“In Cadaqués, we cure anchovies differently than anywhere else,” Rafel Martín Faixó told us. We were sitting at long wooden tables outside of his family’s winery, on a sunbaked hilltop in Cadaqués, two and a half hours north of Barcelona. Rafel is the son of Carmen Faixó and Rafa Martín Mota, and together with his sisters Ester and Georgina, the five of them comprise the Martín Faixó (MF family) brand, featuring three restaurants in Cadaqués and the Celler Martín Faixó winery, with a rural tourism guesthouse on-site.

Kim Díaz, a well-known local restaurateur and owner of Bar Mut tapas bar and El Mutis cocktail bar, wanted to pay tribute to one of the most humble and sadly underrated Spanish snacks, the sandwich. Sandwiches are generally made by most Barcelonan bars with defrosted cheap bread and greasy fillings, and good ones are not easy to find in the city (though we have written about some great ones). Entrepanes Díaz opened last February with the goal of giving the sandwich the respect it deserves.

Roppongi’s Café Sakura serves as a restaurant and seating area for a bundle of businesses under the same ownership. There’s the Café with table service, the Wine Shop Sommelier (retail wines straight from the vineyard at considerable discount), L’Atelier du Pain (a Japanese-style bakery and cheese shop) and the French patisserie Coco Ange. Put them together and they enjoyably represent a Japanese take on the Western idea of “happy hour.”

Marc Cuenca was the kind of kid who was interested in what other people were eating, and this curiosity was the seed of his own restaurant, Els Tres Porquets ("Three Little Pigs"). A small enoteca and tapas bar with just a few tables, it sits in Poble Nou-El Clot, an area that brings to the restaurant a combination of locals, office workers and Spaniards and foreigners employed by startups and other businesses in the 22@ innovation district. While these days the city – and indeed many cities around the world – is teeming with restaurants specializing in an ambitious menu of small plates intended for sharing, in 2009, the concept was still quite new when the "three little pigs" arrived in the city.

Oriol’s face lights up whenever a customer selects his favorite pintxo from one of the 49 different trays, beautifully displayed at Euskal Etxea, the bar where he works and the first bar in Barcelona to serve traditional Basque pintxos. One wonders how a small slice of bread topped with a chickpea fritter, jamón serrano and romesco sauce spiked with a toothpick that costs just €1.95 can make someone so happy. We try one and we immediately see why.

It’s a common fantasy: Accidentally locked in a bakery, forgotten overnight, we quickly eat everything in sight and fall into a sugary, carb-filled dream of sweet-spun bliss. Sequestered away where nobody will find us until morning, we wake from time to time and continue to eat cakes until we sleep again. Short of that happening in this lifetime, we frequently daydream of walking the aisles of bakeries, latte in hand as we pull pain au chocolat and sticky buns from racks, consuming everything in a hurried rush before we’re asked to leave.

Editor’s note: The year is coming to an end, which means it’s time for us to look back on all the great eating experiences we had in 2014 and name our favorites among them. Can Pineda At this tiny, century-old restaurant in the neighborhood of El Clot, we ate a simple dish of guisantes lágrima (“tear-shaped peas”) with little bits of jamón ibérico, one of the most delicious culinary treasures we have had all year – and one we will remember for a long time to come.

For so long, bulk wine has been synonymous with plonk – even in a country like Spain, where buying wine straight from the barrel was standard practice up until the 1980s, when it was largely replaced by bottles with certified designations of origin. We are well acquainted with the bad stuff, which we call vino peleón, literally “scrappy” wine, but thankfully, the era of its ubiquity is mostly over and done with. It’s much easier these days to find good wine at low prices (€1 to €5 per liter) that’s suitable for everyday drinking. And another upside to this practice is the environmentally friendly packaging: your own jug.

Morro Fi and Mitja Vida are two relatively new entrants to Barcelona’s vermuteo (“vermouthing”) culture, whose history stretches back to the turn of the last century. These two bars are the product of nostalgia for a bygone era fused with the social network- and urban design-driven present. The vermouth tradition in Barcelona was started in the early 20th century by Flaminio Mezzalama, who represented the Italian company Martini & Rossi in Spain, at his fabulous modernist Bar Torino. Vermut began to be produced in Catalonia, and in the following decades, the province developed its own style of the aromatic fortified drink. At the same time, the custom arose of having vermut before lunch with some pickles to whet one’s appetite. That tradition faded over time but has emerged in recent years as a kind of retro, hipster-approved pastime.

Fried pig’s ears fortified with garlic and parsley, veal cheek and tongue laced with vinaigrette, hefty veal and pork meatballs, creamy artichoke or eggplant omelets or a hearty bocadillo of marinated tuna, red pepper, anchovies and olives: these esmorzars de forquilla, or “fork breakfasts,” are how a Catalonian might start his day – especially at Can Ros, a tapas-and-bocadillos joint that’s open every day from 7 a.m. until midnight. Office workers might drop by for a coffee at mid-morning, followed by the lunch crowd, which takes over from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Dinner, of course, lasts well into the night. It’s breakfast, however, that has made Can Ros most popular among locals.

When we think of white wine in Catalonia, we think of its seemingly endless possibilities. Production of whites here has a 2,000-year-old history. The wide-ranging diversity in the area’s Mediterranean climate and calcareous soils, from the mountains to the sea, and the combination of old grape varieties and newly introduced “foreigners” with traditional and experimental methods of production make for innumerable styles and no taboos. Who knew white was a color with so many variations? The traditional Catalan grape varieties used to make white wine are mainly macabeo, xarel-lo, parellada and garnatxa blanca, but this area of Spain has the largest number of white grapes included in all its protected appellations (D.O.). Where other Spanish D.O.s usually are deeply defined by one or a few varieties, in the Catalunya D.O. there are more than 16 allowed – 35 counting the reds. In fact, this umbrella appellation, which covers wines that do not fall under the 10 subregion designations (Montsant, Penedès, etc.), was created to allow the use of all the grapes of the other Catalan designations in the entire area. It implicitly gives freedom to Catalan winemakers to express more than the old narrower conceptions of terroir and opens the doors to experimentation.

At first glance, Bodega Manolo seems like the usual wine shop/tapas bar that Barcelona does so well: a solid place to replenish our wine stocks from the barrels, quench our thirst with a cold caña or satisfy our hunger pangs with a vermut and a tapa or two of oil-drenched anchovies. None of which sound too shabby. However, we know to venture through to the rear, where, at dinnertime, the brilliant white tablecloths reveal the venue’s greater ambitions.

Anouchka hails from Extremadura, land of jamón and some of Spain’s best dry-cured sausages. Julien is French and an expert on wine. Together, the husband and wife run La Perla de Oro (“The Gold Pearl”), a pint-sized former colmado (old-style grocery) just off Las Ramblas, where top-notch bocadillos, or baguette sandwiches, are just one of many attractions. Since opening in 1939, three generations at La Perla have supplied their Raval neighbors with cured sausages, cheeses, preserved foods, salted fish and dried legumes. They became known especially for their bocadillos.

Legend has it that in 12th-century Priorat, in the region of Tarragona in southern Catalonia, there was a shepherd who dreamt every night of a ladder leaning against a pine tree. The ladder ascended from the valley all the way to heaven and angels climbed up and down, tending to their heavenly and earthly duties. Some Cistercian monks, upon hearing this story, took the vision as a divine message to build the monastery Scala Dei (“Ladder of God”) in that very spot. Those clever monks, noting the angels’ comings and goings, decided to become their wine suppliers and began cultivating grapes and making wine there.

In Spain, conservas, or foods preserved in cans and jars, are not simply a matter of economic survival or a source of basic nutrition for students, hikers, military recruits and the like. Rather, the tradition of conservas more resembles that of keeping one’s most beautiful jewelry locked safe in a strongbox, to be brought out only on special occasions like Christmas, birthdays or the victory of a favorite football team. There’s nothing better than some delicate canned cockles to lavish on your parents-in-law before a holiday meal!