These days, we can feel a change in Barcelona’s food scene. On one hand, the local cuisine is continually enriched with intercultural dialogue, blended recipes, fusion ingredients or crossroads dishes. Frequently, Catalan restaurant owners pair with partners and team members from around the world, fostering the kind of creativity and collaboration that we love to see.
On the other hand, Barcelona’s culinary traditions are being reclaimed by a whole generation of trained chefs who glorify their grandmother’s cooking and local recipes, seeking to elevate and share them. Innovation is supported by tradition, and the culinary experience here continues to grow with the addition of sophisticated techniques, an eye toward sustainable and local ingredients, and historical concepts.
We continue to seek out the places – old and new – that inspire how we eat in Barcelona. Here a few of the many Best Bites of 2023:
“Post-Punk” Picks at Otra Cosa Taberna
Otra Cosa Taberna, opened by the young chef Felipe González in 2020, was one of our best culinary experiences this year. Creative dishes thrive in a relaxed atmosphere and concept based on authenticity and a crossroads of Mediterranean, Latin American and Asian flavors.
Located in the Sant Andreu neighborhood, the space is a small, old tapas bar that has since been refurbished, mixing luminous colors with traditional wooden tables and old signage from the previous bar. “I like to define Otra Cosa Taberna as ‘post-punk market cuisine,’” explains Felipe. “We buy what the neighborhood has to offer, but we’ll also do with these products whatever we want. The interpretation of cuisine, for us, is super free and very ambiguous. You might be eating a Peruvian causa, but with octopus, and a mayo with olivada, and we totally flip it to present it in a completely different way. The game has no limits.”
There are many fantastic dishes in this post-punk tavern, but we specially enjoyed the Ceviche Nikkei, a dish inspired by Peruvian chef Ciro Watanabe, Felipe’s mentor in Chile. Its ingredients include tuna, salicornia, wakame, yuzu-injected spheres, nori seaweed, fried onion and Peruvian leche de tigre marinade. The succulent flavors, soft spiciness, balanced acidity and a diversity of textures in this dish alone make it worth the trip to Sant Andreu.
A close runner-up is the Bomba de la Barceloneta. Completely different from its traditional version (a local treat which consists of a fried ball of mashed potato with meat inside, topped with a spicy sauce), at Otra Cosa, the “bomba” is transformed into a Peruvian causa, a traditional layered-potato dish. The yellow ají potato has the texture of a cold parmentier, finished with an octopus tartar, Japanese Kewpie mayo, a Basque piparra green chili paste, smoked salt, cornichons and anchovies, bringing the umami through the roof. The result even evokes a deconstructed Galician style octopus with potatoes.
Fonda Espanya’s Menú del Día
For the perfect lunch to celebrate a special occasion, we love Fonda Espanya, the restaurant of the Hotel Espanya, a magnificent “Catalan modernist” building dating back to 1850. The restaurant occupies two beautiful dining rooms on the ground floor of the hotel, and the kitchen is directed by chef Martín Berasategui, who holds a combined total of 12 Michelin stars from seven different restaurants over his illustrious career.
The restaurant offers two “full table” options: a tasting menu (83 euros) and the “Rosa Menú” (69 euros). And, only for lunch, they offer a fantastic menu del día. At just 38 euros, it’s the perfect opportunity to try Berasategui’s creations: modern dishes based on Catalan traditions and seasonal products.
Our most recent visit started with the arrival of two test tubes filled with a broth of champignon, dried tuna and anchovy, which we were instructed to eat first before following with a delicate canapé of mushrooms with truffle and Idiazábal cheese. The first course options included a very autumnal dish of seasonal mushrooms with potato foam and fried egg yolk – light, aromatic and with a delicate contrast of textures – and a black rice with mussels, red prawns and saffron aioli.
It’s hard to say which of the main dishes we liked more. On one side of the table, a dish of two grilled cuts of veal tenderloin were served over a green base of creamy cooked chard and ham, creating a perfect contrast with white truffled gnocchi and brie spheres. The other dish consisted of a buttery rack of lamb surrounded by white dunes of grilled cauliflower foam and fennel mousse, adding an herbal touch – creamy, fresh and intense at once.
Delicious from the moment we arrived to the coffee with petite fours with which we ended the meal, we can’t wait to come back here again.
Revisiting La Estrella 1924
One of the great visits of the year was a return to this old family restaurant not far from Port Vell. La Estrella first opened in 1924, was renovated for the first time in 1992 and again in 2016. When we returned earlier this year, Jordi Baidal – grandson of the former owner Josefa Chiquillo – proudly showed us the restaurant’s new local awards lauding the team’s work and commitment to sustainability. In the kitchen, head chef Josefa “Pepi” Villada, Jordi’s wife, makes the magic possible, creating a menu that mixes modern techniques with traditional tastes.
One of our favorites from this visit is one of their many traditional cod recipes, a specialty at La Estrella. They work with a sole provider, the Catalan bacallaners Perelló 1898 (another local family establishment). The dish, a fantastic cod morro, features the fish cooked at low temperature in a roasted tomato sauce. An extremely simple recipe, it doesn’t require anything more than the high-quality ingredients and expert hand of Pepi to bring out an incredible concentrated taste and perfect texture.
This one was a dish to remember, but the menu also features excellent rice dishes, meat and Pepi’s celebrated desserts!
Market Meals at L’Hermós
One long-awaited opening of the year was the third installment in Alexis Peñalver’s family of restaurants, the sibling of our beloved La Pubilla and the tiny, always-full tapas bar Extra, both already iconic establishments of the Gràcia neighborhood. The newcomer, L’Hermós, has lived up to expectations, a lovely fish bar integrated directly into La Llibertat market.
L’Hermós follows a similar spirit of local fish and seafood, with recipes based on local traditions and a selection of wine with natural options and a focus on small producers. There are basic – but delicious – options like the grilled red prawns, as well as more elaborate dishes such as casseroles, suquets and stews included in the menu of around 15 dishes plus daily specials.
Available from the cold bar is an array of fresh oysters, tuna carpaccio with soy-and-ginger vinaigrette or amazing wild sea bass ceviche, or the typical Spanish salpicón de marisco (mixed chopped fish and seafood dressed with olive oil, salt and vinegar and minced vegetables such as tomato, onion and peppers).
We can’t forget our most recent meal at L’Hermós: a magnificent off-menu stew of tender peas with cod kokotxas (jowls) and black sausage butifarra. A delicious dish where this Basque specialty, the kokotxas, creamy and gelatinous, are delicately mixed with the fresh peas, both in balance with the butifarra, a Catalan pork sausage. It was a perfect example of a Catalan mar i muntanya (“sea and mountain”) dish.
Eating in Barcelona’s markets is a wonderful pleasure, and if the place is run by Alexis, it will surely become another neighborhood favorite.
Published on January 01, 2024
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