Barcelona’s preoccupation with being at the cutting
edge of design and cool has a way of seeping into every
area of life here; including those it does nothing to
enhance. In recent years, the city’s restaurant
scene has been the latest in a long list of fashion
victims, and many of the newer places will spend longer
deciding the shape of that season’s dinner plates
than the elements of that week’s menu.
Of course there are plenty of restaurants ‘de
tota la vida’ - restaurants that have been around
forever, have a crowd of loyal regulars and a reputation
that has run through generations, such as Can Culleretes
, La Parra , Gaig or Can Solé - but there is
little rising up to meet them. New restaurants open
with concepts rather than cuisines, with DJs where once
there were pianos and with kangaroo where there was
once milk-fed lamb; which is all well and good until
they dash your hopes of getting a 21st-century salad
or professional service. Those who get the balance right
waste no time in opening new branches, and much as it
goes against the grain to recommend chains, anything
belonging to the Tragaluz group, for example , is likely
to uphold excellent culinary standards.
Authentic international cuisine is gaining ground only
very slowly; unaccustomed local palates and the difficulty
of sourcing key ingredients mean that it can be difficult
to find really good Indian, say, or Italian, food. Middle
Eastern and Japanese restaurants have been rather more
successful, along with a growing number of Latin American
places. What is really taking hold, however, is the
idea of the fusion restaurant. Here it pays to think
long and hard before eating in smaller, cheaper restaurants,
where cooks are unlikely to have the experience or training
to turn out dishes from Thailand, Japan, Mexico and
Italy with equal panache.
Apart from the Pakistani restaurants, that abound in
the Raval, most of the ethnic variety is to be found
in Gràcia. Japanese restaurants, being relatively
expensive, are mainly found in the Eixample or Zona
Alta, where most of the top-end restaurants are clustered,
while seafood restaurants, for the most part, are in
and around Barceloneta and the ports (with some notable
exceptions). Catalan restaurants are evenly spread throughout
the city, as is an impressive variety of vegetarian
restaurants.
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