Time to talk about food! Not that I have been taking advantage of them much since moving into my apartment, but for lunch time, restaurants, bars and cafés offer a menu of the day. You can choose from usually 3-5 first courses, 3-5 second courses, bread, a drink (yes, including wine or beer) and dessert -- and all for 8-11 Euros complete!
Typical first course choices are salads, soups, macarrones, escalivadas (grilled eggplants, red pepper and onions), cannelones, fideos (thin and short spaghettis), rice and more.
Typical second course dishes are meat, meat and more meat - pork, veal, beef. Occasionally you'll find a roast chicken or fish.
We've found some incredible menus. One of our favorite places to go while we were living in the Eixemple was at Faisan's. We enjoyed gourmet food -- all for 10 euros. For example, a pumpkin soup followed by a sesame-encrusted tuna steak (huge piece) and a hunk of chocolate cake. It was incredible. Of course, the menus are never the same, so some days you go back and nothing looks appetizing.
At Volubilis, a Moroccan restaurant near El Mercat de Sant Antoni, here are the three-course menus for 9.95 euros we usually repeat:
me -- Besara (split pea soup), mousakka (roasted eggplant and chickpea dish), chicken souvlaki (so tender and tasty!), homemade yogurt
Mauro -- Hariri, falafel salad, chicken tagine, baklava
We've also tried some wonderful meals at fancier places. In Vilanova i la Geltru, we went to a Catalan restaurant our first week of arriving. We both had a mesclun salad with a huge round of warm goat cheese on top. Delicious. I then had a baked bacalla (cod fish) and Mauricio had some other type of bacalla. I like bacalla, but who knew cod fish could be so gourmet!
We also tried a restaurant in a hotel in Banyeres del Penedes. You would never know from the outside that this elegant hotel and restaurant existed within, complete with a pool. For only 30 euros we enjoyed fine wine, an assortment of the freshest jamon serrano and cheeses, more goat cheese/mesclun salad, and incredible fish, pork and meat dishes. For dessert I had ice cream in a tulip pastry. The presentation was beautiful throughout.
One thing everyone says about Catalan cooking is that in general everything is homemade and fresh. I guess that is why we enjoy it so much. Simple meals, but so good.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment