Greedy Barcelona - Part 2 and a recipe for Poached Chicken

More places to eat & drink in Catalonia

For a few words about why I love Barcelona so, so much, see Greedy Barcelona Part 1.

Everything has been added to the Greedy Eating Google map, along with descriptions. The map will be frequently updated with the places I love to eat, in London and elsewhere. Currently, everything I earn from paid subscriptions goes toward paying a copyeditor. A link to the map is at the bottom of the page.

And, after the list, a recipe for Poached Chicken

Granja M. Viader

Carrer d'en Xuclà, 4, Ciutat Vella, 08001 Barcelona, Spain

My favourite place to eat churros in Barcelona, and one of my favourite cafés. It is elegant, bustling; like somewhere a wonderful grandmother would take you.

“It’s beginning to rain, and it’s dark, and we run across La Rambla and into the maze of Raval and slip down a little passage to Granja M. Viader to eat churros and hot chocolate in the coziness. Big windows and bright, warmly bright, and full, and warm with the smell of pastry and chocolate and damp people, all giddy as kids waiting for their churros. Two elderly couples sit across from us, and one of the ladies is actually swinging her little feet in excitement — in pristine heels, how they’re so clean when it’s been raining is some sort of magic — behind us parents with a child, across teenagers drinking Majorcan milk with straws. It ought to have a name, the feeling you get in a cake shop. When I was little and we lived in South London, I would make the occasional trip to central London with my mother —‘going into Town’. After traipsing after her in department stores, my feet a bit tired and feeling rather grumpy, we’d go to have tea at Liberty’s. I remember sitting in a crowded room smelling like this one, of damp wool and pastry and coffee — probably the magic is in the rain, the Englishness of rain. A waitress would put a piece of cake in front of me, a big piece of chocolate cake, and my mother would widen her eyes in mock shock. “Will you eat all of that?” I did. I always do. Back in Viader we’ve finished our churros, we’d decided to share two plates between three and order another two plates. What’s special about them is that they’re basically savoury, that they’re like tempura or really nice light fish batter, with that nourishing empty taste. “Let’s bring salt next time.” Dip dip into the nearly savoury chocolate, quick bites, naughty bites like children. There’s a queue outside, lots of umbrellas. With some regard to childhood, no alcohol is served here, also it’s a butcher too, which is strange — the bright pink heaps of sausage, of flesh, sort-of flower like, at one side of the café. The waiters, the older ones especially, grin and move quickly, like indulgent uncles they collude in one’s greed. Walking back to Poble Sec we are heady with sugar and chocolate, minds swimmy and befuddled and infantile, laughing at little dogs.” — 11 March, 2022