It wasn’t a night for calling ahead, for calling in favors or waiting in line. It was a night for dropping in lucidly without stress or a reservation. We didn’t go to Tickets. We went to Bodega 1900 across the street. The name of the restaurant celebrates the birthday of the building that houses it and the…
We stumbled out of a costume store, the Basque and I, gripping shiny cellophane packages and an orange balloon he had snatched from the counter “sinpa”. It was Halloween in Barcelona and I was ready to play, as I do each year regardless of where I happen to find myself. In the past 5 years…
On weekends we used to go town-hopping; poking around the Priorat, lookin’ for trouble. Sometimes we’d climb the rock walls of mountains near the medieval town Siurana. Other times we’d walk through Poboleda, Cornudella, Prades, looking for cultural events with which to breathe life into our barren social calendar. When there was a dance, a festival, a bar opening we’d…
Floro also happens to be quite the wiseass. One time my colleague (rhetorically) asked him how he is capable of baking such consistently delicious breads without anyone’s help and he responded, “Well, how do you put your underwear on in the morning without anyone’s help?” I’m still not sure I understand what that means. Maybe his riddles take time to untangle.
In the Priorat comarca of Catalunya, “Spain” there’s a town called Ulldemolins in which there’s a bakery run by a woman named Pepi, who makes these things called bunyols de vent. Yesterday was my last day in the Priorat and I woke up thinking about them. Bunyols. Bunyols de vent from Pepi’s in Ulldemollins, 20 minutes from Cornudella,…
“And where did you have lunch?” I asked a visiting chef one time, a talented boy from London known for his quick skill with the butcher knife. “The place around the corner, that white one. Grandma food to the max, I love it!” was his answer. For my first few weeks in the Priorat it was “the…
It’s a rural place where I currently live and I’ve come to miss those things that just seem silly in a place like this. I miss cocktail carefully crafted, specifically negronis and I miss drinking these at a sleek counter of a dimly lit bar, leaving a messy streak of red lipstick on the rim…
More Michelins per square meter and one almost forgets because of the quality of the quotidian pintxo available all throughout the Old Part. When you go to San Sebastián, though, you should probably drop in on one of its high profile establishments, if you can afford to [or even if you can’t]: Berasategui, Akelare, Arzak, Mugaritz,…
Here in the Priorat, the answer to the question “Where do you want to go for dinner?” is often the name of a town instead of a restaurant. Each town has a handful of restaurants that serve almost exclusively Catalan food. Some specialize in certain stuff, depending on the suppliers they work with. The small town of Escaladei,…
One of the most dearly beloved restaurants around these parts is Chef Toni Bru’s Celler de l’Àspic in Falset, the principle village of the Priorat. Born into a family of bakers in the town of Cabacés, Chef Bru dedicated himself to cooking at an early age. The resurgence of the region’s wine production in the ’90s also allowed Bru to enhance…
That Best Bite 