I love food with a story, with an adventure. I just got back the journal I kept while I was in Europe, meant to be a travel diary of course but inevitably a food and art diary, my two big passions! SO I thought I’d start with my favourite food experience to date. Barcelona in 200??? Can’t remember. A befriended hostel manager promised to take us to the best and most unknown tapas place in the city (promises promises). We followed him for almost an hour through the back streets of an area of the city I’m still not sure of with the promise of “no no it must be down this street…”. We eventually found the place, no sign nothing else in the street just a roller door pulled up in a back alley, PACKED full of Barcelonians in their 20’s hands full of food and booze! When I say packed I really do mean the sardine style packed, this was a stand up job, no tables in sight, to get served we had to push our way through the crowd to the bar like trying to get to the front of a crowd at a concert.
The energy of the place was like a pumping indie nightclub, but not a boring indie ‘I’m so cool I’m gonna dissolve here in a pile of beige’ club as I have generally known it, full of life, crazy latino music yelling, eating, drinking and I’m sure if anyone could move enough to dance they would have been dancing, handfuls of chorizo rolls thrust in the air! On advice from our new mate we ordered the three course tapas rolls which came with a free bottle of Cava (sparkling wine) for 8 euros ea and the balancing act began! Bottle tucked firmly under arm, 40’s style champagne glass in one hand which ended up more on the floor or other people as the crowd ebbed and flowed and chorizo roll in the other, leaving only one elbow to defend myself from the surges of the crowded bar!
The chorizo was everything it was meant to be, warm, fat, juicy, spicy and shoved inside a warm crusty roll. This is every way I’m not meant to eat! Second course was a bacon and melted cheese roll I barely made it half way through I was so full from the first. The third didn’t even get a look in (accompanied by our second bottle of Cava, apparently it was one bottle for each person who ordered 3 rolls! I love how the Barcelonans drink!), a gorgeous steak roll that I was just too full (and possibly drunk) to even attempt. We simply crowd surfed our rolls around the room until someone who was miraculously still hungry grabbed them. I’ve never had a food experience like this before or since, good honest food, nothing gour-met about it at all, free booze all in pumping back alley no one knows where this place is style craziness! It’s what foodie travel dreams are made of!
