Barcelona, or JoelF orders ham sandwiches on purpose

Quick note on Barcelona, more when I get back, including some lovely gastroporn from local markets (we didn't take cameras to dinner, at least not yet).

I hate ham, that spongy pink stuff they've served to me in cafeterias all my life.
I like prosciutto quite a bit.



Iberian Ham is to be loved.
Mmmm.... I haven't yet found if I can take the stuff back into the states, I worry the beagles will find it.

I had a little help.

Mmmm.... I haven't yet found if I can take the stuff back into the states, I worry the beagles will find it.

Not legally. I was in the Madrid Airport in the spring and a group of Americans got a stern warning at the duty free shop that they couldn't take ham into the US. It didn't stop them (or the store from sellng it to them).

You can't legally, and I very much regret not trying.

If you want a quickie Iberico sandwich at a very good price, check out the otherwise unassuming Cafe Viena, which you are likely to pass by based on looks alone -- it appears to be an Austrian-themed, McDonalds-ish chain that you would assume caters primarily to tourists. We rented an apartment in Barcelona right across the street from a branch and I passed it by until the second-to-last day of our trip, at which point a blown up version of this write-up by Mark Bittman that was posted in the window caught my eye for the first time. Had I known of it earlier, I probably would have had a sandwich from there everyday, even if just a mid-afternoon snack. As it was, I had three sandwiches over the last two days there and they were excellent.

I eagerly await further reports from Barcelona. We'll be there this summer, on the way to some famous restaurant in Spain where we just found out we have reservations .

After much webdiving, and a phone call to the USDA (301-734-7633), hams can be brought back if they are accompanied by a certificate of inspection by the Spanish veterinary agency. That's not what's on sealed packaging, it would be a piece of paper from a manufacturer. Not what I'm going to be able to find in a market, sadly.

Matt wrote:check out the otherwise unassuming Cafe Viena

Yes yes yes! Very good.

Quick update via Crackberry from JFK airport -- ours was the only intl flight in at the AA terminal, and not a pork-sniffing dog to be seen. Wasted an opportunity to break a victimless law.

Timbuk3 wrote:If I were a smuggler, I'd have much more finesse / Yes if I were a smuggler, I'd breeze across this border / My clothes a bit conservative, my papers all in order

A few more random notes, before I get to the long-winded picture-laden post, but forgive me, there will be no meal-porn. We didn't take the cam to dinner. We do have some truly fantastic market-porn, though. Their markets (we visited the Boqueria, Sta Caterina and a third market just off the city center) are amazing.

The other thing about lack of meal-porn, is that we didn't go anywhere high end at all. Why? (a) I'm cheap, (b) my company (which was paying my way most of the days) is even cheaper, (c) I almost went high-end on our last night, until I saw on the board we don't mention that El Glop serves calçots in the fall (don't know where they get them, don't care).

I'd seen Tony Bourdain eat calçots on his show, those char-grilled oversized scallions, dipped in romesco sauce, and had to have 'em. El Glop is the only place I'd seen them while I was out there. They are sweet in ways that a scallion is never, and the cold tart-rich romesco is the perfect foil for them. The bring a cloth bib, since you're supposed to drop the whole 12-18" long onion into the sauce and then your mouth. Don't miss 'em.

So what does Barcelona do really well?
a) Iberic/Iberian Ham, and charcuterie (xarcuterie in Catalan -- "x" is pronounced as we do "sh"). Dry, salty, fatty foods rule here. I had chorizo, loin, salumi, they're all great. Watch out for "York" though -- that's boiled ham. A "bikini" is a sandwich of boiled-type ham and cheese, you don't want that either. But if a chain like "Pan & Company" or "Bocatta" opened in the US, they'd put Subway, etc. out of business, assuming people can get used to really skinny layers of meat that have ten times the flavor of those piles of worthless turkey breast or salami.
b) Chocolate (xocolate in Catalan). Skip that milky Swiss stuff, that hazelnut-laden Belgian junk, give me the deep dark Spanish pure heaven. They know how to use it, and it's everywhere: almost every cafe has a glass tub with a constantly-spinning beater in it, keeping it well-mixed and frothy. Depending on the place you go, it may be just a few notches above Swiss-Miss, or it can be like a liquid bittersweet bar. Served with churros (xurros, you should get it by now), it's a great breakfast or a snack to tide you over until those late-night opening times
c) Roasted/grilled stuff: a typical Catalan restaurant is going to be heavy on fish a la plancha, and grilled meats of a number of kinds. Butifarra is the typical pork sausage, which to me resembled bratwurst.
d) Little fried things: croquets of ham, cod (some very nummy ones at Botiga one night), or calamari rings or whole "little squid" (I forgot the usual name, but they are also listed as "cepia" -- cuttlefish)
e) Did I mention calçots?
f) Wine -- lots of low-priced bottles available in most restaurants I was in, and it's all pretty good. Riojas and Penedes mostly were what we had.

What's not to love so much?
a) Olives. They were pretty much uniformly bland. Black ones were not much different from classical canned olives (except for still having pits), and pitted green ones were lacking in salt, or much flavor at all. It wasn't an isolated incident: the standard green bland olives were everywhere
b) Pa amb tomaquet. After seeing Antonius' gorgeous pix of his own version, I was expecting something really really good. It mostly came out as damp toast. Some of it wasn't even particularly warm. Perhaps more seasonal tomatoes would help, but I was expecting more garlic too. Plus, it's the bread every resto serves with meals, but they charge you 1-2 Euros for it.
c) On the subject of charging you for it, how about a pitcher of cold water instead of making me buy a teeny bottle (and soft drinks are even worse -- 6Euros for a Pepsi, one place)? I realize it's a big bump to your bottom line, but I've been out walking all day, I need some water and frankly the tap water's pretty good in Spain. The wine is sometimes cheaper than the water!

One question I have: With Catalan cuisine being basically a nice piece of grilled meat without sauce (a tournedos with three cheeses turned out to be three tournedos, each with a different slice of cheese on them), how did ElBulli evolve such complex combinations of sauces and garnishes? Reactionary?

I had a return trip to Barcelona this week, on business, so I had less choice of where to eat (and hotel conference food for breakfast and lunch), but some very nice results:

Sunday: A return trip to La Fonda -- this was on my recommendation as everyone had just arrived, weren't interested in anything far away. This was just a block from our hotel, and was very satisfying. First jamon of the week here (wait, that's not true, I carried out a sandwich earlier in the day, but while that was jamon, it probably wasn't iberico), some equisite calamari that tasted very nicely of the olive oil it was fried in, razor clams, scampi, monkfish, etc. Wonderful service.

Monday: Origen 99 in the old city. All Catalan food, again wonderful service with great wine. Lots of things on bread, ten of us shared a ridiculous number of dishes. See their website and especially their magazine/menu. The one online right now is the summer one, we had the fall menu, which included curious machine translation of words such as "l'avellanes" as "you countersink". A quick googling made it clear the word meant "hazelnuts."

Tuesday: Relatively tasty but dull reception at a museum

Wednesday: Gorria -- Basque in orientation, although much of the food is similar to the Catalan cuisine we'd already had. The waiter suggested that we pick out an entree each, and he'd select starters. The starters were amazing: the best jamon iberico I had on either trip, the best pa amb tomaquet (lots of olive oil, and warm bread made the difference), a simple salad of a tiny butterhead cut in half, draped with an anchovy on each half, and a lemon/olive oil dressing, mushroom-stuffed artichoke hearts, a grilled calamari and shrimp, and a couple of sausages: one I think was a chorizo, nothing too special, and the other was morcilla. I was skeptical, since pig-blood sausage is just a bunch of Kosher taboos wrapped up in a casing. I have to say, it was delicious: a cross in flavor and texture between mexican-style chorizo and jewish kishke. My spider crab dish turned out to be stuffed into the upper shell (I was hoping for a grilled crab), but was very tasty. Put this on your short list.