Barcelona Foodies - Take 3 & 4

This is the last section of Barcelona food talk. I promise.

Lunch on Saturday was around the corner from Gaudi's La Pedrera at Tragaluz in the ground floor cafe. The menu was pretty much basic cafe offerings. We went for an arugula salad and paired it with a parmesan based mac-n-cheese. Not too notable, especially after it all started getting blurry after the Cava arrived. I'd mostly recommend it due to it's location. The upstairs formal dining room has a retractable roof and looked like it could be good for dinner. Of note is that this is the flagship of the Grupo Tragaluz, a hip restaurant group that is kind of like the Keith McNally joints of NY.

Saturday night we had dinner at Moo in the Schrager-esque Hotel Omm (another Tragaluz). This was one of the more disappointing meals. To me, it was just way too trendy and overdone. And the crowd it attracted felt very NY MePa. All of the dishes came in 1/2 portions. I went with a violet salad with beets, a chicken & foie meatball and the sea bass with ginger, all of which were good but not so notable. At the end of the meal they gave us a complimentary dessert that we were supposed to guess what the flavor was because the taste was supposed to duplicate the smell of the signature scent the hotel was launching. It was lavender. Whatever. I'm sure someone in marketing got a huge promotion off of that idea. My recommendation is to skip Moo and the downstairs club OmmSession and maybe just grab a quick drink and some nibbles in the lobby. It's not that the food was bad - nothing just seemed to stick out after all the other amazing food we had already consumed.


Sunday night we had our last supper at Arola in the Hotel Arts at the Port.

Phew! Back to AMAZING-ness! Arola is an upscale tapas joint by another of Barcelona's favorite chefs, Sergi Arola. The decor is very Miami with lots of futuristic white and a great soundtrack supplied by a live dj. Much of the food is "deconstructed" - my favorite foodie term of the trip. The highight was the deconstructed tomato bread (which basically meant they brought you toasted bread and then you rubbed the freshest tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and salt on it yourself to your taste - LOVED that!) We also tried the deconstructed patatas bravas (little bites of spicy potatoes with a kick), the quail and foie ravioli with hoisin (a signature dish, we were reluctant by they were excellent), fried oysters and Iberico Jamon (cured ham). Another highlight of this meal was the dessert wine. It was a Mataro, a sweet red wine made from a grape that had been lost for ages and was recently brought back. Not too sweet, this was one of the best dessert wines I've ever tasted. For an upscale tapas dinner, I think Arola is the one to beat!


After dinner we had drinks at Shoko, a club-cum-restaurant across from street from Arola. This is one of the cooler clubs in that very touristy area and was recommended to us by Guillermo, one of our hosts at Casa Camper. Taking in the Asian inspired decor and the funky music was a great mix of people. There is also outdoor space in the back with daybeds. I'd recommend Shoko since most of the places surrounding it looked HORREN.


One last honorable mention. As with any trip, The Lady & I had to find our FP. In this case it turned out to be Bar Lobo, a hip little bar/restaurant (yes, yet ANOTHER Tragaluz) on a cute little square around the corner from our hotel. This was a great place to hang as the Cava flowed freely each afternoon:

To keep from getting too messy so early in the evening we eventually took part in a bit of the tapas - ham croquettes, mini cheese melts and the patatas bravas:

A gorgeous no-attitude staff made it all that much more enjoyable. This will definitely be my first stop on my next trip to Barcelona!