The Charming Dive

Another well kept secret of Barce-loneta's narrow streets is Can Maño. When Wee and Nuria, our friends from the barrio, told us about it, they begged me not to include it in the article I was writing at the time. It's hard enough to get a table as it is, they say. Locals don't need the extra competition.

I've never been very good at keeping secrets, unfortunately, and I can't help but share Can Maño with you, at least by way of blog. My compromise is that you'll have to find it on your own.

The truth is that Can Maño isn't for everyone, and certainly not for the average tourist. It has the look of a neighbourhood dive, right down to the flourescent lights, peeling tabletops and old school proprietor who moves from table to table at his own rhythm, occasionally with a cigarette dangling from mouth or hand. All this, however, is part of its surprising charm, a charm that emanates largely from the friendly bustle of the place: wine still flows freely from traditional porros at Can Maño; musicians enter to sound a trumpet a foot from your ear; the proprietor's daughter comes out to hand a loaf of bread to the street person at the door; and locals order from memory or from the faded list of platos combinados (mixed plates) posted on the wall.

When we first tried Can Maño, the few tables of tourists present asked for a menu, which was dutifully brought out, but we were so captivated by the dishes sailing by our heads that we ordered on the basis of "we'll have what they're having". The unbelievable oven baked mackerel and tasty grilled squid didn't disappoint. Neither did the price. The sizable mains along with a large plate of french fries, dessert (not their forte), half a bottle of wine, a soda and coffee came to 22 euros. I doubt you could do as well anywhere else in Barcelona, especially for such well prepared seafood. And, it's worth noting that at Can Maño it's not unreasonable to expect to pay considerably less--the squid, at 8 euros, was among the most expensive items on the menu.

There is one enormous drawback to eating at Can Maño, however, and it is the one hinted at by Wee and Nuria when they first told us of the place. That is that the restaurant doesn't take reservations and, at peak hours, the wait (in the street outside) can be considerable. The solution is to arrive early. By 8:30pm the place is full so it's best to go just after 8pm, an ungodly hour at which to dine by Barcelona standards, but given the number of locals in the place even at that time, a reasonable trade off for one of Can Maño's in-demand tables.

Bombaaaaaa!

If you're a tourist in Barcelona, you probably know La Barceloneta best for its beach. Packed, lively and somewhat gaudy, it's the beach that's closest to the Old Town and therefore the one most favoured by foreigners staying in the Gotico and Born neighbourhoods, the same foreigners that flood it in scorched pink droves in July and August.

Lately, Felipe and I have been wandering the interior of the barrio, trying to get the feel of the real neighbourhood, that is, the one that doesn't immediately border the beach. It's a special place that, despite the summer tourist invasion, still retains the feel of a close family...a place where, on hot summer nights, life long residents put folding chairs on the sidewalks immediately outside their front doors to escape their cramped apartments, gossip and take in the sea air.

I've been working on an article about La Barceloneta, which I'll post that here when it comes out, but I'm mindful that the article's brevity doesn't lend itself well to sharing all of the barrio's secrets.

Of these, there are many, but one of my absolute favourites is the bomba and the place that claims to have invented it, La Cova Fumada.

La Cova Fumada (c/ Baluard 56, tel. 93 221 4061) is a neighbourhood place de toda la vida. There's sawdust on the floor, barrels of wine on the wall, a sense of decor worthy of the one room apartment of the most hardened bachelor and an open grease spewing kitchen presided over by grandmothers in floral house dresses. That is to say, it's quite fantastic in its own way, as evidenced by the ever present line of tourists and locals at its door.

La Cova Fumada's famed bombas are a mixture of meat and mashed potato, molded into balls, fried and topped with allioli and hot sauce. Actually, La Cova Fumada offers you everything from the mild Señorita (with a dollop of allioli alone, as pictured above) to the fiery Macho (drenched in hot sauce). Felipe and I could not limit ourselves to sample just one and could have gone through a plateful each had we not just finished a filling meal of La Cova Fumada's inexpensive seafood offerings.

Besides the bombas, the restaurant serves some excellent bacalao (salt cod), respectable sardines and perfectly prepared calamares a la plancha (grilled squid). In fact, of the wide selection of dishes we sampled, only the mussels weren't up to the snuff. To order, check out the menu on the wall or ask the waitress to tell you what's up. You won't pay much for the food and you'll feel like you've lived in the barrio your entire life.

Barcelona Travel Tips - What to Know

It's the fault of movies like the insipid Vicky Chirstina Barcelona, not to mention our dwindling knowledge of the world outside our own backyards, that most people have no idea that the native language of Barcelona is Catalan and not Spanish (Castilian). In fact, most expect to drink sangria, see bullfights and hear flamenco guitar when they come here--all of these, though occasionally available in Barcelona, are products of the radically different culture of the South of Spain. It's the same kind of geographical and cultural dimness (often ascribed, but by no means exclusive, to North America) that leads people to believe that we Canadians have polar bears living in our backyards and skate to school on permanently frozen rivers. We don't, but I have heard that Australians do ride kangaroos to work.

If you know only a few things before you come to Barcelona, know these. Barcelona is the capital of the region of Catalonia (Catalunya around these parts). It's a cosmopolitan city of about two million on the Mediterranean coast of Northern Spain. Before being incorporated into modern Spain, Catalonia was a separate kingdom and a proud nationalism still courses through the veins of most Catalans. While a minority are separatists, contrary to the unfortunate reality of the Basque countries to the north, there's absolutely no messing about with bombs and violence here.

The language, as I've mentioned, is Catalan, but all Barcelonians also speak Castilian Spanish (the Spanish of Latin American and the rest of Spain), often mixing Catalan and Castilian when amongst friends. Tourists can expect a reasonable level of English (and sometimes French or German) in hotels and many restaurants, but, once off the beaten track, may have trouble encountering English speakers. (The last statistics I read placed those Catalans who speak English with some degree of fluency at about 30% of the population.)

While Barcelona has gained a relatively liberal reputation, its citizens, particularly the older ones, are a fairly conservative group and are sometimes scandalized by what the tourists get up to--stumbling half naked and piss drunk through the streets as some are wont to do after their days of baking on the beach. The truth is that the attitude of the locals is still largely "live and let live", but recently, tourist excesses, which haven't let locals live very well, have many Barcelonians thoroughly fed up. I'll write more about that and how you shouldn't behave in Barcelona in another post.

For your convenience, here are a few other tidbits that might be of use:

Currency: Euro.

When to Go: The summers are hot and sticky (25-30 C) and much of the city closes down in August for holidays. The best time to come is spring (April/May) or fall (September/October) when the weather is milder (15-23 C). Winter is quiet, rainy and much cooler (5-10 C).

Getting Around: Barcelona's main tourist areas are within easy walking distance of the centre or a short metro or cab ride away. The metro system is extensive, safe and cheap (77 cents a ride if you buy the 10 trip card). It runs until midnight from Sunday to Thursday, until 2am on Fridays and all night on Saturdays. Taxis are reasonably priced as well and cabbies usually aren't inclined to rip you off. Be prepared for small supplemental charges, however, at night, on holidays and when travelling with luggage or to or from the airport or train station. Finally, the city is very bike friendly. Your hotel can help you with rentals and routes. The red and white "Bicing" bikes so prevalent in the streets are for locals who subscribe to the Bicing service. (See the links to transport sites on the left hand side of this page for more information.)

Tipping: Catalans tend to tip very little or not at all. 5% is generally considered adequate in restaurants. It's not expected that you tip in bars or cabs. If you want to tip, any loose change you might have is usually more than enough.

Be Warned: While Barcelona has relatively little violent crime, pickpockets and purse-snatchers abound, particularly in tourist areas. You don't need to outfit yourself with a money belt and personal alarm system, however; just try not to look like a mark. That means dressing for the city and not like a tourist--you wouldn't walk around your town in little more than a bikini top with a knapsack strapped to your chest, for instance. You should also use reasonable precautions like not leaving bags unattended (I always keep my purse on my lap and never hang it on the back of a chair or leave it sitting on the ground), keeping valuables and money you don't need in the hotel safe and being aware of your surroundings. As there are various scam artists about, you should never (and this should be obvious) hand over your passport to anyone on the street, even if they look like a cop. And, as the Simpsons should have taught you, there is no such thing as a wallet inspector.

On the up side, you might be heartened to know that in my more than two years here I've never been robbed (knock on wood) nor have any of my 40 or so visitors. It's just a matter of being ever so slightly on guard, just like in any city of some size.

El Velódromo Revisited

You might be interested to know that Felipe and I were finally able to get a table at the Velódromo (c/ Muntaner 213, Eixample, see The Sounder: A Cafe to Love) for something more than a morning coffee. We had attempted to brave the dinner line-up on one or two evenings, but had been unable to resign ourselves to the hour-long wait. Recently, however, we happened to be hungry for lunch at the odd hour of 4:30pm on a Saturday (a fairly late lunch, even by Barcelona standards, where it's common to eat between 2 and 4 pm). The availability of a proper meal at this hour is, in fact, part of what's most convenient about the Velódromo, whose kitchen is open (atypically) from 6am to 3am and where lunch and dinner dishes are served from 1pm on.

In the late afternoon on the weekend, the cafe's pace was easy and the mood slightly hushed. While there were other diners, the place was by no means packed. It was, in fact, the perfect atmosphere in which to linger and relax in the gorgeous high ceilinged space.

When we asked for the menu, the table was prettily laid for us with a white tablecloth, virtually towel-sized napkins and pleasantly heavy silverware. The choice of dishes, while small, was interesting, ranging from stewed tripe to pig's feet (manitas de cerdo) to rabbit to Valencian paella for two. All are traditional favourites. We ordered the paella along with ham croquettes from the tapas menu to start and an exceptionally good flan to finish. The paella, which arrived in an enormous cast iron tureen, was just slightly soupy with lovely bits of rabbit, mushrooms and cuttlefish (sepia) and left us thoroughly satisfied.

I should mention that, while the prices of the competently prepared dishes were in themselves reasonable, the bill quickly added up. This was largely because the beverages are more aggressively priced than is usual and easily amounted to the better part of the cost. Our relatively light meal for two with drinks came to about 37 euros. Whether you consider that reasonable will largely depend on the value you put on the pleasure of dining in such a well turned out spot.

Of Princes and Pescados

I have a friend whom I dearly love who is currently imprisoned in a tiny cell in an office tower. I imagine him staring wistfully out the window, awaiting his reverse Rapunzel--the sexy warrior princess who throws up her long flaxen hair so that he can secure it to his filing cabinet and climb down into her waiting arms before his blackberry has a chance to send out a vibrating alarm.

Only a short time ago, our imprisoned prince was in Barcelona, basking in the sun pool-side at the Hotel Omm, sampling tapas, quaffing claras (a uniquely Spanish blend of beer and lemon soda), and generally loving life. But it wasn't long before his dark overlords put a stop to all that free-wheeling fun.

Maybe it will make him feel better to recollect his favourite meal. Or maybe it'll just be pouring salt on the wounds. Either way, it was at El Passadis del Pep and spectacular.

El Passadis del Pep (Pla de Palau 2, Born, tel. 93 310 1021, www.passadis.com) is the fancier cousin of Cal Pep, about which I wrote a few months ago: Tapas Basic - Part 1. I had read about it as the location of choice for one of Bono's dinners in Barcelona, not to mention on the Curious Eater blog, which was instructive in its warnings as to what could potentially go wrong with the El Passadis del Pep dining experience.

Those warnings aside, for the moment, El Passadis is an elegant restaurant serving traditional Catalan food. It specializes in seafood in particular. More importantly, dinner at El Passadis was, by our prince's own account, one of the best of his life and was undoubtedly one of my favourite meals in Barcelona--not for inventiveness or audacity, but for the pure joy of exceptionally fresh ingredients simply yet expertly prepared.

Once we were happily ensconced in the bustling dining room, with its rough stone walls and unpretentious charm, the following appeared on our table in quick succession (and, just as quickly, disappeared): A plate of paper thin slices of jamón iberico served with pan con tomate, succulent clams in a garlic broth, sauteed wild mushrooms so good they almost eclipsed the exquisite seafood dishes, pimientos de padrón (small green peppers, some surprisingly spicy), chipirones (baby squid, fried in batter), pescaito frito (fried whitebait), perfect grilled crayfish, the juiciest prawns, a hearty tripe stew (for Felipe), arroz negro (black rice with sepia) and lubina (sea bass), which we ordered at the prince's request, albeit somewhat unnecessarily, on top of the eight substantial dishes that we had already eaten. We shared a crema catalana (Catalan creme brulee) for dessert.

The food was so good that conversation virtually ceased for the duration of the meal. It resumed in the sleepy after glow, helped along by the complimentary chupitos (shots) brought out by our waiter by way of digestif, a welcome piece of tradition that has all but died out in other Barcelona establishments.

And, while we all rolled out of El Passadis drunk, happy and at peace with the bill, I do have a few words of advice that you should heed to avoid the pitfalls of the place (see Curious Eater's summary of those). What you need to know boils down to this: The place has no sign out front so be sure you've found it on a map before venturing out. You will almost certainly need reservations. There is no menu and the waiter will proceed to open a bottle of cava (the first is complimentary) and bring you an eight course meal, all courses emerging in quick succession, before you as much as have a chance to say boo. This is not a scam (I don't think), but it does require virtually instantaneous taking control of the situation if you do not want unwelcome surprises. The waiters, who are very pleasant and speak some English (though it's undoubtedly easier to communicate in Spanish), are very amenable to telling you what's coming and to making changes to the set menu; ours went through the proposed dishes with us in detail. Felipe, who is allergic to shellfish, received divine meat and vegetable dishes to substitute those he could not eat. We were even privy to a table of Israelis ordering a highly complicated, mostly vegetarian meal--why you would do this at El Passadis, whose particular fame is in the world of seafood, is beyond me, but I was impressed that the chef came out to assist with their selections and take note of their restrictions, all this a testament to the aforementioned flexibility.

You should also know that the price is not set and depends on the dishes ultimately selected. You should expect something between 50 and 80 euros per person, depending on the choice of dishes and amount of alcohol you consume. If you need to know in advance precisely what you will be charged, this is not the place for you. If you're lucky, you'll have with you a prince of man, who, with his customary generosity, will insist on picking up the bill.

As for our prince, we wish him many happy dreams of Barcelona and hope that he will be back soon.

Secluded Coves - Cap de Creus

Possibly my favourite spot in all of Spain is the Cap de Creus (about two hours north of Barcelona by car). Windswept, jagged and wild, the area has some stunning coves with idyllic pebble beaches. Here's a tiny snippet I wrote about one of those beaches, the Platja de Sant Lluís, for The Guardian's on-line Travel section: Top Ten European Beaches by Foot. It's the same spot that I mention in The Sounder: Surrealism Meets Nudism. In the photo above, you can just glimpse the beach between the trees at the bottom of the cliff.

Even in August, when small boats are anchored off-shore, the beach is peaceful and the water absolutely sublime. Off season, when the crowds and pleasure boats of July and August disappear, it's even more delicious.

If you have time to ramble, the same path that leads you to Platja de Sant Lluís continues to the very point of the Cape, branching off to two other rocky coves along the way: the Cala Guillola and the Cala Jugadora.

Inducing Cardiac Arrest

Before I share this week's secrets for bringing on massive heart failure, I feel the need to disclose a conversation that I had with my parents last week (loosely translated from the original Polish):

"Does the F in your last article mean what we think it means?" (See What the F Do I Do in August?)

"I don't know. What do you think it means?"

"We think we'd better not say, but I don't know if we're going to read your blog anymore."

"Well, I can't pretend that that might not be for the best."

Huff. (I think only partially serious, but you never know.)

To be honest, given the occasional tongue-in-cheek sexual references in my posts, I had thought my parents would have raised a fuss a while ago. This is the couple for whom the "Love Boat" was so racy that my sister and I were banished to our rooms whenever it came on. Who would have figured they would draw a line in the sand over the letter F.

Mom and dad, if you're still secretly reading, you know that I kid. And I'm not just saying that to avoid another huff.

We all have our crosses to bear, I suppose. Parents and finding a place to eat in August are only a small drop in the cross bucket.

By the way, Cinc Sentits and Gaig are reopening this week after their respective August breaks, in case you need a nice place to go before the reopening of all and sundry in September. However, I don't know how easy it will be to get a table anywhere this weekend as some 25,000 cardiologists descend on the city and, despite all the hoo-ha about heart health, I've heard that they're a group that likes to eat well.

On the up side, if you were planning a cardiac arrest (infarto), this is the weekend for it. So, go ahead, load up on the McFoie burgers at Carles Abellan's Tapaç24. You might also try La Bodegueta's (Rambla de Catalunya 100) giant plate of delectably runny "smashed" eggs (their translation of huevos estrellados, not mine), served over french fried potatoes. Consider Bar Boquería if you like options when it comes to artery clogging: start with a plateful of succulent short ribs smothered in a meaty sauce; then get the exquisite albóndigas (meatballs), also nestled in their own sauce, this time tomato; follow that up with a thick butifarra sausage or a fragrant morcilla; and, for good measure, order the choricitos (small spicy sausages flavoured with paprika) in cider and tell the waiter to keep them coming. Roll out of there and up to the Festa Major de Sants where, if you're really, really lucky, you'll come across street meat of the type pictured above.

I know, I know, I haven't given the deep fried its due. Well, I reckon you could go for as many ham croquetas as you can swallow at Inopia or the patatas bravas with their twin sauces of "hot" and "mayo" at Bar Tomás (c/ Major de Sarriá 49), reputedly the best bravas in Barcelona. My sweet tooth, however, tells me that the sugar-sprinkled, straight-out-of-the-hot-oil churros at the Xurreria (c/Banys Nous 4, more or less) or the cream filled xuxos at the Forn de Sant Jaume (Rambla de Catalunya 50) are by far the most satisfying bets.

So, there you have it, a uniquely Barcelonian recipe for an infarto. Cardiologists, stand by. Let the keeling over begin!