Iberian Spring Day 12: Barcelona (Gracia)

Soundtrack: “Red red wine” Neil Diamond

A full day in Barcelona. We’d booked a food tour, after looking at several options, that promised to take us to some more local spots. I was a little worried at the 5 hour duration — being honest, no one wants to spend 5 hours trying to keep me entertained, at any amount of money.

We met our poor guide P at a placa in Gracia. She gave us a brief run down of how we’d be spending the time, visiting a number of places in the Gracia neighbourhood. As the tour progressed she explained a bit more about Gracia: we’re in Catalonia, a region that feels very strongly about independence, and doesn’t like to consider itself part of Spain; then there’s Gracia, a neighbourhood that used to be its own town, that doesn’t really like to consider itself part of Barcelona and by accounts was only brought into the fold at literal gunpoint. So we weren’t taking a tour in Spain, or Barcelona, but Gracia.

Our first stop was for an old school agricultural breakfast at La Pubilla. As P explained, a pubilla was the name given to a woman who would inherit the family estate/business if there were no male children. Patriarchal sure, if there are younger brothers, they’d get the inheritance, but at least if there were only female children then it wasn’t handed to random cousins who just happened to score a Y chromosome. The current chef is a boy, but has set the place up to recreate the traditional recipes like his grandmother used to make. Inside is quite unpretentious, simple tables and chairs, and I knew it would be good when I saw the clientele were old, well dressed locals, some even starting the day with a glass of vino tinto. We started off with a simple yet wonderful fried egg over some sobrasada, a soft chorizo-like sausage, pure flavours done well. As We’d told P we were willing to try pretty much anything (as long as there was a good gluten free option for L) our next dish was a slightly gelatinous pork and some amazing local beans, a small white variety full of flavour but only seasonally available. The pork was wonderful, a mix of hoof and snout, hence the gelatinous consistency, with meat and the outside was a thin and crunchy skin, almost like lechon. I doubt I could eat this every day, but if I was a farmer I just might.

Our next stop was literally across the street, at a market stocked with local produce that supplied La Pubilla — we’d actually seen the owners of one stall having breakfast there, and another store delivering goods. The market was full of wonderful things: fresh seafood, bacalao, fruit, vegetables, meats, ready-made meals that put just about any Australian deli counter to shame. So many varieties of apples, fresh kumquats, stone fruits, huge trays of strawberries. A meat counter with all sorts of cuts: beef and pork cheeks, rabbit, chickens with the heads and feet still attached, tripe, liver, kidneys, heart, tongue, as well as more regular cuts. It all looked so good. We stopped at one business and tried some smooth and delicate local cheeses and sausages. Also in the market was a school group, it’s a thing here where classes get taken to the market to learn about food and nutrition.

Out next stop was a traditional grain-seller, a family run business that had been in the same place since the late 1800s. Due to local laws made to preserve the traditional appearance, they’d only made small changes to the shop in that time, and still focussed on selling grains, nuts and dried legumes, but had also “expanded” to selling some dried fruit as well. I’m always amazed at stores such as these that sell a wide range of a few products — want dried almonds? you’ve got a choice, polenta? pick the grade — when Australian stores seem to sell a lot of products with a narrow range — sure you can buy a kitchen sink and a sledgehammer in the supermarket, but you can only have one type of mushroom and one kind of tinned tomato.

Then it was an olive oil tasting down the road, three types: one a 100% single type local oil, a very gentle flavour; the second was a blend of two local olive types, grassy on the nose and L found hints of banana; while the third was from that other place called Spain, very bold and grassy with some green apple. They all went well with the salted dried almonds we picked up at the last stop — even the almonds were a different variety to what we get in Australia. Who knew there were different types of almonds, these were rounder and flatter, and not as strongly flavoured.

In the shade of Gracia’s main square’s tall belltower we saw a group of senior citizens doing their weekly dance class, getting some fresh air, and truly dancing like no one was watching, however us and numerous others in the square were. Around the other side of the tower was a map of where all the air-raid shelters used to be during the civil war, at least one is still preserved and gets opened up a few times a year for tours. P also showed us how during on festival, the locals form a huge human tower, five or six people storeys high, just for fun (though they train many months in preparation).

We had a quick stop at what used to be the Gracia town hall, and is now a government office, where they store the gigantes, huge puppet outfits that locals wear during street parades. Some are caricatures of people, while others are more abstract, or are local landmarks. Street parades and festivals are very important in these parts, in Galicia you’ll find that different parts of the same street will compete to have the biggest and best decorations. The offices also had some dragons and a diablo figure, these get fireworks attached and are carried through the streets where hopefully they don’t set things on fire.

Then it was time for something sweet, so it was a chocolate/sweet shop that had been doing the same thing since about 1880. The owner didn’t look like a spring chicken, but they weren’t the original proprietor. Here we had some sweetened egg yolk treats, and some chocolate candied almonds — I don’t like candied almonds, but these morsels, delicately wrapped and dusted, tasted amazing. They also had some amazing cute chocolates on sale for the next street festival, for St George’s Day, where it’s all about romance and books, so couples will give each other presents of books, dragons, and chocolate — sometimes even chocolate dragons.

It’s important to do things in the right order, so one should always have a pre-lunch vermut at a traditional bodega. This we had with some amazing fresh anchovies, first with olives, vinegar and olive oil, then with small peppers as well. I’m beginning to run out of superlatives, but these were just fresh ingredients treated right. The slightly salty fresh fish, the punchy olives, and a hint of vinegar, so good. The vermut was excellent too, spiced and warming and being a traditional bodega, none of this garnish stuff, not even a half slice of orange, it was just a single iceblock.

Lunch, the most important meal of the day, or something. Again, P wanted to push our food boundaries so we got a place of chickpea stew with tripe and various mystery meats, the tripe wasn’t chewy, and all the flavours balanced; some roasted red peppers and eggplant, just straight flavours and so very delicious; local ratatouille with bacalao, while I found it unusual to add meat to this dish, it worked; and finally some snails. While Catalan food does have some definite French influences, when it comes to snails it’s not big French ones drowned in garlic and butter; these shelled bad boys looked like the everyday garden variety, and were prepared with olive oil, salt and garlic, and served with salsa and al-ioli, as they don’t call it aioli here. To help this down we had a porro of vino tinot: a porro is a carafe with a large top hole and a thin narrow spout, while wine can be poured out through the large neck, it can also be drunk straight, using the thin spout where the idea is that this doesn’t touch your mouth. At street festivals they’ll have competitions for drinking from these. P showed us how, but she’s had practice, so I only had a go once the porro was almost empty. I know I’m a chicken, but I feel that I probably need more practice before trying it with a full one in public. The wine was decent, it’s amazing how they just serve wine straight from the barrel here, young fruity easy drinking reds.

Our last stop was for desserts — normally it would be chocolate and churros but the gluten free version is gelato. After a quick wander, including over some paving tiles designed by Gaudi, we were at a little place owned and run by a couple of brothers. While they had many standard flavours, they had a few oddballs including truffle and cheese, which really shouldn’t work but somehow did. They had fresh local small strawberries sorbet, that was delicious. I ended up going for burnt butter, this was pretty spectacular, like a salted caramel/toffee. So very good.

Tour over, P made it through 5 hours dealing with me mostly unscathed. We said our goodbyes and headed to look at some books. We went back to Gigamesh to have a proper look. L possible cracked the code to the shelf ordering, many seem to be divided by publisher. I guess it makes some kind of sense, at least all the books are going to be the same size, but I wonder how much the Spanish sf book-buying public know which publisher has the right books for them? Maybe they do. We walked out with some cool things, and found ourselves deep in what’s been called the “Geek Triangle”. This one block is packed solid with bookshops, comic shops, gaming shops, pop culture stores, it’s certainly the highest density of such specialty stores I’ve ever encountered. Even though our feet hurt we checked out every one.

After a brief rest at the apartment we headed out for a slightly more upmarket dinner, as today’s one of our anniversaries. I had some more pan con tomate, great stuff, the bread used was so crispy and flakey. Then a burrata with avocado gazpacho and baby tomatoes, this was truly to die for with creamy cheese and sweet tomatoes, followed by another pork cheek, this one with pedro ximenez sauce and polenta. I was also drinking a very nice pedro ximenez. Dessert was a catalan creme served like a mousse, and another chocolate courant, both gluten free and delicious. A wonderful meal to finish a day of eating.

Tomorrow is out last full day in Barcelona, so we’ve planned a cava and jamon tasting, checking out the mostly finished sagrada famillia, and shopping.