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specialities, while for a menu reader turn to pp.294–298) Regional Spanish and
colonial Spanish cuisine is fairly well represented, too, from Basque and Galician
to Cuban and Filipino, while traditionally the fancier local restaurants tended
towards a refined Catalan-French style of dining. This has been superseded
recently by the two dominant trends in
contemporary Spanish cooking
,
namely the food-as-chemistry approach pioneered by superchef Ferran Adrià
and the more accessible tendency towards so-called
fusion
cuisine (basically
Mediterranean flavours with exotic touches).The range of
foreign and ethnic
restaurants is not as wide as in other European cities, with Italian, Chinese,
Middle Eastern and Indian and Pakistani food providing the main choices,
though the cuisines of Latin America, North Africa, Southeast Asia and Japan
are also represented.
Nearly all restaurants offer a weekday (ie Monday to Friday) three-course
menú del dia
(menu of the day) at lunchtime, with the cheapest starting at
about €9, rising to €12–15 in fancier places. In many restaurants the price
includes a drink, so this can be a real bargain. At night, the set menus are
rarely available but eating out is still pretty good value and you’ll be able to
dine in a huge variety of restaurants for around €25–30 a head – though you
can, of course, pay a lot more. If your main criteria are price and quantity,
look for a
buffet restaurant
(
Fresc Co
has several outlets, and there are many
others), where €9 or €10 gets you unlimited access to the hot and cold
buffet
lliure
(free buffet). In other bars or cafés, budget meals often come in the
form of a
plat combinat
(
plato combinado,
combined plate), of things like eggs,
steak, calamari or chicken with fries and salad. Be warned that many cheaper
restaurants and cafés might not provide a written
menu
, with the waiter
merely reeling off the day’s dishes at bewildering speed. To ask for a menu,
request
la carta
.
Opening hours
for restaurants are generally 1 to 4pm and 8.30 to 11pm,
though most locals don’t eat lunch until at least 2pm and dinner after 9 or even
10pm. However, in tourist and entertainment zones like Maremàgnum and the
Port Olímpic, restaurants tend to stay open all day and will serve on request.A
lot of restaurants
close on Sundays or Mondays, on public holidays and
throughout August
– check the listings for specific details but expect
changes, since many places imaginatively interpret their own posted opening
days and times.
If there’s somewhere you’d particularly like to eat – certainly at the more
fashionable end of the market – you should
reserve a table
. Some places are
booked solid for days, or weeks, in advance. Finally, all restaurant menus
should make it clear whether the seven-percent
IVA
tax is included in the
prices or not.
Restaurant prices
The restaurant listings in this chapter are divided into price categories. As a rough
guide, you’ll get a
three-course meal (per person)
excluding drinks for:
Inexpensive
Under €15
Moderate
€15–30
Expensive
€30–50
Very expensive
Over €50
Bear in mind that the lunchtime
menú del dia
usually allows you to eat for much
less than the price category might lead you to expect (and often includes
a drink).
CAFÉS, TAPAS BARS AND RESTAURANTS
|
Restaurants