Four days of food in Barcelona

Ah, there’s a lesson here – take more pictures and take more notes. And then write a post less than three months after sitting down to the meal. Yes, alas 80% of the food related fun we had in Barcelona has long since disappeared from memory – but from the few snaps and vague recollections that remain, a single post can still be saved!

The sheer amount of well regarded restaurants in Barcelona is a daunting prospect when planning a few days in the city – we used Chowhound and eGullet to narrow the choices down to:

• Gresca
• Moo
• Cinc Sentits
• Tapac 24

Gresca is a small restaurant located in an inconspicuous, almost run down street in a random Barcelona city district. Inside, the narrow restaurant is all white and clean lines – this minimalism extends to the food, which made for some of the least inspiring pictures on my Flickr stream.

Despite the low key presentation, the food was probably the best of the whole trip – clean, fresh flavours made it the perfect place for a (relatively) light lunch. No, we can’t tell you much more than that – just look at the pictures and a big shiny four stars!

Gresca

Moo is the uber slick restaurant in the belly of the uber trendy and expensive Omm hotel. It is also a ‘product’ of the Roca brothers – the three owner/chefs of El Celler De Can Roca in Girona. We were lucky enough to visit Can Roca a couple of years ago and it remains probably the best food and wine experience of our lives – so we were keen to see how much of this was captured in this inner city incarnation.

Comparisons to Can Roca, however, are not really fair – as although the restaurant offers some of the more iconic Roca brother dishes, generally the experimentation is more subdued and the flavours far more conventional.

In terms of fine dining this well tried approach means that every dish, while not wildly exciting, was solid, well flavoured, beautifully presented and reasonable value for money… Its just a shame that it was ultimately fairly forgettable.

Moo

Cinc Sentits is the restaurant dimmest in my memory – in part because it was our last fine dining stop, and in part because the camera was all but discarded for the meal… The only thing I remember is that they wouldn’t let us both get different wine pairings, and gave us a bit of a hard sell on the more expensive pairings. Our overall feeling was that the food was good though, so another hazy solid fours stars is in order.

Cinc Sentits

Tapac 24 is another restaurant with stellar heritage from the north of Barcelona. Here former El Bulli chef Carles Abellan serves up high end tapas with a slightly bumped up price to match. The queue runs up the stairs and out the door, but without reservations there is little choice but to wait and it moves pretty quickly.

On our first visit we arrived at around 11pm, grateful to find it open, but disappointed to find a couple of the signature dishes finished. In spite of this disappointment, we took a selection of the remaining options and had a good meal – not great, but really good and at a reasonable price. The only problem was the nagging feeling that a similar quality of food could be found in a dozen tapas bars across Barcelona at a lower price…

We were in the vicinity the next day, however, and decided to pop in to try one of the signature dishes – the truffle bikini. Two crispy rounds of toast containing ham, cheese and truffle shavings. It was good. But… it was a toasted cheese sandwich and I’ve made better at home, truffle or no truffle.

Our favourite dish here was probably the tomato bread – the cheap and ubiquitous ciabatta style bread drizzled in oil, and rubbed in garlic and fresh tomatoes, with a healthy does of salt. So simple, so effective. Overall, our last visit to Cal Pep was far more successful – but we can’t help but recommend a stop here, just thinking of that bread is making me hungry…

Tapac 24

This was our first visit back to Barcelona after getting engaged there in 2008, and after such a perfect experience, perhaps we were wrong to go back – but this time around Barcelona itself seemed far less a magical, romantic place, but rather a slightly run down and unfriendly place… more of a big, grubby anonymous city than the charming warren of inviting side streets and cosy cafes that we remembered.

The food was excellent (albeit never truly great) and dozens of world class menu remain untried – but I expect it will be a while before we return to Barcelona.