Serving the
Good Food
Revolution
since 2004

Home * More (Archives + Search) * Contact * Subscribe (it's free) * About Us * Wine Agents * Gremoblog

TABLE FOR ONE: A BARCELONA TAPEO
by Eric Vellend

Travelling with the gastronomically challenged can be frustrating. They will happily spend hours in a crowded museum staring at 10,000 paintings of Jesus, but won’t give two seconds of thought about where to eat and usually end up at some tourist trap with lousy food and cheap drinks.

Such is the case in Barcelona, as my friends and I roll in after a festive week in Ibiza. While the rest of the gang sleeps off a Balearic flu, I pour over the dining section of my guidebook with rabbinical concentration. Before any of the philistines wake up and suggest going for pizza, I sneak out the door.

In Spain, tapas bars make dining solo a lot of fun. Small, inexpensive plates of food enable you to try a variety of dishes at a number of restaurants without breaking the bank. And while the tapas culture in Barcelona is not as strong as Madrid or San Sebastian, there are plenty of spots where you can sample the local Catalan cuisine.

My tapeo starts at El Xampanyet (c/ de Montcada 22), located on a narrow, cobbled street just a few steps from the Picasso Museum, Barcelona’s most popular tourist attraction. El Xampanyet is a cosy blue-tiled bar, and the cooks are busy filleting salted anchovies in the tiny open kitchen. It’s late morning, and the first tapas ready for snacking are an assortment of mini open-faced sandwiches called montaditos. Presented beautifully on the counter, my lack of Spanish is not a handicap as I can just point and eat. My favourites are a piquillo pepper stuffed with zesty tuna salad and a silky marinated anchovy wrapped around a green olive. Washed down with a cold glass of cava, the local sparkling wine, it is the breakfast of champions.

After a trip to the Picasso Museum, my appetite is revived and I wander down to the seaside neighbourhood of Barceloneta. I pick the popular Jai-Ca (c/ Ginebra 13) and score a precious seat on the shaded terrace. As luck would have it, it is the season for chipirones, tiny squid no bigger than a raspberry. At Jai-Ca, these baby squid are tossed in seasoned flour, flash fried, and served with a wedge of lemon. The fried rubber bands of my calamari past fade into memory as I tuck in to these delicate chipirones. It would be nice to linger over my cerveza and pick the nano-tentacles from my teeth, but watchful eyes are on the gluttonous gringo and I must relinquish my coveted seat.

My stomach informs me that there is still some room available, so I head up to the neighbourhood of La Ribera in search of a recommended bar specializing in seafood tapas. After wandering the narrow streets in circles, I finally locate Bar Mundial (Plaça de Sant Agusti el Vell 1), a local favourite for over 70 years.

While waiting for a seat in the long, narrow room of this bustling neighbourhood joint, I notice that every table has a plate of mixed seafood in some sort of red sauce. It is their famous combinado, a Catalan seafood cocktail of cockles, clams, shrimp, fresh anchovies, goose barnacles, baby squid and octopus marinated in olive oil, wine vinegar and a splash of tomato juice. A basket of crusty bread is procured to mop up the rosy juices pooled at the bottom of the plate.

As I sip a dark, rich café solo, savouring one hell of a tapas crawl, I think of my friends, who are probably digging into a Big Mac combinado. They don’t know what they’re missing.

* * *

Eric Vellend was a Toronto-based chef for ten years before trading in his knives for a laptop. He is a columnist at the City Centre Moment, Riverside Quarterly and VintageDirect.ca. His writing has also appeared in City Bites and the Globe and Mail. On a recent trip to Spain, Eric ate so much Serrano ham that his friends started calling him “Jamon”. He is currently working on the perfect tortilla española.

s