Greedy Barcelona - part 1

The first part of my Barcelona list, and a recipe for Sage and Strawberry Cake

The primacy of its ingredients, the atmosphere of its restaurants – and the prices they charge – have made Barcelona my favourite eating city. My affection for this sometimes ugly, cosmopolitan city, its working sea and worker’s food, grows each time I visit.

When I’m abroad I eat for pleasure, but more, I eat to understand, greedy to the stones of a place. It’s not to discover ‘national cuisine’, since home cooking and restaurant cooking are different – imagine how unhappy Italians would be if they tried to survive on a trattoria diet of pasta and meat, forgoing their simple lentils and the breadth of their vegetables – but to see what a place does when performing itself, to visitors and to locals.

The great charm of Barcelona’s performance is that, while being a city reliant on tourism, it still provides for locals, by no means rich, who wish to eat everyday meals. At the same time, the city has a thriving bourgeoisie, who sustain its fine-er dining restaurants and, by being solid patrons, have prevented such restaurants from catering entirely to tourists. Barcelona’s food culture is its own and this means that a visitor, a well-trained one, well guided too, can feel like a lucky guest rather than a marauder.

Here is the beginning of a far from exhaustive list of my favourite restaurants in the city. Since we go back often this list will continue growing. As it stands, there is strong preference for the south and centre, with Mont Juic as a sort of backstop, since this is where my best friends live and we stay. The north is hardly explored at all, nor are the most prosperous neighbourhoods, those which border Tibidabo. Historically – until the 2000s I guess – Barcelona’s rich attempted to get as far from the sea as they could, clambering up the side of their little mountain and building gaudy, sometimes beautiful, mansions from which they spied the city proper, with its slums and smog and scent of fish. But, they will not remain unexamined for long.

Everything has been added to the Greedy Eating Google map, along with descriptions. The map will be frequently backdated and updated with the places I love to eat, in London and elsewhere. Currently, everything I earn from paid subscriptions goes toward (but does not entirely cover!) paying a copyeditor. A link to the map is at the bottom of the page.

The list is compiled in no particular order, though a beady eye might notice that it goes from West to East.

And, after the list, there is a recipe for this Sage and Strawberry Cake