I had been looking forward to my short trip to Barcelona almost as much for the food I was going to taste as for the places I was going to see and the people I was going to see. With the advent of restaurants such as El Bulli (where I have not been and which does not serve Catalan food) and Manresa (in the Bay Area), Catalan cuisine is achieving some sort of recognition in the US. My sojourn through Catalan cuisine was quite successful and I now wanted to see what Catalan dishes would taste like when cooked right. Alas, I ended up being disappointed, not as much as in the cuisine, as in my own experience with it.
The first problem was that for whatever reason I became a bit stomach sick after arriving in Barcelona – whether the culprit was airline food or a Burger King burger from Kennedy airport, I will never know – but the fact was that I didn’t feel like eating anything my first day in Barcelona. A small lunch at Restaurante Taxidermista in Barcelona’s Plaça Reial was my first introduction to Catalan food – but its brief menu only allowed me to taste pa amb tomaquet (bread with tomato) and some Catalan sausages. They were both very good, however.
I didn’t eat again until the next day, when I ended up by accident (i.e. telling myself “I’ll sit down at the next restaurant I find”) at a Galician restaurant somewhere. Here I had some more pa amb tomaquet, some ravioli with sauce and some grilled quail – neither of which impressed me. Once again I skipped dinner that night.
The next day was the start of the meeting I was attending. I had lunch with my colleagues at Restaurante Mango, on Aveda. Diagonal 635, very near my hotel. Mango does not actually serve Catalan food, instead concentrating on pizzas, salads, pastas and paellas. I had the Tropix pizza (E12) and it was good, though nothing special. My colleagues seemed happier with their salads and pastas – so maybe pizza is not the way to go here.
That evening we had the buffet dinner at Restaurante Contraste, the restaurant of the Hotel Princesa Sofia, where we were staying. This was probably the best buffet dinner I’ve had. Though the selection wasn’t terribly broad, everything they had was fresh and great tasting. I had a simple salad (beware that there are no ready-made dressings, though) and then two of the three pre-made entrees. I think one was cannelloni and the other some stewed meat, very good though a bit salty. There were plenty of desserts, I tried the crema catalana which once again did not impress me – but most of the other bites were quite good. They also have a grill station which I didn’t try, my suspicion after several meals is that Spanish/Catalan beef is not particularly good in the first place. Other people seemed quite happy with their selections, though. I think the buffet is about E45-50, but we got a special group rate. In any case, if you want to eat at the buffet you may want to inquire whether it’s cheaper if you pay for it when you register.
The next two lunches were at the University, where we were served 3-course meals which included wine! Leave it to the Catalans 🙂 The food was quite good though not terribly exiting. Our second dinner was at a popular restaurant in the Gothic quarter – unfortunately I don’t remember the name. We had popular Catalan tapas/appetizers such as croquettes, tomato bread and several things I didn’t recognize – but everyone seemed quite happy with them. I had the veal with brie, which seems to be a popular dish in Barcelona, and it was nice but also not too exiting – the veal wasn’t as tender as you’d wish. I ate it assuming that baby cows are not mistreated in Spain the way they are in the US – I hope that’s true.
Our last dinner was at La Botiga, also close to the hotel. It was also quite good.
So, what am I left with? Well, my impression now is that Catalan food as randomly served in Barcelona is good and solid, but not magical. My standards, however, may be too high – I’ve been cooking a lot of really good Mediterranean food lately (you’d be surprised at how many “C” cuisines are in the Mediterranean), and, if I say so myself, I’m quite a good cook, so it takes a LOT to impress me.
Author: admin (Page 38 of 51)
I had my first meal in Barcelona at Restaurante Taxidermista about a week and a half ago. I was quite hungry after having roamed around the old part of the city
for a while, but I was being too picky as to where and what to eat. I
wanted to eat outside, somewhere that had a prix-fix menu that fit my
mood. My pickyness was irritating me to no end, so I finally cajoled
myself into agreeing to sit down at the next empty table I found at
the Placa Reial, where I was as I was carrying on this internal
conversation. That ended up being the Restaurante Taxidermista, not
altogether a bad choice.
The main reason why the Restaurante Taxidermista was not a good choice
was that it has a very limited menu, a few appetizers, a couple of
sandwiches, maybe some seafood stuff I glanced over, nothing much or
much varied. I could have done better elsewhere. Still, there I was,
and there I was eating so I ordered a portion of pa amb tomaquet (E
1.75), literally, “bread with tomato”, a dish consistent of (French
style) bread brushed with a generous amount of olive oil as well as,
well, fresh tomato. It sounds simple, and I had meant to make it when
I cooked Catalan food, but it is such a Catalan specialty that I wanted to try it. And indeed the dish is no more and no less than the sum of its ingredients, it tastes just like you expect it to taste
(though perhaps fresher, given that we are more used to having cooked
tomatoes on our bread), and that´s pretty good. I enjoyed it.
I also had a plate of butifarra, two Catalan sausages with sweet sauteed onions
(E 4.30). The sausages didn´t look that great, but the onions were
nicely caramelized (clearly with the help of some sugar), and the
sweet and hearty flavors went well together. I also enjoyed it.
And that was it. Really. I did have a small coke (E 2.30) and got
some Italian ice cream on the way home, but that was it for my first Barcelona lunch. Pretty sad.
Restaurante Taxidermista
Placa Reial 8
Barcelona
Spain
93 412 45 36
http://www.taxidermistarestaurant.com/
Marga’s Restaurant Reviews
La Botiga is a 3-restaurant chain of mid-priced contemporary Catalan restaurants in Barcelona. A few colleagues and I had dinner at the one located near Avenida Diagonal last Tuesday night, and we were all quite pleased with the experience. We had a very pleasant dinner in the outside patio, the food was good and the service attentive and accommodating.
La Botiga’s menu offers perhaps half a dozen appetizers, plus some salads, and perhaps a dozen entrees (mostly priced E12 and under). My colleagues were all happy with their appetizers which included croquettes and fritters, very fresh asparagus with some sort of sauce and, of course, bread with tomato. They seemed to be pretty pleased with their entrees as well – and they were surprised that the hamburger surprised plate consisted of a stuffed hamburger patty with no bun. I thought my steak kebab lacked ummf and didn’t like the undercooked potatoes it came with, but it was all in all alright. My desert of crema catalana was a little lacking BUT after having made it once and eaten it two or three times, I’ve come to the conclusion that crema catalana just can’t compare with its French cousin creme brulee.
Service was professional and quick – we never lacked for anything, and the waiter happily let me use a credit card to pay part of my bill.
La Botiga 2
Gandesa, 10
Barcelona
Spain
93 410 48 47
http://labotiga.angrup.com/
Marga’s Restaurant Reviews
Marga’s Catalan Menu
Ben and Jerry’s line of organic ice cream flavors (introduced in 2003), has not been doing very well. I haven’t really seen them in supermarkets, and this week they made an appearance at my neighborhood’s Grocery Outlet – for $1.50 each! I tried their organic vanilla and organic strawberry and they were both fine, not spectacular. These are not flavors I usually get, so I can’t say how they compare to the originals.
It’s another matter with Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream, which is one of my favorite B&J’s flavors. Alas, I’ll have to continue eating the regular version (usually $3 on sale at Safeway), as the organic version just doesn’t do it. The problem starts with the flavor of the ice cream, the chocolate is just not deep enough, it lacks that almost bitter richness of the original. In a blind test, I would not guess it was Ben & Jerry’s. The lack of flavor continues in the brownie – which is also dry (how do they manage to make a brownie that is sitting in ice cream dry?) and non-chewy. Not a brownie you’d pay to eat. In other words – there is a reason why this ice cream is being sold at Grocery Outlet.
Note: Biggies has closed.
Biggies BBQ has been opened for a couple of months already, but I didn’t find out about it until the San Leandro Times did a story on it last Thursday. Of course I had to go – not just because it’s my moral imperative to review each and every restaurant in San Leandro (except for those that are obviously bad), but also because I like Brazilian food. I will note that while Brazilians love meat and their espetos corridos are legendary, their meat is unfortunately not as good as that from Argentina. Then again, nobody’s is.
Biggies BBQ is a very most restaurant located in the Marina Faire shopping center in San Leandro. It looks like a shopping mall restaurant, it has no decorations or ambiance and the tables/chairs are the cheapy kind. But that in itself is an advantage, as it suggests cheaper food. We went there for dinner the Friday night after the article about them came out, and while the place was pretty empty when we got there, it really filled up by 7 PM or so. Alas, they weren’t prepared for this – the lone waitress could barely keep up with the needs of every table, and every table in the restaurant was occupied. The kitchen seemed to have the same problem, while our appetizers came right away, we had to wait over one hour for our entree. And believe me, an hour with hungry/antsy kids is just not fun.
Biggies’ menu needs to be redone. As it is it lists appetizers, drinks, daily lunch specials, weekend specials and desserts. No, it doesn’t list entrees, which makes it quite disconcerting. Apparently this is because they have different offerings each night (though only a couple of these), though they have the Brazilian BBQ plate ($13) every day. Many of the offerings, furthermore, are listed by their Portuguese name, and the menu doesn’t explain what they are. This all means that the waitress needs to spend some time explaining the menu to each table – which, of course, makes service even slower.
We started with two pasteles, which turned out to be large, square, fried empanadas-like pastries filled with minimum seasoned ground beef ($3 each). Despite the lack of meat I really liked them, the dough was both crispy and doughy and had a nice flavor, the meat was also nicely seasoned (not in the least spicy). The kids liked them too.
We followed by what I thought was the esfirra ($3 each) but, looking online, might have been a joelho (not in the menu), a baked sweet bun filled with cheese and tomato (I think, though the waitress said it was ham). This was also very good.
After an hour or so we had the Brazilian BBQ which consisted of two chunks of beef, a tiny Brazilian sausage and a small chicken leg. The meat was a little tough and overdone (medium rather than the medium rare I’d requested), but it had a great flavor. The intense marinade brought up, rather than hid, the gamy taste of the beef and I loved it. The only problem was that the marinade was too salty. The same can be said about the sausage and the chicken. The latter had a very crispy skin and moist meat. The meats were served with a large quantity of rice and (refried?) beans (which Camila liked).
In all, I was very happy with the food, but Mike and I thought that it was a tad expensive – HOWEVER, I just realized that you can buy gift certificates for the restaurant (dinner only) at restaurant.com – a $25 gift certificate usually costs $10, so you’d save $15, but sometimes you can get them for as cheap as $2 (keep an eye on dealdetectives.com. That would be a savings of $23!!! I wish I had thought about checking restaurant.com yesterday! I don’t know how they can make any money at those prices, which worries me a little (I want them to stick around!).
I will definitely go to Biggies BBQ again – though in several weeks, when it becomes less busy 🙂
Biggies BBQ
13700 Doolittle Drive #110
San Leandro, CA
(510) 352-2371
San Leandro Restaurant Reviews
Bay Area Restaurant Reviews
The Castro Valley Adult School will be offering several cooking classes this summer. These include Cake Decorating, Doughnuts making, BBQing and Mexican & Southern cuisine. Castro Valley has classroom with 3 kitchens in it, so the classes are very hand-on.
The San Leandro Adult School does not have a kitchen-classroom but it has offered cooking classes in the past. Their class catalog/schedule for the summer is not yet in their website, and I haven’t seen a paper copy – so I don’t know if they’ll have them this summer.
Mika made pancakes all by herself this morning! It’s the second time she makes them, but last time she wasn’t very clear about directions/proportions. She didn’t relize that 1/4 cup of sugar was different from 4 cups of sugar 🙂
This time we took out all the ingredients together (good thing, because I put something in a jar that looks very much like coarse sugar – I don’t know what it is, but I suspect a dangerous chemical), and we went over the proportions (what is a cup, what is a tablespoon and what is a teaspoon). The result was that she did very well – she even remembered that we needed to include sugar, which I’d left out when I copied the recipe!
The pancakes came out great, very fluffy and great tasting! We didn’t have any maple syrup (a visit to TJ’s is in order), but we ate them with a strawberry sauce and whipped cream. The strawberry sauce was great, all I did was put a bunch of washed, cut strawberries in the blender, add a little bit of water and some sugar. How much of each will depend on your strawberries (how sweet they are) and blender. Mika really liked the sauce (I did too)! By itself, is also healthier than maple syrup – and cheaper! I learned the “recipe” in a cooking class on sauces I took at the Castro Valley Adult School.
This time I actually cooked the pancakes myself, I’m a little weary of letting her cook by herself now. She’s still a bit too short to comfortable see and handle pans on top of the stove and, like her mom, she can be a little clutzy.
She wants us to have a tradition of Saturday morning pancakes. I know that traditions are really important for kids, and our lives are pretty disorganized, so that may be a nice thing to do.
It’s unlikely you’ll find anything if you look for “Hart Authentic Orange Chicken” online – at least I didn’t find anything when I looked. It seems that this frozen entree is made by Hart Food Products from Lakewood, CA. I bought it at Grocery Outlet, and I imagine they are their only distributor. Actually, given Hart’s pathetic website, it’s difficult to believe they are any sort of serious company. Which really tells you something about where Grocery Outlet sources its products. And indeed, orange chicken seems to be one of only three or four products Hart offers .
Anyway, I was in Grocery Outlet yesterday and thought I’d take a look at the frozen stuff they had, as I’ve been feeling less and less like cooking lately. This orange chicken product didn’t seem too bad – at least in comparison to the brand-name frozen food products. Yeah, it has a lot of salt, corn syrup and a myriad of preservatives, but so do all the brand name products. At least it had chicken as its main ingredient 🙂
It’s not obvious from the picture in the package, but this is really popcorn chicken – which is annoying as that means it has much more breading than you would like. It’s uncooked so you need to bake it for 20 minutes, pan fry it for 10 to 15 minutes, or deep fry it for 6 minutes. Then you mix it with the orange sauce which comes in 3 packages. You can’t microwave it.
As for the taste, it met our very low expectations. Mike found it too bland, while I thought the chicken had a subtle “off” flavor. The sauce was OK, somewhat orangy and not too sweet.
I’m unlikely to buy it again.
** UPDATE July 2012**
The owner of Hart Chicken e-mailed me a few weeks ago and told me they’d made changes to their product and to give it another try. I was reluctant, because one of the changes involved getting a different supplier of chicken pieces that produced more uniform – but smaller – pieces. I figured one of the major problems was the size of the pieces, so this wouldn’t help. But I figured I would give the product another try (though it would have been nice if he’d sent me a coupon rather than I having to buy it myself) and I was happier than the time before.
The pieces are still small (they need to be in order to be ready within a reasonably period of time, given that they are not pre-cooked), but this time I went into the meal experience thinking of it as popcorn chicken. So I wasn’t disappointed by their size.
I also used much less oil than the instructions called for, which you can do if you stir fry the chicken.
The sauce was supposed to have an improved flavor, and I think it did. It was just the right amount to coat all the chicken – though a bit more would have been welcomed for any rice or veggies you might want to throw in. I did note this time that the sauce takes on a full 10 oz of the 32 oz of the package, which is quite a lot.
Anyway, Hart Orange Chicken is still not for me, though as you can see below it has many lovers (and haters).
The downtown San Leandro farmers’ market is back again for the summer season. It opened yesterday with some band playing that fortunately wasn’t as loud as bands last year. We found most of the same food stands from last year, in addition to a new prepared foods stand: Casbah Exotic Food. They serve a short, but eclectic, list of dishes – if I well remember Moroccan chicken, curry chicken, gyros (I think beef) and a steak sandwich. I’m pretty sure they had another item as well. I think all the plate were $5.
I had the Moroccan chicken plate, which really was a chicken gyro. It consisted of a pita bread covered with lettuce & some tomato, and some pieces of pretty bland chicken. I ate it but did not enjoy it, and I was hungry afterwards. Mike had a slightly better experience with his gyro. He liked the marinated beef, but thought that the portion was also too small. $5 is not much, but I rather pay a dollar or two more and be satisfied.
Fortunately Meyers BBQ is back with their chicken teriyaki and huge hot dogs.
Now that I have Grocery Outlet so close, I figured I’d start making a list of what I /can/ and /cannot/ find there – for my reference as well as yours. As more items come to sight and mind, I’ll add them to this post.
Not Available
Whipping cream
Fresh herbs
Spaghetti
Fresh bread
Sugar
Meat I’d want to eat
Fish sticks
Any soft toilet paper
Name brand cleaners
Natural peanut butter
Available
Grapes
Avocados ($1.50!!!!)
Melons
Off-brand bacon that was actually good
Tyson chicken (which I don’t want to eat)
Stouffer meat lasagna party size for $10
Frozen bagels stuffed with cream cheese (it could be worse)
$3 bottles of wine
Martinelli’s sparkling apple cider
Sliced bread
Analgesics
Nescafe/Tasters’ Choice Instant Coffee
Lemons (I think 25c each)
Jiffy peanut butter
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