Barcelona Restaurants

Citrus, sweeter than lemons

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Citrus, a restaurant you can find on in between the fancy shops on the Passeig Garcia. I got this tip from a colleague of mine aka Judith (who I thank for her tips), who works and lives in Barcelona, so I was pretty sure I could trust her choices. What didn’t know upfront is that restaurant is also from the Angroup, just like Piscolabis that I mentioned in my previous post (a tip I received from another friend). Here again a very good quality-price value, but this time in a more fancy surrounding.

For a meal in at restaurant you have to count around 30EUR per person for a whole meal including drinks… we drank glasses of cava during the whole meal… (it just felt more festively 🙂 )

We started our meal with for me some cannelloni Barcelona style (not sure what made it from Barcelona) and my beautiful fiancée took a salad with shrimps.

This got followed by some tuna and avocado for my fiancée and sea bass for me and we finished our dinner with a chocolate dessert.

Overall a good meal and next time I’m in Barcelona I will be here again. We enjoyed the whole meal so much that we also tried 2 other restaurants from the angroup Attic and Qu Qu… It is true that you can see some dishes come back on the menu in all restaurants, but nevertheless they serve it with the same good quality and correct price. (I have never paid more than 65EUR for 2 all in in their restaurants)

The bonus on my table was, besides the good food, without any doubt my gorgeous fiancée (well this is a bonus I have every time I sit at a table)… she always makes everything even better!

Me versus tapas in Barcelona

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Who says Spain has to say tapas, they go together like a horse and carriage 🙂 Finding a place where they sell good tapas and for a good price (because at some places they can get expensive) isn’t easy, especially not in a city like Barcelona, where you also have the classic tourist traps.

The word “tapas” comes from the Spanish verb tapar which means “to cover”.  Initially people just took tapas as an appetizer, until one day they wanted to cover more then only a small hunger and decided to put lots of appetizers on a table 🙂

To make it easier to choose where to go, I decided to call in some help… Who better to ask then somebody who lives, has lived or has been there looooots of times?! One of these people was Beatriz a Spanish friend of mine who now lives in Antwerp and knows Barcelona really really well. One of many great tips she gave was to try Tapas restaurant Piscolabis.

Piscolabis has 2 locations in Barcelona, one on the Av. Diagonal (on image above) and one on the Rambla Catalunya. FYI they are both in great shopping areas. The fact that we tried both of them, might already tell you how much we liked it! This restaurant has it all, great tapas, good location, nice interior and last but not least friendly staff!

I personally like eating tapas as this way you get to taste lots of different dishes and at the end have eaten whole meal (sometimes more). Another good thing is that you order a few and if you still feel hungry, you can always order some extra tapas… And the best drink to accompany it is Cava, as Catalunya is THE cava region from Spain. The biggest problem (like always) was actually to choose what to eat, but lucky for us the menu also has images of the dishes (the only disadvantage in my case, I wanted to eat it all when seeing the pics)

A few tapas we ordered: Pan con tomate, patatas bravas, tortilla de patatas (classics),vegetable tempura, asparagus with melted brie, little meatballs, croquettes with Iberian ham filling and we also tried some salady dishes… and there are many more, but all of them were great!!!

I would also recommend you to try their desserts (you do the desserts tapas style, by taking a few different ones). The moelleux they serve is one of THE best I ever had! (Really and I tried a few of those in my life)

Basically I really recommend this restaurant!

P.S.: Thank you for this tip Beatriz!

Addresses:

Rambla Catalunya, 27

08002 Barcelona, Spain

Phone n°: +34 (0)93 306 96 69

Av Diagonal, 593

08006 Barcelona, Spain

Telephone: +34 (0) 93 410 54 95

An Italian in Spain part 2

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During our stay we also enjoyed  lots of great restaurant/ tapabars. Some of them were from Tragaluz, but you read about this is a previous blog post.

Restaurant Les Quinze Nits was another true discovery (thanks to friends of mine), heavenly desserts! This restaurant doesn’t take reservations, so you’d better be quick to get a table, as always a whole row of people waiting to get a table … So we got lucky. When sitting outside, watch out for the pickpockets!

Another must do place to have a drink and tapas before y ou have dinner is  Can Paixano (la xampaneria) in Carrer de la Reina Cristina, crowed but a ‘must do’ in Barcelona.  FYI, the more napkins you see on the floor, the better the tapas J  (a Spanish rule). There of course many many other great tapa bars, restaurants, etc.. in Barcelona.. So let me know if you discovered some nice places in Barcelona! I’m always happy to try new places

When we went to Barcelona, we were really lucky that we had some beautiful weather, so we could actually go to the beach every day. What we usually did was walk in the city and around 4 p.m. (sometimes earlier) go to  the beach and enjoy the last sun of the day …. This worked perfectly as dinner starts very late. So we still have time to get back to the hotel and to the restaurant.

We even had one day we staid an entire day at the beach  and believe it or not, but we had stir-fried food for lunch. It might seem like not done in Spain, but this was the closest to our spot on the beach . This place was called Woki market, there are specialized in organic food :-). That was actually some good eating for a day at the beach, we could have done worse.

Something that really surprised me, was the good public transport in Barcelona… something I wouldn’t have expected from a southern-European country/city. The busses and metro trains ALWAYS came on time.  In some cities, taking the subway or bus can be hell, just finding out the route it is taking, but not  in Barcelona! Honestly. We used it the whole time we were there!

Another way to get around in Barcelona (besides bicycles ) is the little Yellow Go cars… We didn’t do this, as I thought it looked silly, my Girlfriend liked it…  You be the judge…

We stayed at the Diagonal hotel in Barcelona, at that  time we had a good deal via booking.com . overall is was a nice hotel , they had a nice choice of breakfast, the rooms were nice… the only thing some people might find less, it that it is not right in the heart of the city center, but it only took us a 15 minute walk to the Barceloneta/ Port Olimpic and when taking subway, you are in just a few minutes at Plaça Cataluña, Passeig Garcia (where the fancy shops are) or sagrada familia. I would also always know there the hotel was, just by looking at the building next to it, which was a giant sausage shaped building (some give another word to it 😉 . I would just suggest to find a good deal on Booking.com if you decide going to Barcelona.

I could go on and on about this city, but I think the best way is to explore this city yourself. Like I said before, this city has something to offer for everybody!… I k now I’ll be going back! Hope you will to?

Tragaluz

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Ever been in Barcelona? No? What are you waiting for??? Ok, it also took me some years to get there, but I really fell in love with this city. I’m not going to talk about this wonderful city, but about a great restaurant group you can find in Barcelona.  The group is called Grupo Tragaluz which in English would actually mean “Skylight”. My girlfriend and I have tried the Bar Lobo, Agua and Bestial. But I’m sure that the next time that we will be in Barcelona , we will go and try the other restaurants of the group. J.  The Group actually has all kinds of restaurants and they all have their own specialties. From a small tapabar to the Michelin star awarded Tragaluz restaurant. They now even have a hotel and I have to admit, it is quit tempting to go there as well.  Both Agua and Bestial are at the beach in Barcelona (Barcelonetta), although from both restaurants I would rather return to Bestial than to Agua.  I liked the food at Agua, and the restaurant is also mentioned in a lot of travel and restaurant guides, but  I think you pay more because of its location (but for Belgian Standard it is still in an affordable price range).  To start we  had the Iberian Ham (I really love ham) and some tapas. Followed by the  “Arroz con bogavante y butifarra” (rice with lobster and botifarra) and the “Langoustines” . We also  had a great regional wine. And I finished with my preferred dessert,  Tarte Tatin andsome coffee, basically a great meal.

 

As mentioned above, I preferred restaurant Bestial.  Maybe because of the great setting where all the trees were nicely illuminated and because had a table outside or maybe because of the nice service? It could have also been the really great food!!  We again started with some nice tapas  one of the “tapas” was a small wood oven backed pizza, some Iberian ham, tempura of vegetables, etc… after that we had the day suggestion  and we finished with these woooooonderfull pies.

 

And this leaves us with Bar Lobo , just a few minutes from the Mercat de la Boqueria. Sitting on a little square,  under an umbrella (as it was so hot at the time) enjoyed an endless choice of tapas with some local rosé and white wine (I think the picture below speaks for itself)and I think we almost tried all the tapas they had (besides the anchovies)… I got more hungry while eating, that’s how good it was