“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…
“With Catalan food, the future doesn’t worry me,” says Carles from Garcia in nearby Ribera d’Ebre. “It won’t disappear. I’m 32 and I cook at home. I’ve been doing it for years.” “He gets pissed off when I cut the potatoes wrong,” his girlfriend chimes in. “Slice in a curve and break off, always.” We’re talking about…
“Friday at 00:15” means Thursday night, not Friday night. This most rookiest of mistakes cost me two hours of despair and a two hundred dollar flight the following morning. As the loss of my night bus from San Sebastián to Barcelona began to sink in, I found myself focusing solely on the negatives: money lost, time in…
Directly across the street from Bar Gran Sol in Hondarribia is Bar Alcanadre, a much more laid back and traditional spot where a pintxo is a pinxto and not so much an abstract work of art. The food here doesn’t take itself so seriously and neither does the service. The guy behind the bar was incredibly…
A short bus ride away from Donostia is the charming Basque fishing village of Hondarribia best known for its spacious beaches and its fusion of Spanish and French architecture. A 10-minute boat ride and you’re in France, in the town of Hendaye across the bay. As is generally true of places within Euskadi, the village of Hondarribia is packed…
And then there was Casa Bartolo, a slightly more legitimate and local looking spot where the bar is lined with plates and the floor below is covered in used napkins. They come around every 10 minutes to sweep it up. It is said by locals that the more napkins there are the better the place…
That Best Bite 