To celebrate our 20th anniversary and my 50th birthday, Jean first proposed to me that we spend a week in Paris in June. After some thought, I countered with the suggestion that it be spent instead in Barcelona, a city that neither of us had ever visited. My reasoning was that, as much as we love Paris, Barna would afford us with architectural splendor, great food and warmer weather in early June. After some consideration, Jean agreed and so last week we boarded an Air France flight from Chicago to Paris, then on to Barna.
Touristic notes
Once again, the stark difference between a European airline like Air France and an American carrier such as Delta was borne home: on the former, we were served complementary Heidsieck Monopole before dinner; on the latter, we were given the option of buying a bag of potato chips for a snack. Barcelona proved to be all that I'd hoped it would be, and more. Our hotel, the Hotel Soho in the Eixample section of the city, proved to be ultra-modern, clean, spacious and friendly. Most of the major tourist attractions were within easy walking distance of our hotel, too, though the modern and efficient Metro and plentiful taxis made transport around the city swift and easy. The people of Barcelona in general were polite and friendly, most speaking at least some English, and the drivers were hands down the most polite and disciplined that I'd seen in the Mediterranean. Although Catalan is the first language, my schoolboy Spanish from 35 years ago proved to be helpful, and people would switch to English if the need arose. The Gaudi architecture was fascinating, with the two houses (Casa Batllo and Casa Pedrera) providing important details of what Gaudi did and how he did it. Although I had come to the city with an image of Gaudi's work as borderline grotesque, I quickly gained an appreciation for both Gaudi the artist and Gaudi the engineer -- his catenary arches are fascinating. My only criticism is that the museums lag far behind those of other major European cities. Well, that and the prevalence of cigarette smoking there: almost inescapable, even when walking down the street.
Food
Everyday Catalan cooking is exceptionally tasty as well as fairly priced. When one can sit down in a touristy café on a major plaza and get a bocadillo de jamón Ibérico (Iberico ham sandwich) that consists of tasty meat on good, crusty bread, life is not at all bad. Add to that the plentitude of traditional tapas and you have a very tasty selection of foods available at most places. One surprise for us is that Barcelona is a beer town. Tapas bars mostly call themselves cervecerias and the locally produced Damm beer is ubiquitous. Food was priced somewhat higher than it would be in the US but still remained fairly reasonable.
The centerpiece to our trip was a dinner out at El Celler de Can Roca in Girona. This restaurant, a modern structure built around a glass-enclosed triangular central courtyard, is an interesting blend of the traditional and the avant garde. One big surprise was the dress of our fellow patrons: men were dressed in jeans, tennis shoes and occasional T-shirts, with the women not much fancier. The waitstaff, all in suits, were the best dressed folks in the place by a long margin. The menu of Can Roca included three set menus, priced from €80-125M, and a la carte selections. We opted in the end for the 8-course €125 "feast" menu with paired wines for another €48:
amuse:
a "cracker" of black sesame seeds and cacao
a frozen "bloody Mary" bonbon
caramelized green and black olives
cucumber skin soup with smoked eel and almond
morel in a foie gras-morel sauce
pigeon "bombon" with Bristol Cream
(wine: Albet i Noia Cava El Celler)
menu:
seared tuna atop a wasabi brioche in a celery-scented fish broth
charcoal-grilled oysters with citrus marinade
(wine: '06 Rebholz Riesling Trocken Im Sonnenschein)
charcoal-grilled king prawn with prawn "sand" and prawn essence
('05 Pairal Xarel-lo D.O Penedes)
Herring smoked caviar omelet
(La Panesa Jerez)
Catalan cod pot-au-feu
('07 Val de Sil Valdeorras)
Olive oil-poached sea bass in an olive purée with "sphericated" olives
('06 Nelin Priorat blanco)
Lamb and tomato-rubbed bread
('03 Clos Martinet Priorat)
Goose à la Royale with peach
('04 Villard St. Joseph)
Moixernon consommé
('90 Lustau Oloroso Abocado Jerez)
Orange chromatism (mandarin orange ice in a carrot sauce)
('02 Dr. Bürklin-Wolf Gaisböhl Auslese)
Spun milk dessert
(Fernando de Castillo P.X. Jerez)
The most memorable dishes were: the king prawn, where the "sand" was created from the juices of the head and the "essence" was incredibly reduced prawn juice; the sea bass, which was perfectly done and perfectly paired with a Roussanne from the Priorat; and the goose, which was decadently rich and flavorful. The wines were well chosen, but the wine steward was less than communicative (in his defense, he was serving wine to the entire room). Despite the large number of dishes and the large number of wines, we ended the evening feeling pleasantly full but not stuffed and sober (at least in my case -- Jean was a bit worse for the wear). Overall, the meal was a revelation, and stands as one of the most memorable of my life. The prices being charged are probably half of what a comparable experience would fetch in the US or Paris.
Our other major stop was at Monvínic in Barcelona, a wine bar/restaurant/wine reference library. Only open on week days, Monvínic has an extensive and interesting wine list that one peruses on electronic tablets and a selection of foods prepared by their enthusiastic and able chef Sergi. The six sommeliers are friendly, helpful and quite knowledgeable. The food, while on the expensive side, is well prepared and wine-friendly.
Apart from those two destinations, we ate somewhat simply, often getting an assortment of tapas for either lunch or an "early" dinner (ca. 8 pm). Near to our hotel was the excellent Cevercería Catalana, a very traditional tapas joint with a bar and a dozen or so small tables. The foods were a selection of tapas and pintxas, including a small number of specials chalked on a board. There was also an enticing array of shellfish on display in the bar. The place was bustling both times we were there, but the Philipino waitstaff handled the traffic admirably. In the Barrí Gotic we had a surprisingly good meal at El Atril, a small, dimly lit hole-in-the-wall with a decent wine list, tasty tapas and a small selection of larger dishes. The evening we were there, there was live music in one end of the cramped interior space. From the lack of English spoken there, I'd hazard a guess that it's not much of a tourist destination. We also had lunch at Tapas24, the tapas joint run by the well-known proprietor of Commerc24, an El Bulli alum with a reputation of his own. Of all the meals we ate in Barcelona, this was probably one of the less interesting. We also had a couple of simple meals constructed from bread, cheese, jamón, almonds and olives. Even the corner store was stocked with tasty provisions.
Wine Shopping
We did spend one morning scoping out two wine stores. The first, Lavinia, is the Barcelona outpost of the small chain of upscale wine stores with an extensive selection of interesting wines. This version was not nearly as palatial as the Paris branch (but what is?) but still had many interesting wines from all over Europe. Since my purpose in visiting was to secure some bottles of Spanish wine, I was pleased to see a fairly extensive collection of Spanish wines, including many labels with which I was familiar. Alas, they were sold out of the '07 Do Ferreiro Cepas Vellas and the bin stood empty. However, they did have the '06 Finca Sandoval, so I secured a bottle to be able to later harass Victor de la Serna about. They also had an interesting selection of Sherries, which we availed ourselves of, and the requisite collection of old and new Rioja from both the traditionalists and the Modernistas. Prices were reasonable, if not especially cheap.
From there, we next ventured to Vila Viniteca in the old part of Barcelona, This was a cramped, floor-to-ceiling affair, much like my favorite bookstores and wine shops (i.e. Caves Augé in Paris) with the added twist of a second level accessible by catwalk and stairs. Again, many interesting wines here from Spain and elsewhere in Europe (They also had a special section devoted to rare wines, including a bottle of '00 Ridge Lytton Springs!!) Again, a nice selection of Sherries, Riojas and plenty of wines from elsewhere in Spain. Although I had attempted to locate the Val de Sil Valdeorras we'd had at Can Roca, I settled here for another Valdeorras from Guitian. They also had a companion store next door selling meats and cheeses that positively had us drooling almost to the extent that we had at La Boqueria. Prices here were again reasonable and perhaps a tad lower than at Lavinia.
(A report on the wines can be found in the Wine Forum)
Your intrepid reporter,
Mark Lipton
At 50, I'm fighting off getting reading glasses, but it's getting harder to justify (Interesting genetic note: my mother is nearsighted and my father became farsighted later in his life; I've been 20/20 most of my life, but now my left eye is farsighted and my right eye is nearsighted!!)