Category: Barcelona Restaurant Reviews

Almost a year to the day since my last lunch at Blavis (C/Saragossa 85, 08006, www.restaurantblavis.com), my wife and I were in the area and unexpectedly in possession of a couple of child-free hours of liberty. We hadn’t reserved and we were lucky to grab the last remaining table at the end of the last lunch sitting.…

In a perfect world I’d spend every lunchtime sitting in a wonderful Barcelona restaurant, taking notes and photos for the blog. The sad reality is that I spend most lunchtimes hunched in front of my computer with a sandwich or a plate of leftovers, working through to meet my journalism or copywriting deadlines. I have…

The area around Plaça Catalunya is something of a gastronomic desert. The vast majority of restaurants exist only to take money from the hordes of tourists that pour incessantly out of the underground train and metro station like water from a broken mains pipe. These disorientated souls stand confused and blinking in front of El…

Yesterday I noticed that El Racó Del Sikkim, somewhere I’ve revisted quite a few times, is no more. In its place is a generic-looking “barbecue” bar whose main selling point seems to be that the food comes on heated stone plates. I’ll check it out but it’s sad that we’ve lost one of the few…

One day in late January I headed out to try a new restaurant only to have second thoughts upon arriving at the place. The menu, and the food I could see through the window, looked bland and uninspiring. My friend Dan was running slightly late so we agreed to head in each other’s general direction…

The challenge of eating out with young kids is one that often results in a failure to eat well: this restaurant is no good because it’s too small for prams; that one doesn’t have highchairs. One by one the list of places where you want to eat is whittled down in a quest to find…

Before I start, please allow me to apologise for the lack of recent posts. I’ve had lots of new followers and visitors to the blog recently (welcome!) but not many noteworthy meals to write about. Our new baby’s still being breastfed which means no babysitters which means very limited opportunities for gastronimising. I’ve had a…

Mid-August, midday; having suffered through the life-leeching bureaucratic processes of registering a newborn. We’d survived the paperwork but the heat was beating us down. Pushing a pram through the Born district, in desperate need of sustenance and a sit down, I suddenly remembered that we were close to somewhere on my ‘to-try’ list: Sagás (Plà…

UPDATE: Verdi Bo is now CLOSED Drained of intelligence by a combination of summer heat, school holidays and sleepless nights, I found myself leading my wife and daughter around Gracia, looking for lunch. In a befuddled state after being awoken at dawn, I had failed to account for our early breakfast and now my daughter…

This isn’t a full-blown review, just a quick mention of an old favourite. La Esquinica (Fabra i Puig 296, 08031 Barcelona, +34 933582519) is where I had my first tapas. My then-girlfriend, now-wife lived around the corner and this boisterous, traditional bar was a regular haunt. It had just relocated to its present, larger premises and it was…

Bar Velódromo (C/Muntaner 213, +34 934 30 60 22) crops up in every tourist guide book and newspaper supplement about Barcelona which is one of the reasons it’s usually so crushingly busy. Since reopening in 2009, after a huge remodelling exercise to restore its original Art Deco charms, it’s become a fashionable place to queue outside…

EDIT: you can also read about my most recent visit to Blavis. If you accidentally stumble across Blavis  (C/Saragossa 85, 08006, www.restaurantblavis.com) as a tourist, you’re almost certainly lost. It sits between Gracia and Sant Gervasi on a narrow, nondescript street in a resolutely locals-and-office-workers-only area, far from the more picturesque charms those districts have to…

UPDATE: Nuvola Café is now CLOSED Nuvola Café (c/ Roger de Flor 135, +34 93 265 16 84, www.nuvolacafe.es) is a regular haunt of my friend and habitual lunch companion, Dan. I’ve been in for a drink a couple of times and the food always looked good so I needed little persuasion to drop in  for lunch when…

I visited a restaurant last week that deserves a mention. I had my camera but didn’t take notes so apologies for the unusually brief and sketchy overview. Romero (www.romerobcn.com, +34 93 457 06 40 – Bailén 115, 08009 Barcelona) is a new Eixample restaurant owned by Venezuelan chef José Antonio Camacaro León. Its attractive brick-lined interior…

Traditional Spanish/Catalan, home cooking-style restaurants always cause mixed feelings for me. The food can be very much my kind of thing: hearty and robust, cooking from the heart not the head. The flipside is that because it’s my kind of thing, I’m usually capable of making most of what’s on offer in my own kitchen…

There are days when you just don’t want to gamble. It’s always great to try new places but if you want a guaranteed good lunch, a no cabe duda certainty that you will sit down, eat and leave happy, then you need to go to somewhere tried and tested. It seems strange to refer to…

A sunny Sunday in Ciutadella park is a fine family day out, not least because the Borne area of town is right next door. There’s a good choice of places to get a drink or snack when you tire of chasing footballs, pushing swings or sitting on giant plastic mammoths. Today we fancied a burger…

Asian food in Barcelona has improved dramatically while I’ve lived here. Thirteen years ago there were a few Pakistani restaurants that ranged from awful to mediocre and a lot of enormous Chinese restaurants that were permanently empty. I have long harboured suspicions that the primary purpose of these businesses was not in fact to sell…

2015 update: The pizzas at Ninones are still pretty good but the service has become progressively worse over recent years. Bear that in mind before you visit. And the ‘no truly great pizzeria in Barcelona’ line below is no longer true. Give N.A.P a try. A quick mention of a local favourite. Pizzeria Ninones isn’t…

Barcelona food’s not all about creative, competitive chefs and the transient fashions of the contemporary culinary scene. Sometimes you just want lunch. Wherever you live or stay in the city, chances are that somewhere in your local barrio there’s a restaurant that’s always full. It will look like all the bars around it: resolutely non-designer,…

I am not electronically tagged; nor am I under court orders to patronise only “bistronomic” restaurants in the Eixample as part of some bizarre, 5-star community service initiative. It’s just the way things are working out recently. This time my excuse was the visit to Barcelona of Jonnie — writer of the excellent food blog…

Another week, another Eixample bistronomic restaurant… Please forgive the somewhat monothematic nature of this blog recently. In my defence I would make the point that the restaurants visited represent some of the best value in the city and as this is a blog without an expenses budget, value is high on my list of desirable…

2017: UPDATE – Gelonch has now PERMANENTLY CLOSED Last week I went for lunch at Gelonch (C. Bailén, 56, (+34) 932658298, www.gelonch.es). I was here not too long ago to interview the owner/chef Robert Gelonch but as that’s still awaiting publication I’ll not dwell on the restaurant’s decor or philosophy and instead dive straight into the…

Please note that there is now a more recent post about Etapes from 2015. When I was recently preparing a magazine article on the best ‘bistronomic’ restaurants in Barcelona — very broadly defined as those offering high-quality. modern, innovative cooking for no more than €25 at lunchtime — a new name was suggested to me…

2015 Note: There is now an updated review of Caldeni here. 2014 note: Caldeni now has an excellent ‘meat bar’ spin off next door. Check out my recent post on Bardeni.  In the company of Dan, a friend and fellow food enthusiast, I headed for lunch yesterday to Caldeni (C/ València, 452) near the Sagrada…