Barcelona, February 2002

[Wilfrid]

[Note: correct name and address of charcuterie now added to original post.]

Here it is at last, a bit long, but I thought it worth doing properly if at all:

This trip, planned long ago, was first postponed, then savagely truncated by other commitments.  What I did not do, to my great regret, was experience some of the new cutting edge cooking which is plainly happening in Barcelona, and even if I'd had a chance to research vdelaserna's recommendations, I would have had little time to try them.  So all I have are some comments on places concerned with retrieving and serving good Catalan cuisine - a movement which has been afoot for a number of years now, and has, of course, vast local significance because of the clampdown on Catalonian language and culture in all the years under Franco.  My suggestions here really only represent one kind of eating you should do in Barcelona.  If you are there longer, you will want to try the newer restaurants, and, in summer especially, indulge in some seafood around Barceloneta.

I started with Bux's recommendation, Ca d'Isidre, on my first night in town (it's on the short street C. Les Flors which runs north from C. de Sant Pau just before you reach the big main street, Paral.lel).  I was staying at the Hotel Oriente on the Ramblas - very plain, but clean and tranquil ($77 a night) - and Ca d'Isidre was only a short walk away, through the so-called Barri Xines, or Chinatown, which we are now told should be called "El Raval" (a bit like you're supposed to call hell's Kitchen "Clinton").  I was planning only to case the joint, but I was hungry, there were tables...

Isidre turned out to be Isidre Girones, the very pleasant proprietor.  He had the courtesy to converse with me in Spanish, which must be a painful experience for any native Spanish speaker.  The restaurant was very quiet, and he told me that American trade had fallen off dramatically since last September.  There were some Brits in the place, and sure enough the locals started wandering in for dinner, in true Barcelona style, around 11.30.  Girones showed me a copy of last November's "Saveur", which featured his restauarnt heavily, and I was pleased to identify in the photos, along with Griones, the bushy-bearded figure of Senor Nunez, proprietor of El Ateneu - more later.  He was pleased with my wine order, a 1992 Hacienda Monasterio Riserva from the Ribera del Duero.  I picked this without hesitation, as I had drunk the wine (from a later year) in New York; I hadn't realised, until Girones told me, that it comes from the same stable as Pingus, the Ribera's vastly expensive bid for superstardom.  It was $38 the bottle.

I ordered an appetizer of angulas, tiny, whole baby eels, served over a salad of frisee lettuce and the delicate local judias - small fava beans.  The nest of eels looked like julienned celeriac, or maybe cold spaghetti.  On close inspecton, they had tiny little faces.  My first few mouthfuls made me think - ah, texture food.  The flavor was slow in coming, but it did arrive - sweet, very mild, nothing like the strong flavour of full-size eels.  Not an explosive dish, but I liked it.  

Next, a boned pig's foot stuffed with foie gras and a diverting mixture of wild mushrooms, topped with some big slices of black truffle, in its own, sticky, truffle-specked juice.  No accompanying vegetables or extraneous garnish, and I didn't expect any.  Rich, satisfying, and you could have put up wallpaper with the gravy.

The cheeses were a slight disappointment.  I had spotted a trayful, with little plastic flags, as soon as I'd walked in.  Surprisingly, it turned out to be a selection of well-kept boutique French cheeses, some of which were new to me, and I wondered why he didn't serve regional cheeses from La Boqueria market.

No fireworks, but a subtle, serious, grown-up restaurant.  Three courses with the wine, around $95 (obviously cheaper for two people sharing the wine) - and this was with luxury ingredients at a high end restaurant.  Next thing I knew, I was enjoying a couple of glasses of cognac (Magno) in a new-looking bar full of people younger and arguably sexier than myself.  Simple but stylish bars are everywhere around the old city: this one was just a bare room on the ground floor of a nineteenth century building.  A big, steel bar.  A few nice artworks on the wall.  A dj playing pleasant and relatively quiet music.  And beautiful people.  The night moved on to Bar Pastis, an absinthe-ridden dive on a side street which was once patrolled by transvestite hookers who looked like they'd retired from the WWF.  

Just a word on safety.  Bux mentioned that he'd been warned about the area around Ca d'Isidre after dark.  As so often, I think one key thing is whether you look like a lost, well-off tourist or not.  There is no real obstacle to patronising Ca d'Isidre after dark, because you can either approach it from the well-lit, busy (Paral.lel) end, or you can arrive and leave by taxi - they'll find one for you.  I have no problem with the busier streets of the Barri Xines after dark, but then I do (usually) know where I'm going.  You certainly do not want to get lost in the side streets - they are a creepy maze.  I was amazed to see that some of the grotesque bar/brothels, relics of a distant, sad past, still exist.  They will eventually be swept away by the re-building and modernisation going on in the area.  Everywhere in Barcelona is plagued by petty, non-violent thievery now (and London is going the same way), so always keep your valuables hidden.

Breakfast the next morning inside Barcelona's central food market, La Boqueria.  There are about half a dozen full scale tapa bars dotted around the market floor, and most of them have had something of a refurb since I was last here.  Artichoke tortilla and a glass of rose.  Morning drinking is encouraged; the two old guys next to me were polishing off a bottle of cava for breakfast.

One thing I've noticed in Barcelona over the last three or four years are new food stores/delicatessens which make the regional produce of Catalonia easily accessible.  No longer do you have to know which bodega serves a particularly tasty sausage - you can go to stores which serve a whole range, along with cheeses and local wines.  I pause now to kick myself, because I have lost the cards I picked up.  Anyway, there is a huge craft shop on C. dels Escudellers, on the block after the old Los Caracoles restaurant as you head towards Las Ramblas.  Hard to miss it, as the ground floor is a vast repository of regional Spanish ceramics - pots, tiles and so on.  Look down through the windows in the floor, and you will see an equally vast cellar where they are aging hams, slicing all kinds of cold cuts and cheeses, and serving local wines by the glass or bottle.  I took lunch on my second day at a newer charcuterie called Xaloc, only six months old, where a library of aging hams covers one wall.  I watched the staff climbing ladders and dipping long prongs into the hams to check the aroma, and thus presumably their progress.  You can order meats or cheeses individually, or eat a selection (and, of course, buy them to take away).  I ate the assortment of Catalonian sausage, a big plate of hard salamis, soft slicing sausages, and sweet cooked hams; about $9 with a glass of cold beer.  Xaloc is on one of the upmarket shopping streets in the upper part of the Barri Gotic, near the old Sant Pi church - C. de la Palla, 17.

While eating, I flicked through a local magazine, managing to understand a little Catalan.  Like another good omen, there was an article about Senor Nunez and his Ateneu restaurant.  This revealed, as far as I could make out, that Nunez is an old-time anarchist radical, who was a publisher/bookseller before creating his restaurant.  One of his interests was re-discovering the historical cuisine of Barcelona.  A new dish on his menu, "Bacallo del Alquemista del Call" was an old moorish-accented dish which he had restored in order to celebrate the arrival of Islamic Bosnian immigrants in the city over the last few years.  I took mental note.

The evening began with cold beer at El Portalon, a dingy bar on Carrer dels Banys Nous in the Barri Gotic.  El Portalon has a curved, ribbed brick ceiling, and you feel a little like you are drinking inside a barrel.  I ate a light tapa of snails, stewed with salt pork, onion and garlic, and served in the resulting broth.

Then it was dinner in the restaurant (as opposed to wine bar) at El Ateneu Gastronomic (http://www.ateneu.com/).  I have been eating here since shortly after it opened, seven or eight years ago.  It is a labor of love.  The restaurant is quite Spartan; bare floor, hard chairs (take a sweater in winter), but with table cloths and uniformed staff.  The menu used to be a lovely affair of deckled parchment, but is now plainer and plastic covered (it's in Catalan, Castilian and English).

The menu is divided into plates para picar - essentially for picking at and sharing - cold and hot appetizers, and so on.  I mention this because the prices are such that you would be crazy not to order a sharing plate followed by an appetizer and entree. You can pick at selections of sausage and cheese, or big slices of toasted country bread with various toppings.  I chose a mixed foie gras plate.  The ample portions of local foie gras came in two styles: the usual mi cuit, but with a firm, interesting texture and deep flavor which suggested home-made rather than mass produced; or a terrine with dashes of prunes and other dried fruit, soaked in a good sweet wine.  The latter nearly made me cry.  My appetizer was a rustic sort of dish I've ordered before: the sweet local fava beans, cooked to tenderness, then quickly sauteed with chunks of terrific dried ham, lightly dressed with olive oil and sprinkled with fresh mint.  And it's a big plateful.

I usually eat a meat dish next, with a red from the local producer Raimat, but mindful of my earlier history lesson, I ate the Alchemist's salt cod.  Ungarnished, as is customary, the fish needed more vigorous flavoring; the mild crust of spices didn't really kick it out of blandness.  It was topped with some bitter olives, which did add some drama.  I drank a rose, Mas Comtal Rosat de Penedes, 2000 (I drink a lot of rose in Barcelona, where it is taken quite seriously, and is not a "pink confection").

For dessert, slices of fresh goat's cheese with a sweet tomato marmalade.  I chose a mysterious dessert wine called "Hydromiel", which turned out to be a kind of honey eau-de-vie with some frightening sediment which eventually settled.  I recommend the moscatels.

The check?  Embarrassing.  Four courses, drinks, tip: about forty bucks.  If I'd eaten meat, I would have drunk a more expensive wine, but it would really be hard to push the price much higher here.

I don't know what it is about Barcelona, but after a stroll, I found myself refreshing my taste buds with a cool beer.  Before I knew it was four in the morning in Bar Pastis again.

Distinctly fragile as my last day began, I drank large quantities of coffee with skimmed milk in the sunshine.  Eventually made it to the Bar del Pi, in the square outside the Sant Pi church, for a couple of heart starters.  I breakfasted on montaditos, little slices of baguette with various toppings: smoked salmon and quail's egg, catalan (a pale, soft slicing sausage), ham and anchovy.

After some more healing sleep, I planned a traditional tapas bar crawl for the evening, with a more modest alcohol intake.  I started at El Portalon, eating bunuelos de bacalao - salt cod balls - and deep fried artichokes.  I took an obvious tapas route down C. d'Avinyo:  breaded crab claws in the Galician bar on C. Ample.  Disappointingly vinegary empanadas in Bar Jarra opposite (where the speciality is a cooked Canaries ham, cut fresh from the bone and served with a few potatoes for a about $1.50 a plate).  It was very quiet for a Saturday night.  Then I realised there was a soccer game on TV.  I watched the end of the match, drinking Guinness in Bar Thales on C. de Regomir.

I was about to get an early night, but my walk back to the hotel took me past El Ateneu again.  I stopped to read the menu.  Then, as if possessed by higher powers, I found myself seated in the wine bar section, saying to myself "Only an entree."  I ordered their tartaro de caballo, one of my favorite dishes.  Yes, horse tartare, dark and rich.  This one was a little underseasoned, but I corrected that myself.  I thought a desset in order after all.  Something was described as "Plum Cake" on the Catalan and Castilian, as well as the English, menus.  When it arrived, there was no sign of plums.   It was a light, lemony sponge with a few caraway seeds.  "Flummery?" I asked myself, in the grips of another Nero Wolfe flashback.  Then I realised with a shiver that, if I queried the dish, I would be told that the kitchen had run out of plum cake and had substituted authentic clouty dumpling flown in that morning from Scotland.  For once, I decided to shut up and eat it, and the accompanying scoop of fresh yoghurt and home-made bitter orange marmalade were fine.

In the interests of full disclosure, if someone told me I had to move to Barcelona tomorrow and live there the rest of my life, I would fall to my knees sobbing with gratitude.  If you haven't been, this year is the 150th anniversary of their famous architect Gaudi, and as I write the Euro is still plummeting against the dollar (and doubtless the pound too).  I may have to go back shortly.  

[Jinmyo]

I just thought I'd put a plug in for a great book: Barcelona by Robert Hughes.

Very nice post, Wilfrid.

[A Balic]

Wilfrid, what a wonderful post I hardly know how to reply. Maybe, you lucky, lucky bastard might be a start . I haven't been to Barcelona since 1996, but my memories of it are very warm. Friends of mine that have been there more recently have told me it is improving all the time (although the petty crime is a problem) and you have confirmed this for me (the improving, not the petty crime). I really like Spain and I will have to go there soon.

I'm pleased that you had the baby eels, you can get the same dish in the south of France, which suggests that it has shared Catalan roots. I have also had a baby eel dish in Tuscany, but they were in vinegar, which over powered their flavour. It's interesting that they served you Hydomeil, as it is medieval liquor (most often called "Hydromel"). I was wondering if you example was heavily spiced like the original recipes.

You are so lucky that you were in town at the same time as the baby broad beans were in season. How can something so good turn into something as nasty as matured broad beads? The Tapa of snails that you had, what type of snail were they? Petit gris, Roman or the mysterious white ones I once had in Barcelona?

This post of mine has inspired me to get out my Colman Andrews Catalan cooking book for the last week. I like the idea of the tomato jam/cofit? with goats chees for desert, I can't find a recipe so do you think that you could have a stab at a recipe for me?

[Bux]

I have had the baby eels, which have a short season, in Amat's restaurant across the river from Bordeaux in Bouliac the first time I ate there. I seem to recall them as being a very Basque food. There is a great reference to them in The Basque History of the World. They are seasonal and I believe it's a rather short season. I had not had them before and recall being lucky to catch them early in the season. They were simply served in a bowl of olive oil that had been seasoned with dried Basque peppers.

I have also heard about and seen indirect evidience of petty crime in Bracelona. Although I witnessed no crime itself, unless we consider it a crime that Wilfrid was there and not us. I did, however, notice that the larger cafes, and tapas places in the touristy paseig de Gràcia all seemed to have security guards. I also observed a waiter move someone's purse so it would not be easily grabbed by a passing motorcyclist.

I have been fond of Barcelona since my first visit and credit a commercial paella in a touristy restaurant that I would now tend to avoid, with opening my senses to the greater world of food and its opportunites. Barcelona is a major tourist city. Only in Paris do I hear more English. Mediocre food is all over and especially available in tourist areas, but with a little research, you should be able to avoid the mediocre and enjoy eating in Barcelona. I think your evaluation of Ca d'Isidre (l'Isidre?) matches my memory. Good traditional Catalan food with some comtemporary touches, but no attempt to be cutting edge.

Barcelona has several fine markets. The one off the Ramblas is the one I most fondly remember, but it was also undergoing renovation during one of our visits and we had the opportunity to pass another large covered market while returning our rental car and made a point of visiting it on the way back to our hotel.

[Steve Klc]

Adam--I wonder if it was a marmelade or a caramel reduction.  I've cooked a dry caramel, deglaze with warmed skinned, seeded and diced tomatoes, reduce, cool.  Lots of chefs are doing this now, Ducasse opened with a tomato caramel in NYC. (Elsewhere on eGullet, others have waxed poetic of the famous Passard tomato dessert, might give you a few ideas.  It is quite "layered" with flavor and spice.  It's explicated nicely in the Gopnik book.) Dry spices like cracked pepper, ground cinnamon and shaved nutmeg work--so too does adding small amounts of citrus zest (to the cooking caramel) and fruit puree (added either before or after the finished caramel). I've also added small amounts of candied kumquat or apricot confit sometimes, to add a little surprise to the tomato mixture, but then that starts to change things--and certainly is farther away from the Saveur magazine crowd.)

For the goat cheese, I am less inclined to go with the nuevo-latino tomato pairings, like coconut, canteloupe, cilantro--that I have had otherwise enjoyed from Catalan and Spanish chefs in the US.

Much thanks Wifrid for a wonderful post and yes, you are a lucky bastard.  I, too, had a eerie feeling eating those eels after seeing their little black dot eyes.

[A Balic]

Bux - you are right, I did have them in Bordeaux come to think of it (I knew it was in the south!), so forget shared Catalan roots yahda yahda yahda.

Steve - thank you very much for the information. I was interested in the idea, not as a desert but to go with chicken liver mousse etc. I thought that the sweetness and the acid would be a good match for this type of dish.

[Wilfrid]

Thanks for wading through the post everyone.  I found the missing info for the charcuterie, so I will go back in and correct it.

Jinmyo:  I am with you on Hughes.  Every great city desrves a fabulous book like that.

Adam:  I think your spelling of "Hydromel" is correct  - I had been thinking of the Spanish word for honey, miel, and doubtless there's some link.  This was not a noticeably spicy wine, although I am prepared to believe it had been laying sediment for five or six hundred years.  How about a kind of mead-flavoured grappa?  Maybe not quite that harsh, though.  I am afraid I can't figure out the tomato marmalade, except that I wonder if there was some addition of bitter orange or orange zest, because a mainstream marmalade flavor was in there along with the fresh tomato flavor.  It was bright red in colour, and distinctly sweet.

Sadly, I have seen the petty crime (summer before last, not on this trip) - a purse snatching and some blatant attempts at pick-pocketing.  With the money tourism brings in, they should not let this get out of hand.

[Steve Klc]

Adam--I wasn't necessarily thinking dessert, though all of those ideas could be adapted for dessert or for the cheese course or for savory amuse kind of things.  I am one of those who leans away from sweet in dessert and delights in some sweet in savory applications.  The Ducasse caramel tomato was savory.  There is a honey/onion marmelade paired with tomato in the new (highly recommended) Kunz/Kaminsky book that might be an interesting model--and could easily be adapted to include Hydromel.

[Bux]

With the money tourism brings in, they should not let this get out of hand.

Of course it's the level of tourism  that attracts the criminals. I have to suspect that much of the crime is committed by criminals who move with the seasons much like migrant workers in any other trade.

[Wilfrid]

No question.  I shrink from racial profiling, but it is clear at a glance that most of the hookers working on the street in Barcelona are actually from Latin America, while the gangs of pickpockets are from somewhere in the Eastern European direction.  They ain't Catalans.

I made similar observations in London last year.  The guys trying to lure me - unsuccessfully - into an obvious and clumsy credit card snatch did not have English as their first language.

[cabrales]

I really like Spain and I will have to go there soon.

Adam -- If you visit Barcelona with very limited allotted time, it's not impracticable to take in the sights of the city and have decent (but not very good) tapas.  If you like architecture, Antonio Gaudi's Sagrada Familia and his Casa Batlo (latter viewed just from the outside) are major works of that artist (apart from Parc Geuill; Casa Mila aka La Predera, sic, with undulating "waves" of sculpted items and levels on its rooftop; Palais Gueill, sic, with chimney-like sculpted items on its rooftop too -- this last structure may be close to one portion of Las Ramblas (?)).  

Near each of the Sagrada Familia and the Casa Batlo, there are rows of tapas bars -- tasty items included plump squid (or cuttlefish -- I'm never certain of the differences), which at times was prepared just grilled with parsley (with my addition of fresh lemon juice) or deep-fried; anchovies with different oils drizzled over them; black/grey colored mini octupi for which the texture of the "suction" pads was relatively pronounced (less common in the tapas bars).  On ham, I was a bit disappointed at how frequently the only variety available was serrano.  Some places served me shotglasses of a Spanish sherry, the name of which escapes me.

[Wilfrid]

You're right, Cabrales.  When I lived in London, a weekend in Barcelona was very feasible.  By the way, next door to the Casa Batlo, the Casa Amatler is now open to visitors.  It had always been private on my previous visits.

[cabrales]

Wilfrid -- Were you tempted to take the train to dine at El Raco de Con Fabes (when I last inquired, the response might have been that journey time is less than 3 hours)?  I have never eaten there  :confused:

[A Balic]

Cabrales, for my next holiday my wife and I are going to rent a flat in Florence for three weeks. We were in Spain (Andalusia) in August and had a great time. Unfortunately, getting from Edinburgh to Spain can be difficult, my last trip to Spain was via Frankfurt. When I was in Barcelona in '96 it was on my first trip to Europe, we spent Christmas in Parc Geuill, sitting on that incredible Gaudi tiled bench with a several jugs of Sangria. The tapas I liked then were razor clams, deep fried anchovie spines and sepia (the tiny cuttle fish that you see). Its a pity that you could not get more then serrano ham, some of other hams (especially the black ones, which unfortunately I can't remember the name of) are amazing, so buttery in flavour. Ah bliss.

[Wilfrid]

Sadly, I haven't eaten in any of these great restaurants outside Barcelona.  When I have taken the train I have tended to go further afield.  Pamplona (great place), Burgos (grim), and so on.

[cabrales]

Cabrales, for my next holiday my wife and I are going to rent a flat in Florence . ... [G]etting from Edinburgh to Spain can be difficult, my last trip to Spain was via Frankfurt.

Adam -- I can't be sure you haven't already described this somewhere, but how much does your wife enjoy food? Also, has she looked into your bio?  

In connection with the UK dinner, you had mentioned it's hard for you to get to London. Have you monitored the special discounts offered from time to time by "no frills" airlines (I don't know if they service London-Edinburgh, or London-other European cities)?

Razor clams -- yes.  I've seen them in certain Chinatown restaurants in NYC.  I wonder where one can have them in the UK.

[Tonyfinch]

There may be theives everywhere but I don't know anywhere where they operate with such impunity as Barcelona.

Last year,after spending two days on the beach I could identify 4 theives working the beach without a care.Their method was to approach lone sunbathers who appeared to be asleep and steal their stuff.If one woke up they pretended to be collecting for rent of the sunloungers.If challenged they would pretend outrage,swear and make off,disappearing only for the time it took to see whether one could be bothered to call the police.They were soon back in full view of everyone.

At no time did I see a single policeman patrolling the beach/marina area.If a tourist like me could ID theives after 2 days,would it be beyond the wit of the city police to know who they were? Or do the police have another agenda?

[yvonne johnson]

Mention of Burgos and crime brought back this memory. Me and my boyfriend were camping during our student days, and we found this lovely camping site on the outskirts of Burgos. It had handsome trees, long grass and lots of space between the campers. We were asleep one night in our small two-sleeper tent, when all of a sudden I woke up and just above my head I saw a little, strange face peering down at me. The intruder had cut open the airflap revealing his disembodied head. I obviously startled him and off he scampered.

Some of our clothing was taken, and we guessed the thief was aiming for things under our pillows (where, indeed, we kept our money). The next day was spent sewing our tent back together as it had been cut in various places. Ho, hum.

[PaulaJ]

Barcelona is such a charming city that it would be

Spain's loss to have it identified as a hotbed of petty

theft. On two separate occassions, friends of mine

were pickpocketed last year. One was visiting for the

day on a cruise ship and admiring Gaudi's work when

he was relieved of passport, traveler's checks,cash etc.

Spent his Barcelona day in the police station, signing

complaints, arranging Am Ex replacement,etc. Second

friend was robbed primarily of wallet/money & cards.

There is petty crime everywhere..but..Barcelona seems

a hotbed and I agree w. above posters re: need for

security measures.