Dining In and Around Barcelona Part 1 - Tapas and Traditional Restaurants

Due to my good fortune in getting a reservation at El Bulli, combined with the availability of a non-stop flight in exchange for miles, I recently spent the better part of a week in Barcelona. Arriving on a Tuesday morning after an overnight flight from Newark Airport, I checked into my hotel and immediately headed over to La Boqueria so I could immerse myself in the local culinary culture. It was 11:30 in the morning when I arrived and the energy level in the market was amazing. I wonder if anyone knows exactly how many transactions happen there each day? It was a toss-up between Pintoxo and El Quim as to where I was gojng to have lunch, but the fomer was desserted while the latter was bustling with people so the choice was easy and within moments of arriving at El Quim, someone was getting up and I sat down to the right side of the counter.

A Swiss couple was sitting to my left and they were eating a plate of gambas that looked pretty good. They saw me looking at their plate and they started up a conversation, telling me how delicious they were. Hmmm, I was interested in chiperones, and the gambas were sort of ruining my plan. But then I noticed a plate of some lovely looking mushrooms on the counter in front of me. Oh screw it I said to myself and I ordered all three dishes. Gambas first in a garlic and wine sauce. Tasty but a hair overcooked for my preferences. But the chiperones were superb, Grilled ala plancha and served atop a fried egg, I broke the yolk and dabbed the baby squid in the yellow sauce. Delicious and I imagined that Catalan babies must grow up eating this way. A plate of firm and tasty mushrooms with a roasted tomato in the middle of the plate tasted of fall and was a terrific way to end the meal.

On the flight over I had run into an old business colleague and his wife -- people who I hadn’t seen in years and who were now in their early 80’s - and we made plans to have dinner on my first night in town. I was meeting friends beginning on Wednesday,. but I was planning to dine along on Tuesday night so their company was welcome. I booked a table at Passadis del Pep in order to settle an old argument on OA. OA used to have a few members who were located in Spain, and who used to criticize the tapas bar Cal Pep for being a touristy restaurant. Pouring even more sea salt on the Cal Pep wounds, they would also claim that Passadis del Pep, run by Pep’s brother or uncle or cousin etc. was a better restaurant. And as someone who was always a fan of Cal Pep, I went to see if there was anything to their claim.

The routine at Passadis is that you get to choose your main dish out of a list of four to five dishes featuring fish or seafood that are fresh that day, but the rest of the meal is a parade of dishes that the kitchen chooses for you. All of the Catalan staples are there, from gambas to clams to cockles to chiperones which I followed with a hunk of turbot. A plate of rice that was cooked with espardenyes was superb with the rice as starchy, crunchy and al dente as possible. The stuff was addictive and if I lived in Barcelona I would consider eating it regularly. Cigalas, or sea crickets as they are called in English, were stewed with onions and then shrimp from Palamos that were grilled ala plancha in sea salt. We drank an 1981 Cune Vuna Real which was superb and cost all of 45 euros.

The first of dining companions for the weekend arrived the next morning and we made a bee-line over to Cal Pep for lunch so I could do my comparison. To be honest, if someone can find a difference in the quality between what they serve at Cal Pep versus Passadis del Pep, more power to them. The food is virtually the same and if anything, I would give Cal Pep the slight edge but that’s really picking nits. Anyway we had a tasty meal with the highlights being clams ala plancha with bits of chopped bacon, a delicious stew of chiperones and chickpeas and a creamy egg and potato tortilla that was slathered with aioli.

Dinner was at Arola (I know you’re saying this post is supposed to be about traditional food but it is relevant to the story) because we were staying in the hotel the restaurant is located in and they gave us 60 Euro vouchers which we could use in any restaurant in the hotel. Well the food was awful and we left in the middle of the meal, canceling the remaining dishes that we ordered. The best dish is pictured below, a ceviche of mushrooms with cubes of foie gras. But even that was a mess. Still hungry, even after having eaten half a meal, we jumped in a taxi for a Basque asador called Gorria which I had read about in Margarita Puig’s new guide to dining in Barcelona. Well we weren’t disappointed and while it didn’t rival the very best steaks that I’ve had in the Basque Country, the meat was marbled and beefy tasting. It also reminded me that when you’re having a meal and things get tough, a good hunk of meat goes a long way and this one nearly made us forget our disaster at Arola.

The next day the rest of the crew arrived and we had a late lunch at Taberna del Clinic which is sort of an advanced tapas bar that serves dishes like rice with white truffles shaved on it. We were in a rush so we limited our meal to some ham and some delicious large prawns from Palamos (sorry no photos).

Dinner on Friday was at Bar Inopia which is somewhat difficult to get into if you don’t know someone. In fact they have a velvet rope outside of the restaurant and with the moderately sized line of people waiting to get in, they were doing their best Studio 54 imitation. Fortunately I had been to El Bulli the night before and Albert Adria arranged a reservation for us so when Signor Plotnicki and amigos arrived, the velvet rope magically disappeared and we were led right to the tapas bar where we had front and center seats along with four other friends of the house. The food at Inopia was much different than what I imagined it to be. Given that Albert is one of the owners, I had thought it would take a page and feature a few molecular sleights of hand from the El Bulli playbook. But it was pretty straight forward and the food was ingredient based, the best dishes being bonito in a mustard sauce, grilled octopus with a pimenton laden mayonnaise and tuna belly topped with tomato sauce. But to be honest the food at Inopia is almost secondary. The place is so much fun, and the energy level so high, and the people who eating there and working there so friendly and jovial, that the food is almost an afterthought.

(To be continued....)












autoatically get a tasting menu of various seafood dishes with

11/22/2009 | Add a Comment | Barcelona, Albert Adria, La Boqueria, Tapas, Margarita Puig