Here is everything we ate in Barcelona.
Except all of the hot dogs. Food options at motor racing events are exceptionally limited!
Much discussion and debate was had about where we’d go to watch a live Formula 1 race this year. The British Grand Prix at Silverstone is naturally out because of the eye-watering ticket price, and as France was not on the 2024 calendar, driving somewhere was also out. And once we’d added in factors such as Italian fans not taking kindly to anyone not kitted out in Ferrari red (seriously, there are reports of people being attacked for being in just plain clothes!) taking Monza and Emilia Romagna off the table, and similar factors at play removing Austria, the Barcelona Grand Prix started to look like our best option. So tickets and flights were booked, and obviously my mind turned to plotting the food options for the parts of the trip we’d not be spending trackside.
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Whilst I would not say that Barcelona (which for the purposes of this piece includes the town of Ripollet to the city’s North East which we stayed in for a few nights to be closer to the Circuit de Catalunya) was one of my favourite food trips of late, there was still lots of delicious Catalonian food to be had, so shall we get stuck in?
The below would work as a handy guide to where to eat on a visit to Barcelona, but I’ve decided to group dishes by theme rather than venue, to give a bit of an overview of Barcelona’s restaurant scene which I hope will be more interest to an armchair tourist, as well as some specific recommendations if you’re heading that way sometime soon - a proper ‘where to eat’ guide as well as hotel and travel guides will be published on my website in due course!
Tapas and Bar Food
Tapas-style dishes made an appearance in two different guises in Spain: as bar snacks to accompany a drink (where many could be ordered to make up a meal if you so wished) and as sharing starters in restaurants to order before the main event.
Once we’d finally made it to our hotel after a very delayed flight, our first order of business was to go out again in search of drinks and food, which is also were our first Spanish tortilla happened at El Xampanyet, one of the most popular tapas bars in the city. Somewhere you can’t book and you’ll be likely to queue for up to an hour for the table, you can sometimes skip the queue by willing to stand at the bar. The tortilla: made with plenty of tender potatoes, savoury onions and with a signature, not quite set eggy middle was the perfect start to our Barcelona eating with a side of the city’s ubiquitous Pan con Tomate. Both are dishes common outside of Spain, but the tomatoes for the tomato, garlic and olive oil rubbed bread are never quite as right, the tortilla never as perfectly set as the one we had either on our first night, or in the restaurant in the lobby of our third and final hotel of the trip, Hotel Casa Sagnier, a few nights later.
Another brilliant potato-based tapas dish we shared after our first night at the track was the Huevos Rotos we were served at Sandacos in Ripollet. Translating literally as ‘broken eggs’, fried eggs, fried Catalan sausage and pieces of jamon are served over chip-like fried potatoes for a very Spanish ham, egg and chips number we all loved, and which I also saw ordered as a quick lunch once we returned to the city.
One tapas-style potato dish I was a little less enamoured by, surprisingly, were the patatas bravas: I’ve enjoyed this with a punchy pepper sauce in Spanish restaurants, but both times we were served it it came with aioli and either a pepper-infused mayonnaise, or a simple dusting of paprika, both options making for a rather unimpressive dish.
Speaking of ubiquitous dishes, I didn’t, but I think some of the group started to get sick of not just the Pan con Tomate, but the endless plates of jamon and of local slightly hard sheep’s cheese by the end. But me, I could eat them with a cold beer forever!
Shared as starters in more traditional restaurants, both sets of croquetas we ordered on the trip were very strong examples: roast and shredded chicken was the most popular filling, as seen on the left at Enovin, our favourite place to eat in Ripollet (delicious food in a wine warehouse where there is no wine list, you just pick from the bottles that line the walls), and the Catalonian sausage numbers served with a modern dab of chipotle mayo at brilliant seafood restaurant Arume were also fantastic.
So close to the ocean, seafood was never far from the menu. Starting from left to right, we have the best gilda (a Spanish skewer-with-drinks of a pickled chilli, gordal olives and an anchovy) I’ve ever tasted at the first random bar we stumbled upon out of our hotel, some excellent and wonderfully fresh prawns in a dried chilli-infused garlic butter at another random bar in Ripollet, and back at Enovin, some tender tuna belly with flame-roasted peppers, and two of the most incredible anchovies I’ve ever tasted.
Just as in Vienna, vegetables were rather hard to come by on local menus, but what did not disappoint was the prevalence of properly charred-until-collapsed aubergine often served as a sharing dish (more too-saucy potatoes pictured in the background!) This one was at Granvin, the exceptional Italian (but with a lot of Spanish dishes on the menu too) next to cult joint Cal Pep, and my pick if you can’t be bothered with the queue for their tapas!
Classic Catalonian
Yes reader, returning to Arume I did eat this entire seafood paella, designed for two people, all by myself on the final night. You see, I could not get anyone to share one with me, and even though I was happy to pay for it, most restaurants refused to let me order a sharing paella just for myself. So when one finally did, I wasn’t going to waste it. Perfectly cooked, shellfish-infused rice, tender Mediterranean prawns, plump mussels and saline clams, all hot and just saucy enough, all to myself? It was one of the highlights of our trip. If you are planning a trip to Barcelona, go here and order this.
One of the best places to go in the city for traditional Catalan food (you need to book but you can do so online) is Ca L’Estevet. After bread, good olives and with a bottle of Verdejo we shared a dish of roasted peppers, aubergines, good olive oil and an even better anchovy (as we were sharing they kindly split it into our own mini portions which was a lovely touch) I had beef meatballs in a beef sauce with tender slithers of braised cuttlefish, and J had a grilled Catalan sausage with plump white kidney beans. Both delicious, but I think J had the edge as mine became a bit too rich towards the end.
Two simple dishes of grilled meats cooked over wood flame were quite memorable in Ripollet at first Enovin and then Sandacos. I’ve never seen entrecôte steak done on the bone before (one of my favourite European cuts and done very well here) but what stole the show were the lamb ribs, which smoked as they charred and the fat caramelised over wood. A really simple, really special dish served simply with chips and roasted peppers. Honestly, the one of the most memorable bites in Spain.
Also at Sandacos I want to give a shout out to my cuttlefish served in a garlic herb sauce. It was plump, it was tender, it was the best cooked cuttlefish I’d ever had… but it needed more than just a small salad to not make it a mission to get through - it’s a texture that calls for variety with between bites!
Moving onto some traditional Catalonian desserts, these were filled with memories of my childhood summers spent with my grandparents in French Catalonia. Creme Catalan is a citrussy creme brûlée (though sometimes with a sprinkled cinnamon rather than burnt sugar topping) you need to know about, and obviously cheesecake is a must - this one at lovely modern seafood restaurant Mar i Terra - in the region arriving like a burnt basque but with a less caramelised top and a biscuit base.
Creme Caramel was another childhood throwback (the one at Ca L’Estevet was utterly perfect) as was their nougat ice cream J had which was one of my mother’s favourites when we ate out during my childhood summers.
Our second dinner at Enovin fell on the summer solstice where as part of their set tapas menu for the evening to finish off the meal we were all presented with a slice of Coca de Sant Joan, a special holiday variation for the solstice of a local brioche-like yeasted bread, which is stuffed with a wonderfully light cocoa cream and topped with candied fruit and pine nuts. A much lighter dessert than you’d expect whilst still being lovely and sweet, it’s a real treat it’s worth seeking out if you’re around in June.
Falling into the dessert category of ‘slightly strange’ however was this at Sandacos: Castilian Chuchos, aka croissant-like deep fried pastries coated in sugar and filled with (in this case heavy rum-infused) creme Catalan, and here, inexplicably served on a bed of blueberry yogurt. I’m willing to except this was a bad example of something that might have been rather good!
Modern Spanish
We had several Catalan dishes with a modern twist that were worth shouting about, including this Catalan-style (paprika spiced and fried) cod served with white beans at Mar i Terra, and another iteration of charred aubergine served warm with dollops of cool burrata and toasted hazelnuts at Hotel Casa Sagnier.
Still at the hotel the very slow cooked lamb lamb shoulder with carrot puree was impossibly good, and was the cheesy potatoes, fillet steak and foie gras number which took rich and savoury to another level. A special mention goes to the sheer quality and perfectly cooked nature of J’s Iberico at Arume, but don’t order it, why would you when that paella is on the menu??
Pasta, both Italian-style and with a Spanish twist is very present in Barcelona. I LOVED my seafood tagliatelle with more wonderfully fresh Spanish seafood at Terra i Mar, and we also enjoyed the arrabiata and smoked cheese tossed pasta sharer at the hotel.
Granvin, as an actual Italian restaurant gave us our only non-Spanish dishes (except for those trackside hot dogs of course!) with an excellent, classic cherry tomato, garlic and clam number, and another slightly more traditional creamy sausage and mushroom.
One dish I’d told was amazing in Barcelona I knew I would not be able to eat was the savoury cheese cheesecake at Fismuler, but as J did not fancy their menu I never caught a glimpse of it. However, when I spied the same made with a local smoked cheese at Arume, and I explained the dish to J he was game and what arrived was a sweet meets savoury, dessert meets cheeseboard number that was frankly fascinating. He’d not order it again but did enjoy the whole thing: an experience to end the meal.
Brunch
As in practically any other big city, brunch has taken over somewhat in Barcelona, and we had several in holiday mode. We went to Egg Lab twice (once to each branch) for their delicious, clever, egg-centric dishes - bookmark this place for your next trip!
On both visits J had the Mexican Rancheros (declared one of the best breakfasts he’d had in ages) of roast chicken, green sauce, beans, salsa, Mexican cheese, fried eggs and Pico de Gallo, but I branched out a bit, having their Korean Fried Chicken Eggs Benedict (on brioche, complete with a green papaya and carrot salad) one day, and their curiously mad but very tasty Kimchee Pancakes the next, served chilled with an avocado cream, pickled fennel, soy-cured quails eggs and a teriyaki pancake syrup.
And finally, slightly more traditional but still very good at the hotel was my sourdough avocado toast with the nice addition of whipped ricotta I’ll be playing around with later this summer when the bigger tomatoes have started ripening in the kitchen garden.
Wow, Rachel, I’m afraid we didn’t feast anywhere near as well on our recent trip to Barcelona, though we did sample the Spanish tortilla, patatas bravas and other tapas you mentioned. Obviously it just gives me more reason to want to return. Thanks for an excellent vicarious food tour! My mouth is watering.
Heroic feasting on an epic scale! Thanks for the abundant tips. In a similar vein, you might like Substack https://thekateadventure.substack.com/. She was an F1 journalist but now writes a food/travel blog.