courses and a foie gras dish. Yes, they were small plates, but each one showed us something new. The fact that dinner ran us €68 per head, including gratuity, was merely icing on the cake. Pictures and details at a later time.

Tipping did baffle us. I continue to be amazed at the lack of information in guidebooks. Credit card slips do not have provisions for adding a tip, and in some places your server will wait for you to sign the slip so they can return with it. Knowing that service is generally included, we spent the first week wandering between the Italian algorithm (round up some) and leaving 10% at the table. Eventually I was set straight by natives: the staff are paid a proper wage from the outset, and few restaurants in Catalunya tip out the servers at all. Your tip is likely to end up entirely in the pockets of the owner (maybe okay in small chef-owned establishments) but for the same reason, generous tips might be considered an insult to the server, who is unlikely to receive any of it. In the end, we gave up and rounded up only when paying in cash.

Finally, Spain also provided me with the worst case of food poisoning ever, when we let our guards down this past Sunday and ate at a couple of dives. I dunno if it was the hippie rice balls, the unprocessed apple juice, or the staggeringly bad Indian food (free tip: the first day of Ramadan might not be the best time to eat at a Muslim Indian restaurant; that grumpy scowl on the staff's face might be actual hunger, and not merely seething anti-Americanism), but I've been living on yogurt and ginger ale for the last 36 hours, and things are only 70% rebooted. Ol_ironstomach is going to need some welding and Rustoleum.

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My family and I are going to ... Barcelona ...

My best seafood eating experience ever was at Botafumeiro in Barcelona. They had an array of seafood. I split a gigantic cold seafood platter for my meal. If memory serves (and it has been eight years), it had great prawns, lobster, oyster, crab legs, etc. Another person in the group ordered the Spider crab, which was enormous but also delicious. It's a bit crowded and pricey, but I'll definitely head back when I (some day) return to Barcelona.

http://www.botafumeiro.es/indexen.htm

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It's been years since I've been. So I can't remember the name of this cafe, but I'm sure this place is in the tour guides. Nothing better than some of their freshly fried churros and rich hot chocolate with cream to dip them in. There were some other really tasty looking pastries, but we didn't get any of them.

Though while we were walking the streets we found a churro cart that had these delicious custard-filled ones. I thought it wouldn't beSo they might be pretty good almost anywhere you can find them. Mmm...

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there is some more barcelona information on the board here:

http://www.donrockwell.com/index.php?showt...mp;hl=barcelona

it's been a couple of years, but i can't think of a better destination for food.

i would definitely check out what is up these days with el celler de can roca (www.cellercanroca.com).

it may not be el bulli, but i had never experienced anything like it before. it's a nice train trip away from barcelona in girona. also, i believe they still have a restaurant in barcelona itself, called moo.)

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Lucky me - I'm making a last minute (and brief) trip to Barcelona next week for work. We're staying at the Hilton Diagonal Mar so I'd love suggestions of what to seek out/avoid near the hotel. Keep in mind that I'll be with the same picky-eater client I have mentioned previously for most meals. He actually might do well in Spain because he loves seafood. Nothing haute though. Any ideas?

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Lucky me - I'm making a last minute (and brief) trip to Barcelona next week for work. We're staying at the Hilton Diagonal Mar so I'd love suggestions of what to seek out/avoid near the hotel. Keep in mind that I'll be with the same picky-eater client I have mentioned previously for most meals. He actually might do well in Spain because he loves seafood. Nothing haute though. Any ideas?

Wow--you lucky ducky! You should be totally fine if you can just embrace the eating style--a few pinxos here and then move on to the next place. Not only does that let you taste a lot, but it also makes it easy to just pay and walk out of a restaurant that's not offering anything you enjoy. Admittedly, that's actually hard for a lot of Americans, including my parents, to do, but it's worth it. It's been a few years, so I don't remember any of the names (ooo--except Los Caracoles--a well-known local and tourist spot [though I may have had the wool pulled over my eyes on the "local" part] that serves a lot of seafood, traditionally, and offers a fine meal in a lovely environment) but you should just move around and taste as you go. It's the way to go.

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Any updates or new information? My parents are visiting soon (!) and asked me for recommendations...they like to sample good, but not super fancy, super pricey, meals, preferably in the local style. They are specifically looking for good tapas, Basque food, Catalan food, and paella. Thanks in advance for any help!!!

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I was just in Barcelona. I'd recommend;

Paco Merlago (c/ Muntaneer 171) for excellent seafood tapas. Paella looked good there but I didn't try it. It's also open on Sunday which is nice.

Bar Inopia (Tamarit 104) also good for tapas.

Cerveceria Catalana (c/ Malloca 236) Decent tapas, good local atmosphere.

The bars in the Boqueria market are also nice.

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Any updates or new information? My parents are visiting soon (!) and asked me for recommendations...they like to sample good, but not super fancy, super pricey, meals, preferably in the local style. They are specifically looking for good tapas, Basque food, Catalan food, and paella. Thanks in advance for any help!!!

This coming Sunday, the New York Times Travel Section feature "36 Hours in . . ." will spotlight Barcelona. There are a couple of ideas in there, which you can read now on the internet.

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Our favorite place, and the only restaurant we went back to a second time during our week in Barcelona in 2007, was Cal Pep. Forget about the seating area in the back and wait in line for a spot at the friendly, casual bar. Pristine seafood prepared in front of you, great staff, very casual and reasonably priced. I loved this place.

I will warn you though, the photos on the web site are horrible! Don't let them discourage you (or your parents) from trying this place.

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Our favorite place, and the only restaurant we went back to a second time during our week in Barcelona in 2007, was Cal Pep. Forget about the seating area in the back and wait in line for a spot at the friendly, casual bar. Pristine seafood prepared in front of you, great staff, very casual and reasonably priced. I loved this place.

I will warn you though, the photos on the web site are horrible! Don't let them discourage you (or your parents) from trying this place.

I have also been to Cal Pep. I echo this poster's sentiments and suggest getting a seat in the back. The front bar is overwhelming. I was with a group of 5 and we were able to get a reservation. If the fried baby artichokes are available, ask for two orders.

Eating in the Boqueria is also a great Barcelona experience. I particularly love the places where you pick your fish from the fish monger and they cook it for you in the same stall.

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I have also been to Cal Pep. I echo this poster's sentiments and suggest getting a seat in the back. The front bar is overwhelming. I was with a group of 5 and we were able to get a reservation. If the fried baby artichokes are available, ask for two orders.

If you can't get into Passadis del Pep, his formal restaurant, make your way to Tapas del pep. Straight bar tapas, a wait for sure, but well worth it. I waited two hours for Pep himslef to ask me what I liked, and serve up the most delicious tapas. I ate my weight in seafood, causing Pep to remark "she looks small, but wow, she eats a lot." One of my favorite memories from Barca.

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My parents just returned this week, having had a fabulous time, and said that they enjoyed this restaurant so much they went twice :D Thanks for the excellent recommendation!

Sure. Glad to send some business Pep's (the chef, and when I was there, lone cook) way. I'm glad they enjoyed it, and a bit jealous...

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My wife and I recently spent a week in Barcelona. We loved Restaurant Gelonch for a stupendous and reasonably priced multi-course dinner.

And for tapas, one of our favorites was Quimet et Quimet. Paco Meralgo is a don't miss, and if you're a pig lover, Jamonisimo should be on your short list.

Was in Barcelona for 5 days back in October. We hit up the usual tapas hot spots: Tapas 24, Paco Meralgo, Cerveceria Catalunya, Lolita, Cal Pep, Bar Pintxo in the Boqueria. Cal Pep and Paco Meralgo were my personal highlights but all sent out some very good food. We got in with no wait almost everywhere when we showed up around 8:30; we were second in line at lunch for Cal Pep at 11:45 and while the counter *is* frenetic, as described above, it was fun and the locals seated next to us were friendly and told us what to get. Note that Paco Meralgo is open Sunday nights which made it a no-brainer then when very few places are open. I would buy a plane ticket tomorrow to go back to Quimet y Quimet, a standing room only bar that makes gorgeous montaditos to order. I recall a creamy cheese and caviar one, topped with a jewel of a shrimp (which I see now is linked in the blog above. YAY! Oh how I loved that place). Just fabulous and they have a good beer selection too, which excited my beer geek mate very much. Have a spectacular journey!

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Haven't been in a couple years, but I would check for Commerc 24 reviews. If it is as good as it was, then that would be on the top of my list. It might still be my favorite meal of all time. The cuttlefish ravioli I had was great.

We also had a very good lunch at cincsentits. Expensive and fancy and modern and worth it.

And, for a most decent to very good cocktail, Dry Martini is great and just a block or two from Paco Meralgo.

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Thanks for all the suggestions - we will definitely make use of them and report back post-trip.

Anybody been to Inopia (Albert Adria's tapas bar)? It's near our hotel, so we may have to give it a try.

Inopia is now Lolita which was near our hotel as well. It was very good, I recommend a soybean, avocado and egg dish drizzled with truffle oil. It wasn't clear to me if the Adria connection was still there but it was clear that the place was still popular among the locals and gets very crowded.

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We also had a very good lunch at cincsentits. Expensive and fancy and modern and worth it.

And, for a most decent to very good cocktail, Dry Martini is great and just a block or two from Paco Meralgo.

We ate at cinc sentis too. I liked it, as well. Reminded me of a Spanish Le Paradou.

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Thanks for all the suggestions - we will definitely make use of them and report back post-trip.

Anybody been to Inopia (Albert Adria's tapas bar)? It's near our hotel, so we may have to give it a try.

I don't believe the Adrias are involved any more.

But the new Adria place, Tickets, is open, and Eater did a spread back in January...Tickets.

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Anyone have any good hotel recommendations?

Whichever hotel you stay in try to stay as close to the Ramblas as you can. Barcelona also has one of the most incredible markets in Europe directly off of it. Good luck with the Euro!

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Anyone have any good hotel recommendations?

Casa Camper - Amazing. Great location. Very hip and artsy but quite possibly my favorite hotel anywhere. It is worth the splurge. If you want to potentially cheap it, the Nunez Navarro chain hotels are very nice. They range from 5* 1898 Hotel right on the Ramblas to the Hotel Jazz 3* a few blocks off Placa Catalunya.

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Whichever hotel you stay in try to stay as close to the Ramblas as you can. Barcelona also has one of the most incredible markets in Europe directly off of it. Good luck with the Euro!

I disagree. Don't get me wrong, La Boqueria is an amazing market with some great restaurants inside and you're going to want to go there many times. But the Ramblas is noisy, crowded, and at night loud with drunk kids...I'd pick a hotel in a quieter area within comfortable walking distance to the Ramblas (of which there are many). I wouldnt recommend the hotel we stayed in particularly, but the area, near the Picasso museum, was perfect.

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We stayed at the Market Hotel which I recommend for the price, comfort & location. It's on top of a metro stop, the Mercat Sant Antoni, and about a 15 minute walk to the Rambla. It's also a 7 min walk to Quimet & Quimet.

We stayed there as well (in March) and were mostly very happy with it. I'd suggest requesting a room away from the elevator area and bringing a pair of ear plugs - there are lots of noisy scooters buzzing around the city at all hours . The old market building is being renovated, but there are temporary structures (similar to what was used at Eastern Market) with great food stalls and a clothing/home goods building as well. I really liked the location - we walked a lot but the Metro stop is close by and so is the stop for the very inexpensive airport bus. It would have been great to have access to a kitchen, as there are numerous markets in the city and so many beautiful choices.

I've been remiss in posting about where we ate and will try to get something up in the next few days.

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I suggest an apartment, with a kitchen. Then you can appreciate the quality of the raw food products sold at La Boqureia.

We rented an apartment from friendlyrentals.com and were very happy with that. It was clean, comfortable, centrally located and a good deal. Also had lots of room for food and wine storage and consumption. I would go that way again. It was super easy to arrange, and get the key and find the place. The only downfall was getting the luggage in and out without help, but that was my fault for packing a heavy suitcase.

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Casa Camper - Amazing. Great location. Very hip and artsy but quite possibly my favorite hotel anywhere. It is worth the splurge. If you want to potentially cheap it, the Nunez Navarro chain hotels are very nice. They range from 5* 1898 Hotel right on the Ramblas to the Hotel Jazz 3* a few blocks off Placa Catalunya.

Beware the attached natural foods restaurant, though. Their apple juice was the prime suspect in the worst case of food poisoning I've had in my life...I couldn't eat normally for weeks afterward. And the rice balls were as bland and boring as I had expected. But I couldn't convince my dear wife to pick somewhere else to lunch that day.

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I've been remiss in posting about where we ate and will try to get something up in the next few days.

So, finally (and with definite memory gaps, due to the time that has passed) here is an overview of several of the spots we tried in Barcelona.

I loved Barcelona and there was no shortage of good food. Some of the places recommended in earlier posts weren’t my favorite – perhaps the result of heightened expectations, or maybe they’re resting on their laurels.

Los Cachitos - recommended by a hotel employee around the corner as a decent local spot, it didn't disappoint. My love affair with pimentons de Padron* began here. Very good patatas bravas and fried calamari, among other things. Kind and friendly staff, as well.

Quimet y Quimet – This was one of our first, and favorite, stops. The kindness of strangers served us well, as a friendly local helped us order and made sure we got some good things to try. The montaditos were great and, while there was a bit of a language barrier the owner was quite amenable to the pointing and asking (in broken Spanglish) for something made with a particular item. Standing only, so people move on relatively quickly. It was here that we learning about dropping the little paper napkins and toothpick wrappers on the floor - apparently it's the thing to do :D

Tapas 24 – a basic selection of tapas, we walked in late afternoon/early evening and were quickly seated at the bar where we enjoyed the bikini (ham and cheese sandwich) and a few other bites.

La Seu – wonderful little cheese shop, run by a Scotswoman. Allegedly the only shop in the whole of Spain dedicated to Spanish cheeses. Stop in for a tasting of 3 cheeses and a ‘got’ of wine for about 3 Euros.

Zim – wine bar, sister to La Seu. Seats about 12, a great spot for a glass of wine in a relaxed environment. Small menu of meats, olives, etc.

Café de L'Academia – this was a great recommendation from a friend. They have a great 3-course lunch deal (even cheaper if you sit at the bar). It's just down the (narrow) street from La Seu and Zim.

La Pineda – 16, carrer del Pi - great little deli/tapas spot in the Gothic quarter. If you can find a seat, they’ll fix you up a nice plate of charcuterie, cheese, or your choice of a few other bites.

Lolita Taperia (formerly Inopia) – we managed to get in here twice with minimal wait time, though both visits were on the later side. A lively place with some fun/interesting twists – we did try the edamame/avocado/egg (Yum!) and several other bites.

41° (Tickets) – Closest I expect I’ll ever get to an Adria restaurant. Tickets is only available by reservation (and they were booked through June in early March), but we were able to have a few cocktails in 41°, along with small plates, some of which are apparently from the El Bulli menu. The parmesan ice cream sandwich and the dried raspberry meringue are dishes that stood out. The cocktail menu was extensive and it was one of the few places we saw that was really doing the "craft cocktail" thing. They made a lovely Aviation and had an extensive selection of gins. Tickets looked quite a spectacle, with an elaborately costumed door man and different stations throughout the restaurant. According to the website, it now looks like reservations are required at 41°, as well.

365 café – this was a quick, cheap spot for a café con leche and a croissant in the morning. Nothing special, but fairly convenient to our hotel.

Bar Boqueria – In the Boqueria, we much preferred this to Bar Pintxo. Easy to find a seat at the counter and lots of dishes to choose from - the spinach tortilla was very good, as were some small, spicy sausages.

Maoz – Falafel chain – counter service, with some room to perch. A great way to get a cheap meal, as they have the endless topping bar. Falafel was pretty good and could be ordered in a bowl, which facilitated repetitive adding of toppings as we saw several guys do while we enjoyed a sandwich. I had no idea that Maoz is in DC, but I liked it.

Café del opera along la Rambla – chocolate and churros in a very pretty setting. Kind of reminds me of Caffe Vittoria in Boston’s North End.

Mercat Sant Antoni – an indoor market, in a temporary location while the (beautiful) old market building located across the street is being renovated. There is also a building housing clothing and home goods.

Mercat de Santa Caterina is another indoor market in a very interesting, modern building. Not too far from Cal Pep and a nice stop for market junkies (like me).

Honestly, I felt as if Bar Pintxo and Cal Pep are trading on their names more than anything else. We had plenty of food that was as good or better than what we experienced at either of these spots, for a lot less money and a lot less hassle.

We did our own gourmet tour of Barcelona, using this map, which I "borrowed" from a tourism website. Pastisseria Brunells had some wonderful traditional pastries and a nice little cafe next door.

* small green peppers roughly the size of your thumb. They're fried in olive oil, salted, and served at many tapas bars in Spain. If anyone knows where to find them around here, PLEASE let me know B)

Edited by goldenticket
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* small green peppers roughly the size of your thumb. They're fried in olive oil, salted, and served at many tapas bars in Spain. If anyone knows where to find them around here, PLEASE let me know B)

Shishito peppers, perhaps? La Tienda sells them fresh, and you can find them on the menu at Estadio.

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