Silly Disciple

Gaucho, I dont mean to contradict you but Las Lilas is not a tourist trap but a tourist experience similar to Joes Stone Crab in Miami. Any serious visitor to Buenos Aires should make LA Lilas there first steak experience, after that try the local suggestions and compare. Price should not be the only determining difference. On my last visit, I was told that Negra Rosa was better for steak and upon my visit I found it a real tourist trap for locals. ← I think the point (which I agree with, btw) is not that Cabaña Las Lilas is expensive, but that even if you don't care about price, value for money is not worth the visit.

La Torre de Can Roca has been their banquet facility for quite a while, and it is indeed bound to become their new restaurant location. ← After my lunch last November, I chatted with Josep Roca and he gave me the impression that La Torre will continue to be their banquet facility and the new location for their restaurant is somewhere in the old part of town. ← They switched the banquet operation from la Torre to Mas Marroch, a country house in the outskirts of Girona, a while back. Not quite sure when exactly, but I can find out.

La Torre de Can Roca has been their banquet facility for quite a while, and it is indeed bound to become their new restaurant location.

Roca, pg. 129, recommends 12 minutes at 60C, to reach a center-of-product temperature of 48C.

I second Doc's recommendation of Rafa's. Moreover, in Roses you have La LLar, Joan Viñas' restaurant, which holds (or held, not sure) a Michelin star. Also close, just outside Figueres and a 20 minute drive from Roses you have Xavi Sagrista's Mas Pau restaurant, with one star as well.

Nope, according to their website they close on Sunday evenings and Tuesdays.

For fish and seafood on a Monday, I would either recommend Hispania in Arenys de Mar, which is close to Sant Celoni, and Rias de Galicia, here in Barcelona.

Chris, to answer your questions: The plain pasta, such as spaghettis, are in the 7-10 euro range per kilo, depending on the ingredient( plain egg, beetroot, spinach, squid, saffron, pumpkin, etc.) The stuffed pasta (ravioli, pansotti, etc) is in the 15-18 euro range, also per kilo and also depending on the filling, and it can go above these prices for things like Xmas specials, like foie ravioli. We also have a lunch menu, for a price that will be around 6-7 euros, for a bowl of pasta, a drink, a piece of bread and either a starter (ie we're making gazpacho now) or a dessert. We haven't started serving the full thing yet, as we need to adjust the logistics of our main product, the pasta itself. As for the supply chain, we have the best produce we can ask for, coming from the market itself. Most of the ingredients we use, save for flour and some cheeses, are not 50 feet away from our stall. We can daily adjust our production accordingly, and offer the freshest products right at their peak. We're so lucky to have the opportunity to do so, as I think there are very few establishments (save for high end or product oriented places, of course) who can do this. In a way we are doing market cuisine, from within the market!

Fantastic! What is the first batch going to be? ← Today we're making both veal ravioli and eggplant pansotti (triangular ravioli).

I'm typing this sitting in our stall, in the Boqueria market. Pretty much everything is in place, plus or minus a few details. We just finished lunch and are about to start producing what should be the first batch of stuffed pasta, to be sold tomorrow morning... I am a happy man.

sockster, remember that most of the market is closed on Monday, save for the stalls in the front which are more oriented to tourism these days. mar, we'll be there for a long time, hopefully, so there should be plenty of occasions.

As far as I know, Gaig is not really noted for the seafood, but rather for his interpretation and execution of catalan dishes.

Easy , it's for the stall number, 920 - 921.

This Sat the 30th. By all means stop by if you like.

(Almost) open for business...

Kitchen's usually close around 11:30-12:00, at least in Barcelona, so I don't think you could get a reservation at 11:30 even if you tried. As Bergerka points out, the earliest is around 9:00, some places may do 8:30.

pepe, I'm sorry to say that the stall is closed not just this past Monday but all Mondays, same as most of the market, and same for Sundays. We may eventually open on Mondays just for the lunch hours, depending on whether demand justifies it.

I second Viking's suggestion of Lasarte as an option, we had a really good meal there a couple of weeks ago.

Since this project started about 16 months ago and we were hoping to open last summer, "on schedule" is a term we stopped using a long time ago . But in general terms, yes, we are happy with the progress and hope to open in about three weeks time, by the end of June.

We have an extruder now. It's a little beauty. Well, not exactly little. It's more like a beatiful mammoth. Yesterday, around 5pm, the delivery company showed up with a 2m x 1.5m x 1.5m box (I kid you not), 600kg, and pretty much left it in front of the stall for us to place it in. We unpacked it, knowing that we had bought a slightly smaller mammoth. we had to remove one of the stall's front surfaces to make it fit, and with some help in the end the machine was in. Next week a technician is coming from Italy to do the final assemply and show us how to operate it. Chris: Unfortunately I don't have a good diagram in digital format to show, but hopefully in a few days I will have pictures of the finished stall and will be able to explain it better. Corinna: yes, we will do ravioli and other stuffed pasta, as well as extruded pasta (spagetti, penne and the like), tagliatelle and also lasagna sheets. We will also offer fresh sauces, pasta salads and cold soups during the summer and a few desserts to match.

It's sold out and out of print as far as I know. I've heard they want to re edit it, but that rumor has been going on for a while now. In the meantime, try the file sharing universe, or PM me.

More construction going on. The builders are moving rather quickly, I think (what do I know, really). We should have the extruder/pasta cutter we bought from Italy within the next 5 to 7 days, and the builders have assured me they will be ready to receive it, so I guess we should see a lot of improvement in the next few days. We've also setup a site/blog here: Pasta Fresca Pazzta920, which follows the whole thing in Spanish (and Catalan too, soon). Note in the picture above how they've already put in the the fake ceiling (in wood). They should be putting the new tiles today, so maybe I'll have some pictures of that tonight. The guy to the left in the picture below is Juan, one of our two remaining partners, who is the cook behind the production and will be manning the stall on a daily basis.

Construction work, two days later: Progress has been made. They've closed the second front door which we won't use. They've made the hole to move the door between the kitchen and the shop. The shop's floor is done. The pictures also show how they removed the old surface since we're replacing it. I'm moderately happy about how the work is going, I guess. Also, hopefully we should have the main machine from Italy next week.

C'mon, you didn't really go to Meson David just for the food. In fact, you can get similar food in maybe 10 other places in the city. It was the atmosphere that made it fun. And the new owners have turned that into the usual tourist trap atmosphere. Moreover, I've been twice since they changed owners (I have friends who own a youth hostel a couple of blocks away), and I do think that the food has gone downhill (not that it was that great to begin with). My two cents: not worth it anymore.