A Culinary Paradise

Barcelona is a vibrant, delicious, and exciting culinary heaven! From vinegary and deep fried tapas to baked potatoes laden with truffles,  oh and squid ink risotto and butter poached sea bass and gastronomic wizardry you will not be able to even attempt to unveil....

Not only is the above a fantastic example of a run-on sentence- it is more importantly, a glimpse into all the delicious eating Barcelona has to offer. You will never visit a city where such a small circumference twinkles with so many Michelin stars!

Catalan Cuisine
Basques may well disagree, but Catalunya has a reputation for producing some of Spain's finest cuisine. Catalunya is geographically diverse and enjoys a variety of fresh, high-quality seafood (although, due to high demand, much seafood is now crated in from other parts of Spain and Europe), meat, poultry, game, fruit and vegetables. These can come in unusual and delicious combinations: meat and seafood (a genre known as mar i muntanya - 'sea and mountain'), poultry and fruit, fish and nuts. Quality Catalan food tends to require a greater fiscal effort.

The essence of Catalan food lies in its sauces for meat and fish. There are five main types: sofregit (fried onion, tomato and garlic); samfaina or chanfaina (sofregit plus red pepper and aubergine or courgette); picada (based on ground almonds, usually with garlic, parsley, pine or hazel nuts, and sometimes breadcrumbs); allioli (pounded garlic with olive oil, often with egg yolk added to make more of a mayonnaise); and romesco (an almond, tomato, olive oil, garlic and vinegar sauce, also used as a salad dressing).

Catalans find it hard to understand why other people put butter on bread when pa amb tomaquet - bread sliced, then rubbed with tomato, olive oil, garlic and salt - is so easy.

Other good things to look out for include oca (goose) and canalons (Catalan cannelloni). Wild mushrooms are a Catalan passion - people disappear into the forests in autumn to pick them. There are many, many types of bolets; with the large succulent rovellons being a favourite.

When to Eat in Barcelona
You may not arrive in Barcelona with jet-lag, but your tummy will soon think it has abandoned all known time zones.

 Breakfast (esmorzar/desayuno) is generally a no-nonsense affair, taken at a bar on the way to work. Lunchtime (dinar/comida) is basically from 2pm to 4pm and is the main meal of the day. No local would contemplate chomping into dinner (sopar/cena) before 9pm. That said, although restaurants tend to stay open until 1am or so, most kitchens close by 11.30pm. 

Don't panic! If your gastric juices simply can't hold out until then, you can easily track down bar snacks or fast food (local and international style) outside these times. And, anxious to ring up every tourist dollar possible, plenty of restaurants here cater for northern European intestinal habits - although you often pay for this with mediocre food and the almost exclusive company of other tourists.