As some of you may know, part of the Meals Across America staff recently went overseas. We were instructed by the rest of the Meals Across America staff to not come back unless we brought some amazing food stories back with us.
Well, we're back. Actually we came back a long time ago, but we've been in hiding while trying to figure out what to write. We're ready now. Hopefully we don't disappoint.
Maybe we will disappoint... because the only pictures we have are from La Boqueria. This is the main market located right off of Las Ramblas. Beautiful food in there... so, we'll sprinkle those pics throughout this posting.
Our trip started in Barcelona. Although we arrived in the early evening, we were both pretty wiped out by the flight, so we just went to the hotel and crashed. We slept straight through the night and most of the next morning. Needless to say, we were famished... and lost. So, we walked and walked and walked. Eventually we made it to Las Ramblas and wandered there for a while. As is my norm, I dragged G past many restaurants trying to gauge her interest. As is G's norm, she also would not make a decision until she hit the proverbial wall. At that point, we had ten minutes left before meltdown, so we backtracked and found the place with the least amount of wait and people who seemed to be enjoying their food. We ate on the sidewalk at Ciutat Comtal.
This was our first foray into the world of Spanish restaurants and tapas. As such, it was some work. Although the servers spoke a fair amount of English, we were unsure of ourselves, what to order, how much to order, what was appropriate to order at that time of day, and many other paranoia-enducing concerns. We ended up with patatas bravas, some chorizo and bread, croquetas, and some rose. For me, the best part of the meal was the rose.I have a special place in my heart for patatas bravas, but on this trip I found that none of the places I tried matched up with a place in Ballard that I can go to anytime I want--Ocho(http://ochoballard.com/). Ocho has the right combination of spicy brava sauce, crispiness of the potatoes, and the aioli is present enough to make an impact, but the dish isn't drowning in the sauce. Ciutat Comtal's patatas bravas was mushy and swimming in ailoi.
Unfortunately, this would be the theme for many of our stops in Barcelona. I am sure that we simply ended up at the wrong restaurants. They weren't horrible -- just pedestrian and certainly not up to the hype that we had heard regarding Spanish food. Here's a quick rundown of some of the rest of the places we ate:
Daps:
We ended up here after trying to find another restaurant in the area that sounded delicious. Unfortunately, it must have closed down because we could find no trace of it. We had dinner at Daps which was more upscale with great wine.
This place actually had great pinxos, plus it's in a great location by the Cathedral in the Barri Gotic. Later in the trip we went on to Bilbao and San Sebastian, so we were able to compare pinxos. These were right up there in quality and variety.
Taller de Tapas:
We actually didn't eat here, but had some cava before taking in a classical guitar concert at a small cathedral nearby. We met two friendly German women who shared their table with us -- much to the annoyance of the server. I'm still not sure why he was so put off and rude about it. He was able to get more money out of the table than he would have otherwise.
I really enjoyed the atmosphere of Placa Reial where this restaurant was located. We stopped here after the concert after walking for quite a while through the Barri Gotic. Again, we had some decision making problems. The info we had said that this was a great place to check out some more traditional Catalan food which we wanted to try. The line to the restaurant stretched halfway out into the Placa though, so we kept walking around to try and find something else. When nothing looked good after about 30 minutes, we wandered back and to our surprise the line was only about five people long. We had no idea, but the inside of the restaurant was immense. They had tons of tables spread throughout two floors and multiple rooms. Unfortunately, instead of traditional Catalan cuisine, the food seemed more continental to us. I fear that it was just too overrun by tourists and thus they had dumbed all the food down.
Sanshirou:
I think this was the last night we were in Barcelona. I was pretty wiped out from our adventures and just wanted to rest before having to get up early to catch a train to Valencia. So, I suggested that we just go to this Japanese restaurant by the hotel. It received good reviews online, but coming from Seattle it just wasn't up to our standards. It wasn't horrible, but it wouldn't be in the top 5 or maybe even 10 here in Seattle.
Part Two will focus on Valencia where things definitely started to pick up!
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