Tarragona, Barcelona-- I'm a-goin-ta

We will be staying near Tarragona, but visiting Barcelona too. Any suggestions for restaurants, more of the little fun place with great X than the temple of cutting-edge cuisine type?

If you're a fan of grilled octopus, La Pulperia in Barcelona is a must.

Set a few blocks off Las Ramblas on a quiet street, this was one of my favorite restaurants in Barcelona. We wandered in sometime after midnight and found the place hopping with locals drinking wine and eating some of the best grilled octopus I've had. It came served on a large wooden platter with lots of toothpicks to eat the pieces with and was just a mound of perfectly grilled octopus, nothing more, nothing less. I'm sure they have other things on the menu, but I zeroed in on their specialty.

It was one of my fondest dining experiences in Barcelona and certainly typifies the "little fun" vibe you're after.


La Pulperia
Consejo de ciento, 329
08007- Barcelona

http://www.restaurantesbarcelona.com/la ... riaeng.htm

there's a place very close to the beach, just off the ramblas called "set ports" (7 doors) that i often recommend to people visiting barcelona.

it's nothing innovative, or even novel. it's somewhat of a touristy restaurant, but they do an excellent job of offering a sample of the cuisine that this region has to offer.

i highly recommend going there and getting the 'barcelona samper' (or whatever they're calling it) appetizer, which is a per person app platter that gives you 5 or 6 tastes of typical dishes. and they make a very respectable seafood paella as well.

the service is old-school fancy, as is the decor and setting, but you needn't dress up, as it's a very tourist-friendly place. i've eaten there 5 times and never had a negative experience. it won't blow you away, but it's a good solid dependable choice for basic catalan cuisine.

I think this place is about 1/2 way between Barcelona and Tarragona, it is DEFINITELY worth a stop.

Cal Xim
Pl. Subirats, 5
Sant Pau d'Ordal (Subirats) near Vilafranca

A teeny place with a huge open wood burning oven/grill and a great wine list. Everything was seasonal and local and simply cooked. DH had duck and I had the rarest pork I’d ever seen (they offered to cook it a bit more for me, but I managed to eat about ½ of it). The best was the grilled artichokes. Soaked in olive oil and salt, and left to slowly roast over wood coals. Yum.

In Barcelona, I know it's touristy, but these two places are really good: Bar Pinoxio in the Boqueria market, and Cal Pep (Plaça des les Olles 8 ) - at Cal Pep, go later in the evening, during the week, and you shouldn't have to wait in line too long. Don't sit in the back in the dining room, sit at the bar and eat there.

In Barcelona we also enjoyed TapaÇ24 (Calle Diputació 269) which I think had the best tapas of all the places we had tapas. Really amazing fried artichokes – they sliced baby artichokes paper thin, so they were like artichoke chips. Oh so decadent! And we didn’t have to wait for seats, so that made for a good experience as well.

(artichokes were in season, so I'm sure your experience will be of some other phenomenal veggie done in different but wonderful ways at several different places)

You can check out the rest of my post on Barcelona - (we were there in February) at http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.ph ... highlight=

MIke, in Tarragona, per se, there aren´t too many special places. An area you can check is the fishermen quarter. All small restaurants with good and fresh fish. A recommendation is casa Manolo.Outside Tarragona there are a few very interesting ones, mostly because the quality of the product they have. In the town of el Morell, around 15 Kms. inland, there is the Hostal La Grava, with a modern cuisine that combines great product and modernized local dishes. South on the coast, in the town of Cambrils, you have what is probably the best cuisine of the Tarragona area. A few places that I would recommend are Rest. Gallau, Can Bosch (great arros negre or a banda), El rincon de Diego (elaborate cuisine, somewhat expensive). All of these places have the best and freshest of fish. Beware with a lot of the cheap places (tons of them) where you can´t trust the product they serve.
As far as Barcelona, there are a couple of areas with lots of restaurants that are nice to visit, walk around, etc. One is the Barceloneta, near the harbour. The other is the Port Olympic, some what further north. Both are nice to spend time and see around.
Let me know if you need anything else.

I forgot, in Barcelona I would recommend a visit to el Mercado de la Boqueria, half way down the Ramblas as you go towards the harbour.
Aroud, there are quite a few small restaurants with local dishes and tapas.
After walking around the market and seeing all the wonderful things they have, I am sure you will be ready to eat anything they put in front of you.
At least that is what happens to me every time I go!!

Rafa wrote:I forgot, in Barcelona I would recommend a visit to el Mercado de la Boqueria, half way down the Ramblas as you go towards the harbour.
Aroud, there are quite a few small restaurants with local dishes and tapas.
After walking around the market and seeing all the wonderful things they have, I am sure you will be ready to eat anything they put in front of you.
At least that is what happens to me every time I go!!

There's a falafel joint right around the corner from that market that has the greatest falafel sandwich I've ever had. Tons of toppings to choose from, the place was terrific. Wish I could remember the name, but it's right there near the market, on the right side of Las Ramblas, heading toward the harbor.

I definitely have to second the Cal Pep recommendation. We went for dinner one night and liked it so much we went back for lunch the next day. It's very casual up front (bar stools) with a formal dining room in back (reservations a must). I believe it was named the 33rd best restaurant by someone or another a few years ago. The seafood was amazing.

In addition I quite enjoyed my Tapas at Ceveceria Catalana. It is located at 236 Mallorca, between Rambla and Balmes. They also had a very good beer list (not too surprisingly).

I also lunched at a small gourmet food and wine shop/restaurant called Ravell. Here is a link to their web site (http://www.ravell.com/). We went there because it had made the Saveur 100 and were quite glad we did. It was not inexpensive, but dishes like fried eggs with foie were incredibly memorable. The eggs in Spain are amazing. We ate downstairs in the shop where there were two tables and made an afternoon of it. The wine list was also outstanding. We actually let the manager send us whatever he thought we would like and he did a great job. As long as you stay away from items like caviar and baby eels, the bill is not too bad.

Wish I was there now. Good luck.

One other thing you may wish to do before your arrival in Spain is to study a bit about Spanish wines. The wine lists in most restaurants are very Spanish heavy, and extremely reasonably priced. 1994,1995, 2001, 2004 and 2005 were generally considered very good vintages for rioja and ribera del duero. 2002 was a disaster. I found some wines from priorat that were somewhat difficult to find here were available and fairly reasonably priced in Spain. I also found that the cavas were extremely cheap and much better than any of the examples I have had here.

Thanks all, believe me, I have all this stuff carefully printed out for the trip, it is all appreciated.

One question about wine-- I haven't even been to any wine regions (um, I guess I was in Sonoma, barely) since 9-11-- what do you do about bringing wine back these days? Have them ship it? Pack it really good and check it? Drink it all before you come back?

Im originally from chicago but am living in barcelona now and have been for the last year. a few uggestions:

a nice cheap lunch spot where you can get 1.50 sandwhiches and 2 euro bottles of cava. still good quality street food and a local favorite. no seats, its a stand up bar and is bound to be packed any time of the day. Its in the barceloneta neighborhood and is called Chapagneria. I reccomend the entrepan de chorizo, queso, y cebolla, and a bottle of Rosat for about 3-4 euros in total.

Takeaway catalan rotiserie chicken. On the corner of urgell and aragon.

Menu of the day- argentinian brasserie with an excellent selection of grilled meats from galicia and argentina. It is tucked away in a small alleyway right of the corner of bruc and trafalgar. on trafalgar there is a samll alleway with shiny metal letters that say "Passeig". Go for lunch to get one of the best values in town but get there before 1:30 to avoid a long wait. the menu changes daily, but the selection of meats always provides good options. Try the solomillo de buey

Argentinia empanada joint on torrent de lolla in the famous neighborhood of gracia. Try the ternera milanesa and an empanada de carne picante. they deliver too.

Paco Meralgo -a little more upscale, but with high quality traditional catalan cuisine and an assortment or mariscos, or shellfish, in tapas portions. still reasonably priced on calle muntaner, I believe between corsega and rosello.

Bar Inopia- calle tamarit and roquefort. a nice tapas bar with limited selection but with excellent tapas and a nice place for drinks. It is run by the brother of the famous adrian ferran, owner of el bulli, known as one of the worlds best restaurants. Try the grilled tuna, the lamb skewers and las bombas. also try the mato con miel for a light natural dessert, along with the peach liquor.

Cafe paris- muntaner con paris, nice bar with excellent sandwiches. try the "paris" which is a triple decker ham, bacon, fried egg, lettuce, tomato sandwich. A good place to watch team Barca play. but has terrible service as does almost every restaurant in the city.

Lasty and excellent place for traditional catalan dinner with very reasonably priced entres considering the quality. La Clara on gran Via and Roquefort. The solomillo with a wine sauce and carmelized onions is amazing but make sure you make it clear you want it cooked poco hecho so they dont burn it because they think you are a tourist. also try the Calcots whcih are fried spring onions with a romesco sauce, or the fois gras with frid egg and mil hojas pastry. This place also has an excellent cellar of spanish wines.

Mike G wrote:what do you do about bringing wine back these days? Have them ship it? Pack it really good and check it? Drink it all before you come back?

Most places in Spain are not set up for direct shipping to the US. Plus, with the duty charged on shipped goods, even if it's cheaper there, it's not really worth shipping back unless you get the VAT off, which probably means a case of bottles around 30 euros each. And it will take forever, and you'll be really worried that it won't arrive because it's taking so long (they are also more casual about things over there than we are here, so it gets shipped when it gets shipped)

Check at the winery if you can get it here. You can get a lot of nice Spanish wine in Chicago.

You can not carry it on. If it is not correctly packed for shipping, they won't let you take it in checked baggage. You can't just take a case of wine in a cardboard box. We brought back 3 bottles in a styrofoam shipping container, well wrapped in plastic and put into our luggage, and I still was worried the whole way home that they'd been taken or broken. Someone on our plane did have something break in their luggage, it was soaked.