The Food I Ate in Barcelona

While being on my holiday in Barcelona, I thought it would be fun to write a blogpost about all the food I ate in that magnificent city. I took pictures of every dish I had, and carefully noted down what I ate and where I ate it in my little notebook. Now, I’ve been back for almost a month and this post is still waiting to be written! Let’s finally do this!

Day 1: We arrived in Barcelona at the end of the afternoon, and we still had very Dutch timing when it came to being hungry: at around half past six we started to walk past all the terraces on the lovely Rambla de Catalunya in search of food. It had such a nice atmosphere, with all the lime trees lining the street and all these nice terraces full of people. We eventually stopped at MasQMenos‘ terrace to have a bite to eat. While we definitely needed something to eat, we weren’t that hungry so we both went for a salad consisting of tuna, fresh tomato, onion and a little bit of dressing. That was all there was to it, and it was so tasty! It came at exactly the right moment as well: right then it felt like the most delicious thing I’d ever had! My mother also ordered gazpacho, which tasted really good as well. Definitely a positive first experience with food in Barcelona!

After this delicious salad we continued wandering around the Rambla de Catalunya, and a Häagen-Dazs store caught our eye… Obviously we had some room left for dessert, so we got ourselves some ice cream. I never actually had Häagen-Dazs before and, man, was it good! I like most ice cream because well, it’s ice cream, but this was definitely on a whole other level! We both got two scoops and I had one scoop of mango ice cream and one of mango-raspberry (I like mango, can you tell?).

Day 2: Our hotel didn’t offer breakfast, so we had to go out and find some ourselves. I never go out for breakfast, so that was actually pretty fun! We ended up at a tiny place called D’Joan, which was very close to our hotel (we were hungry, you see). At D’Joan you can get a croissant and a cup of tea (or coffee) for €2, which was a huge bargain. And the croissant was absolutely delicious! It was just a regular croissant, but covered in something sweet. I think it was egg yolk with some sugar but I’m not sure. We enjoyed this breakfast so much that we actually came back every day of our trip, except on the last day because they were closed. The lady behind the counter was so sweet and friendly, which made us love coming back here every morning.

During lunch time of day 2 we were walking around in the neighbourhood of La Rambla, and I was already getting quite grumpy (I get really grumpy when I’m hungry) when we passed an Irish bar called My Bar.

And honestly, I really didn’t care that it’s kind of ridiculous to eat at an Irish bar when you’re visiting Barcelona: I was craving fish and chips! My mum didn’t mind, in fact, she wanted some fish and chips herself as well, so that’s what we had for lunch. The gooey green stuff are peas, which I didn’t eat because I’m not a huge pea fan, especially not when they’re gooey like that. The rest tasted really good though! Although we both did miss a bit of vinegar to go with our fish. Still, I really enjoyed this lunch!

When it was time for dinner we figured we didn’t want to go all out since we already had quite a big lunch. A simple (but delicious!) salad would do just fine. We walked around for quite some time and couldn’t really find a place we felt we wanted to eat at, but then we came across Los Barriles, an adorable, rustic little restaurant. We were pretty sure it was a family business, and it just looked so cute. They didn’t really have a salad (or not one that appealed to me, anyway), so I went for the salmon. And got two huge pieces of it. Wow, that was a lot of salmon to eat all by myself! My mother also ordered fish and got a huge portion as well. Granted, it’s just the fish, with only a little bit of lettuce and nothing else, but still. I wasn’t able to finish it all, although this was probably the best salmon I ever tasted.

After dinner we were completely stuffed, but we decided to find a nice place to get a cocktail. You see, my mother never had a mojito before and has wanted to try one for ages. Unfortunately, not a lot of places in my home town serve them. So, we went to a cocktail bar called Kokomo (I believe) and ordered two mojitos. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any mint in this first one, but it still tasted really good. When we went back two days later we had another mojito which tasted completely different. It did have the mint in it but used white rum instead of the dark rum that was used in this first one. I don’t know which one I preferred, since they were both delicious and tasted so different! My mother loved both of them as well, by the way, so that was a good first mojito experience for her.

Day 3: During lunch on the third day I initially forgot to take a picture, which is why you’re looking at a half eaten sandwich here. We had lunch at a place called Picasso, from which we had a view of La Sagrada Família. The people doing the serving weren’t exactly friendly and the atmosphere wasn’t that wonderful, since it was mostly a place for tourists. But hey, that’s what you get with a location like that, so it didn’t bother me. I ordered a tuna sandwich, and got exactly that. A sandwich with some tuna. Oh, and three pieces of red pepper. It tasted really good, but I was expecting a little bit more than what I got. At least a little bit of lettuce or something.

Dinner on day three was a bit of a disappointment. This was kind of our own fault, though, since we decided to eat at the café at the top floor of El Corte Inglés, which is a huge department store. It was really busy and noisy (we practically had to yell to have a conversation), but we were really hungry and didn’t feel like wandering around the streets and looking for a (decent) place to eat. So here we were. We both ordered the same thing, and we asked to the waiter if the chicken we wanted was coated with cheese, which we suspected. No, no, it wasn’t, it would just have a normal crust. Oh, it had a crust alright. But underneath the crust was a layer of cheese… I really don’t like cheese (please don’t kill me). So that was the chicken ruined for me. The potato chips tasted just fine, but the green stuff that was supposed to pass for a salad was another disappointment. There were two tiny tomatoes and the lettuce was wilted to the point that we could’ve sent it back. My mother didn’t eat any of it because she just didn’t feel comfortable with the way the lettuce looked.

I figured I’d cheer myself up with a nice banana split for dessert, which I’d spotted a picture of on the paper placemat. Another disappointment: they were out of bananas… I chose a dame blanche instead, which was quite good, but overall this meal wasn’t exactly what we hoped it would be.

Day 4: This was the day of the disappointment of Parc Guëll, which left me in a horrible mood during lunch time. Like, really terrible. We went into a small place called La Cartuja to eat something, since eating usually cheers me up. We both ordered the tuna panini, which tasted really great right about then. You could tell it wasn’t exactly freshly made, but I didn’t care. It was bread, it was tuna, it was fine by me. The cokes were ridiculously expensive here, though.

The fourth day was our last full day in Barcelona, and therefore included our last dinner. We were in Barri Gotìc during dinner time and it took us quite some time to find a place to eat, since we found ourselves in little streets full of wonderful shops but with no restaurants. Eventually we found a place called Los Toreros. Once inside and seated we realised we were in a restaurant that was all about (the history of) bullfighting (the name should’ve given it away, but we were hungry and didn’t notice). There were pictures on the walls depicting these fights, and some showing stuff I’d rather not look at, especially not during dinner. It was a little uncomfortable (we’re both against bullfighting) but the food was delicious, so we decided to just not look at the pictures. We had a three course meal since it was our last night there, and we also had a lovely experience talking to an Indian man living in New York but at that moment stranded in Barcelona because he missed his flight. We talked about poverty, student loans and different cultures. It was a lot of fun.

Anyway, here’s what I had for dinner:

The starter was a Cuban dish, which was banana with rice and egg covered in tomato sauce. Banana and tomato sauce is definitely an interesting combination, but I loved this dish!

I had this tongue fish as a main course, which also tasted really good, but was a little on the greasy side.

And then for dessert I had some strawberry ice cream with whipped cream and some red sauce (strawberry, I think). We had a lovely time at this restaurant and the food tasted great! I don’t think we would’ve had dinner here if we’d realised what the restaurant was about, but it didn’t really matter in the end.

This post turned out to be a little bit longer than I expected, but it was a lot of fun to write. If you want to read about the non-food related things I did in Barcelona, click here. I hope you enjoyed reading about my experiences in this beautiful city!