Making a selection of the best restaurants in a city as big as Barcelona is an arduous task. And although some, such as Dua Lipa are very clear which is the best culinary tour in Barcelona, others of us need a top of restaurants to cross off the temples of good food that we have had the luxury of trying.
Your preferences do not matter. Whether you’re looking for the latest trendy restaurant or you’re a lover of the traditional cuisine. Already go crazy looking for steakhouses or you opt for vegetarian and vegan options s. Sushi restaurants, italians or even pizzerias. To nice restaurants if for you the food cannot be separated from the environment. This list includes all types of restaurants, but only on one condition: that they are worthy of being among the best restaurants in Barcelona.
Like the ‘tengui’ and the ‘falti’ of the sticker exchange in Sant Antoni we invite you to keep this list so that you don’t miss a single restaurant that we insist you visit before you die.
Table Of Contents
- Unforeseen
- Bandinis
- Contracorrent
- The Textile Collective
- Âme Barcelona
- Via Granados
- Sartoria Panatieri
- Kitchen Theater & Bar
- Dinner with specialty punch at The Barcelona EDITION
- Fat Veggies
- Maians House
- La Plata
- Pizzeria Pummarola
- Tandoor (and its little brother, Mirch)
- Bar Verat
- Nou Can Martí
- Taverna La Parra
- Tasca i Vins
- Koh
- Koryo
- Els 4 Gats
- Los Caracoles
- La Estrella Restaurant
- Enjoy
- Enigma
- ***Lasarte
- Alkimia
- Jardinet d'Aribau
- Teresa Carles
- Xavier Pellicer Restaurants
- Vacka
- Three social restaurants where more than just food is served:Mestres Envelopes, La Pau y She Bistró
- The cheap restaurants that Michelin recommends
- Mont Bar
- Masala House
- Feast
- Flying Monkey
- Brabo
- Windsor
- La Cabrera
- Martinez Terrace
- Fire, by W Barcelona
- Yuku Barcelona, first class quality in a secret bar
- Virens, vegetarian haute cuisine
- Rías Kru
- Assalto, Wine bar
- Ultramarinos Marín
Unforeseen
Part of the restaurant team Caellis (with a Michelin Star, started this project last year. Its gastronomic proposal is defined as proximity and vegetable-based cuisine, with a certain Italian touch from its founders.
Imprevisto works with two tasting menus (El Previsto and Imprevisto) that change seasonally, in which a curious cuisine is elaborated: the flavors are homemade and recognizable, but the recipes are elaborated. The elaborations are announced complicated, but what enters the mouth does it as if it had already done it all my life. An example of how to cook well and without fuss in a restaurant that seeks to grow.
42€ per menu
📍 C/ de Bailèn, 104
Bandinis
In the old premises of Bandinis, where the famous bravas of Sant Antoni Gloriós were served, there is now a new restaurant that offers delicious dishes such as this lemon fish tartar or its sweetbreads with artichokes, combining the best of Mediterranean cuisine with Italian touches. A different and surprising Italian in Sant Antoni.
💸 25€ average price per person.
📍 Carrer de Manso, 42.
Contracorrent
Contracorrent Bar is an ideal option to enjoy creative and accessible cuisine in Barcelona. Some of its most outstanding dishes are the ensaladilla rusa de pollo a l’ast, an original and tasty version of this classic, and the cap i pota with red shrimp tartar, a combination of textures and flavors that surprises the palate.
20-25€ average price per person.
c. de Ribes, 35, local 14, Eixample.
The Textile Collective
Up to 22 taps craft beer l only at the entrance of the bar. If you go on, they have their own restaurant (with a separate kitchen, and on display) and even their own discotheque. Its 1100 m2 even house its own craft beer brewery, where, in addition, they also make their own soft drinks, taking another step forward in their zero waste philosophy.
The tasting menu varies depending on the pairing or if you prefer a lighter or less meaty meal. Be that as it may, you won’t leave there without having tasted dishes made by a strict food reuse circuit: the snack crackers, for example, are made with bagasse and oats left over from brewing.
💸 Menu from 65€
📍 Carrer de Casp, 33B
Âme Barcelona
Âme is the kind of restaurant that Barcelona always needs: an intimate place, with exquisite service, good wines (many of them natural) and a small but well selected menu. Its cuisine is Mediterráneo style but with a French soul.
Most of the dishes on the menu are on the tasting menu, which is certainly recommended for the full experience. In it we find three bites: mushroom consommé with foie gras oil and eringiri, sea crêpe with Palamós red shrimp pil-pil and venison tartar with kalamata and beet. To start, they offer a Montseny mushroom maitake with anchovies and foie (undoubtedly one of the best dishes), scallop from Japan with salsify cream and citrus air, and hamachi with viergesauce.
As main courses, they offer a fish option (Pyrenean trout) and a meat option ( Pyrenean acorn-fed duck matured with duck juice). Also of note is the rice broth from the Ebro Delta with duck confit and velouté (off the menu, we recommend trying the rice broth with red shrimp tartare from Palamós). To finish, the selection of cheeses together with the foie gras and cocoa block. The pre-dessert is strawberries from Maresme with champagnefoam and the dessert is a chocolate tart with caramel beurre salé and Tonka. The latter, brutal.
tasting menu 75 €
📍 Carrer Londres, 91
Via Granados
If someone wants to surprise with an exquisite mediterráneo cuisine in a charming restaurant in a charming restaurant, Via Granados “is the place to go”. With spectacular dishes thanks to local ingredients and delicious recipes, one cannot miss their starters, as well as the patatas bravas, the padrón peppers and the homemade ham and mushroom croquettes.
💸 Menu from 28€
📍 C/ Enric Granados, 67
Sartoria Panatieri
Awarded as one of the 50 best pizzerias in the world according to Top 50 pizza last year, in 21st place.
In addition, Sartoria Panatieri has achieved two other considerations. On the one hand, recognition for the Pizza of the Year 2022 – Latteria Sorrentina Award for its creation based on Cantabrian anchovies, tomato, escarole and Kalamata olive puree.
And a second award, in this case linked to sustainability: the Forno Verde – Green Oven 2022, which recognizes the pizzeria’s commitment to environmentally friendly practices and its attempt to avoid food waste as much as possible.
🍲 Your roasted cauliflower, gremolata sauce and parmesan cheese
average price between 20€ and 30€
📍 Carrer de Provença, 330
Kitchen Theater & Bar
Teatro reopened last March in style where Tickets used to be, maintaining its layout with open kitchens and a low bar, which was already a show in itself.
Eating with your hands and nibbling is welcome at the restaurant. The starters are based on snacks (such as the Iberian bacon airbaguette or the nori and tuna mille-feuille, brought from Elbulli) recovered from their former essence Tickets, however, the main courses already take on a more novel air. They are moving away from fingerfood and are getting closer to the casseroles that your grandmother would cook, with dishes where the highest cuisine is hidden behind the most delicate preparations.
av. del Paral-lel, 164
average price between 50 and 60 €
Dinner with specialty punch at The Barcelona EDITION
The luxurious 5* hotel The Barcelona EDITION, at the foot of the Mercat de Santa Caterina (Born), is a microcosm within Barcelona. Gastronomy, signature cocktails, entertainment and elegance. A lot of elegance. But also an impeccable dinner service. His Bar Veraz is one of the most unique restaurants with speakeasy in the city.
For its part, Punch Room brings creativity and sophistication to the plan. Accessed by an iconic spiral staircase, this speakeasy bar offers local distillates and ingredients in its carefully curated menu of signature cocktails and punches, served in vintage silver punch bowls.
📍 Avinguda de Francesc Cambó, 14
💸 60 €
Fat Veggies
Almost every time we recommend this place they twist the gesture. Fat Veggies is a brasserie where almost everything has contact with fire, but the menu is all about vegetables. Not a single animal. The result is dishes with incredible textures, smoky flavors, fresh products and some ingredients you didn’t know about. The star dish is its cauliflower in various textures.
💸 Average price between 20€ and 30€
📍 C/ de Paris, 168
Maians House
Undoubtedly the best restaurant in La Barceloneta. Roger and Fuensanta are the couple behind this small restaurant where you better make a reservation. There they dispatch catalan-mediterranean food made with the care and attention that allows a restaurant for the people of the neighborhood that deserves to be in any guide for the international public. I couldn’t recommend just one thing, but the most fun is ordering their off-menu items.
💸 Average price between 30 and 40€
📍 C / de Sant Carles, 28
La Plata
It is curious that a place like this, small, neighborhood, humble and simple offer is crowded with the same tourism that makes it increasingly difficult to find places like this in Barcelona. It is also surprising that, being where it is, its anchovies and homemade vermouth still retain the same quality as always. Long live La Plata.
💸 Average price between 10 and 20€
📍 C / de la Mercè, 28
Pizzeria Pummarola
This pizzeria on the border between Raval and Sant Antoni is the best example that pizza is and can be an economical dish. Here the most expensive pizza is no more than 10 euros and you get a margarita for six. If it is too crowded it is always a good option to order take away and sit and enjoy it on the benches across the street
💸 Menu around 10-15€
rda. de Sant Pau, 59
Tandoor (and its little brother, Mirch)
Iván Surinder is the head of Tandoor, one of the best Indian restaurants in town. And, if not the best, at least the most referenced. To talk about Indian food you have to ask Surinder, or his mother, a woman with a splendid smile who used to run Tandoor and can now be seen one day lending a hand at Mirch, Tandoor’s little brother; Indian food but from a more street perspective. Few curries and a couple of vada pavs but packed with flavor.
💸 Average price around 30€
📍 C/ d’Aragó, 8
Bar Verat
I just learned the meaning of a word and I really like the pedantry derived from using rare words. That word is bicoca. Bicoca is a “thing that is considered good and that is obtained for little money or with little effort”. Well, the Verat is the biggest bicocca in the whole city. Michelin-starred chef’s lunch for less than 20€.
💸 Price for between 10-20€
📍Av. Pallaresa, 104 (in Santa Coloma)
Nou Can Martí
On the outskirts of Barcelona, in the park of Collserola, with a simple dining room and spectacular views of the entire city. The location of Nou Can Martí allows access by public transportation. Of all the places to eat calçots, it is one of the most interesting from the economic point of view: it has a menu for 23€.
💸 Menu for 23€
📍 Passatge de la Font del Mont, 4
Taverna La Parra
A classic restaurant with a classic concept and a surprising reinterpretation. What is surprising? An ice cream of wasabi, for example. This place is also said to be expensive, but “the expense is worth it”. Another curiosity: the creature is almost 90 years old and, contrary to what is usually the case, she never stops reinventing herself.
💸 Menu around 30€
📍C/de Joanot Martorell, 3
Tasca i Vins
A classic like the top of a jacaranda. It has several restaurants spread throughout Barcelona and they all have one thing in common: a menu based on traditional cuisine and prices suitable for all budgets.
Its premises are characterized by offering fresh products, slow-cooked, “chup-chup”, in a family atmosphere, which encourages long after-dinner meals with friends.
💸 Average price between 20-30€
📍 C/ de la Indústria, 118
Koh
We’ll start by talking about the Koh saying that free will is bullshit. Asking implies regret (not for making a wrong decision) and the desire to return. A menu to salivate just by looking at it. Ramen, baos and different Asian products in a place that has been standing for four days counted.
💸 Average price around 40€
📍C/de Pujades, 133
Koryo
Koryo itself is a boon for those of us who want to experiment with new cuisines but don’t have enough zeros to afford a flight to Seoul. And not only for that: Koryo is a favor because you can eat like a Russian or Russian oligarch menu of the day (seriously, the menu is highly recommended and only costs 12€).
💸 Average price around 20-30€
📍C/ Reus, 4
Els 4 Gats
It opened in 1884 with the cabaret atmosphere of Le Chat Noir in Paris as a reference. Its bohemian and inspiring spirit attracted the attention of the artists of the time, so it was soon frequented by Picasso (who designed the cover of the menu), Dalí, Santiago Rusiñol or Hemingway.
It is one of the oldest restaurants and active in the City of Barcelona. A classic frequented by locals and tourists alike.
💸 Average price around 40€
📍C/de Montsió, 3
Los Caracoles
It doesn’t take a genius to guess that it specializes in snails in their sauce, although it also offers typical Catalan dishes. Robert de Niro, Joan Miró, Dalí and Gala or Giorgio Armani have passed through here. Nowadays it is so classic in Barcelona that you have to visit it at least once in your life, if only to see its chickens cooked on firewood on the same street.
💸 Average price €30
📍C/dels Escudellers, 14
La Estrella Restaurant
La Estrella opened its doors in 1924 and, four generations later, Jordi, Pepi and Pau continue to offer their diners high quality Mediterranean food.
Right in the center, but, at the same time, away from the tourist hustle and bustle, this restaurant offers dishes cooked with seasonal products and km zero, which vary depending on the day and what is in the market. That’s why we recommend not only looking at the menu, but also asking what they have off the menu (and save room for desserts!)
💸 Theaverage price is between 60€
📍C/Ocata, 6
Enjoy
The best restaurant in Barcelona, if we take into account the Michelin Guide, which places this restaurant as the best restaurant in Barcelona the third best restaurant in the world. The home of Oriol Castro, MateuCasanyas and Eduard Xatruch, alumni of el Bulli, is a fantasy, an experience that is noticeable in the pocket but that, if you can, makes you understand why you pay what you pay what you pay in this kind of places.
💸 Menú Disfrutar Classic 255€ (without wine pairing)
📍 C/ Villarroel, 163
Enigma
Enigma concept is, as defined on its website, Albert Adrià’s new gastronomic proposal. The evolution of el Bulli according to Albert has revived after the pandemic, but it remains an enigmatic space where great things happen, and where diners enjoy different experiences depending on the spaces they pass through.
tasting menu €220 (without wine pairing)
📍C/ Sepúlveda, 38
***Lasarte
Martín Berasategui’s restaurant has three Michelin Stars. In it, the Spanish chef with the most stars in his restaurants, offers signature Basque cuisine, one of his most iconic gastronomic bets. Its dishes are prepared with seasonal and local products, and they combine Catalan and Basque flavors in a unique symbiosis.
Lasarte is located in the luxurious Monument Hotel and its design offers diners an experience where textures and light are the protagonists, along with the food, creating an avant-garde and elegant atmosphere.
💸 Tasting menu 305€
📍C/ Mallorca, 259
Alkimia
We already talked about Alkimia in its day: it received the award for best design restaurant SBID 2017. Or, to put it another way, he most beautiful restaurant in the world. It is understood, then, that there are few places more instagrammable than this one. But of course, it doesn’t stop there.
Alkimia has become the home of those who know how to cook in the city, a place where Catalan recipes and cuisine prevail, but prepared in a very elevated way. A place, so that we understand each other, for cooks.
💸 Alkimia menu for 184€
📍Rda. de Sant Antoni, 41
Jardinet d’Aribau
A delicious menu and a unique gastronomic experience is what we find in Jardinet d’Aribau, one of the most charming restaurants in the city most charming restaurants in Barcelona of Barcelona. In a magical setting and surrounded by nature in the center of the city, the menu offers the most exquisite dishes, from ratatouille, mushroom risotto and the chef’s fish, to veal burger eco, confit of Catalan pork and his famous baos locos.
💸 Menu for one person for 25€
📍 C/ d’Aribau, 133
Teresa Carles
A classic among vegetarians in Barna. A complete menu costs 13€ (quite economical if we remember that it is a totally ORGANIC option). Its products, some of which you can buy, such as the oil, are VMASS: Vegetarian, Mediterranean, Artisan, Healthy and Tasty.
This is the ideal place if you want to eat healthy but without leaving a kidney.
💸 Menu from 13€
📍 C/ Jovellanos, 2
Xavier Pellicer Restaurants
It is the best vegetable restaurant in the world. This was announced by the contest We’re Smart Think Vegetables! Think Fruit! after awarding this distinction to Xavier Pellicer. Xavier Pellicer, by the way, is the name of the chef, yes, but also of the restaurant. Pellicer, by the way, is one of the most renowned chefs in Spain.
💸 Tasting menu for 85€
📍C/ Provença, 310
Vacka
Vacka, which means awakening, is one of the most worthwhile restaurants in Barcelona in terms of concept and novelty. And that’s big words. It’s a restaurant totally vegan. Although it stands out for offering a gluten-free and mostly raw product. A must among alternative food geeks.
💸 Average price about 10€
📍C/dels Almogávers, 138
Three social restaurants where more than just food is served:Mestres Envelopes, La Pau y She Bistró
Gastronomy is not just about food, restaurants, recipes and chefs, and the better it is understood that a meal has unsuspected economic and social implications, the better it will be for everyone. These three restaurants have understood this, and are exploring ways to improve society through hospitality, which is why we wanted to add them to this Best of 2022 list.
Sobres Mestres is a project of Café Lleialtat in the Sants neighborhood that cooks a daily menu prepared with fresh quality food that for commercial reasons are discarded from the food supply chain, giving a second chance to artisan bread, vegetables and fresh fruits.
On the other hand, SHE Bistró is a restaurant in the upper Zone of Barcelona where the workers are survivors of male violence and people with functional diversity. Finally, La Pau is a restaurant that the Fundació Llindar has opened in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona, in the center, to provide work for students from difficult backgrounds who are trained in gastronomy at the El Repartidor school in L’Hospitalet.
In short, three places that show that gastronomy goes far beyond the plate, and that the further we move away from the recipe, the better we understand the food and everything that surrounds it.
💸 Various prices
📍C/d’Olzinelles, 31 (Sobres Mestres)
📍C/de Santaló 88 (SHE Bistró)
📍C/Josep Anselm Clavé, 10 (La Pau)
The cheap restaurants that Michelin recommends
Luxury food doesn’t have to be expensive (or at least, not always), and that’s why Michelin has been launching for years now bib Gourmand awards, which awards restaurants that offer haute cuisine for less than 35 euros.
We already showed you the list, and you can choose yourself, but without a doubt, Cruix, Nairod or La Mundana are some of our favorites, places where we have enjoyed a bistronomic cuisine of category, with accessible tapas, Catalan cuisine reinvented and some dishes of a lot at very affordable prices.
💸 Various prices
📍C/ d’Entença, 57 (Cruix)
📍 C/ d’Aribau, 141 (Nairod)
📍 C/ Vallespir, 93 (La Mundana)
Mont Bar
This restaurant leads the our list of 2022 favorites. And this restaurant brought to the city one of the latest michelin stars. After its chef won the award at the Fòrum Gastronòmic al Cuiner 2022, the Michelin Guide recognized Mont with its first star.
Soul of a gastrobar that works with fresh seasonal products and proximity, where the presentations are taken care of. This is what the Michelin Guide says about them. In short, a restaurant that has given a lot to talk about this 2022 and that will probably be one of the stars of 2023.
💸 Unwrapping menu for 135€
📍 C/ de la Diputació, 220
Masala House
Not everything in Barcelona are Michelin stars and great awards, and we are aware that gastronomy is the day to day, and often, as the saying goes, “al pot petit s’amaga la bona confitura”. It is good that there are great starred restaurants, but it is in the daily lunches where the great battle of the gastronomy of a city is fought.
Therefore, it is fortunate to have for wars like these with soldiers like Casa Masala, an Indian restaurant where true haute cuisine is made at affordable prices, and where it is demonstrated, on the one hand, that Indian cuisine hides a complexity and refinement that is often hidden from us, and on the other hand, that great gastronomy does not have to be inaccessible.
All in all, Casa Masala is one of our favorites this year, a great little restaurant where you can discover that eating well can be Indian, cheap and fun.
💸 Price between 30-40€
📍 C/ Muntaner, 152
Feast
And if we continue walking to escape from the Michelin Stars, we take the path of accessible gastronomy, until we reach a sandwich. It reminds us that food is humble, and that before the plate, tupperware and fork, a bread made of primordial continent and efficient: the food wrapper is your edible carbohydrate. At a time when edible straws are being made to save plastic, the sandwich gives us a lesson in humility.
🍲 Your 100% vegan pitonisa burger
💸 Average price between 10€ and 20€
📍 Carrer del Portal Nou, 19
Flying Monkey
Flying Monkey’s is a casual haute cuisine stroll through the Mediterráneo. The new restaurant of Ronit Stern, the owner of another great restaurant, La Balabusta, elevates the food of Israeli and Middle Eastern roots to create a concept halfway between home cooking, the healthy dish for a midday (good midday menu) office worker or a light snack that stretches between natural wines, the other specialty of the restaurant.
Also note, by the way, its cakes and breads, as the restaurant shares its premises with Oz Bakery, which prepares its doughs in the visitable bakery downstairs, rounding off the proposal of the space.
🍲 Your homemade bread sandwich with pastrami
💸 Average price between 20€ and 40€
📍 C/ d’Amigó, 37,
Brabo
what do the best pizza makers in Europe eat when they leave the dough aside and want to treat themselves? The answer is Brabo, the steakhouse opened by the people in charge of Sartoria Panatieri, recently named the best pizzeria in Europe. Brabo is a fine dining steakhouse where everything, even the bread and butter, is grilled, and where high quality meats are prepared to satisfy the carnivorous cravings of any food lover.
💸 40-60€
📍 C/ de Sèneca, 28,
Windsor
what dishes would you choose to summarize your own life, or to summarize your city? Those of us who are not yet lucky enough to have chroniclers who talk about what we have eaten throughout our lives, have to make do with reading those who talk about what is eaten in our surroundings, in our cities. Let them talk about dishes that we also eat and, therefore, also a little bit about ourselves.
The Windsor is an example of one of these restaurants, a place of traditional and classic Catalan cuisine, with tablecloths, heavy curtains and cheese cart, where to give yourself the homage you deserve. They have several menus (Tradition, Tribute to Néstor Luján…) or a seasonal menu where they work with elevated cuisine but always with an eye on our tradition.
💸 60-70€
📍 Còrsega 286, 08008
La Cabrera
Those in the know know that a barbecue is not the same as an Argentinean asado, and in Barcelona, a city where everyone knows that the Argentinean is one of the largest communities, there are several places where you can learn the difference between the two. Few, however, as La Cabrera, one of the best grills in Buenos Aires, which has just opened a branch in Barcelona.
The restaurant, named best steakhouse in Buenos Aires in 2018 in one of the cities with the best steakhouses in the world, is owned by grill icon Gastón Riveiro, a chef who doesn’t do cartwheels: Traditional grill, the cuts they touch and the exact elaborations. Because here you don’t come to experiment, but to learn the secrets of a way of cooking that has become the symbol of a country.
💸 50-60€
📍 C/ de la Diputació, 239
Martinez Terrace
There are few places that can be said to be all they need to be. And there are few because to be all there is to be there are no standards or ideal is. It is not a question of fitting a model, but of responding exactly to the idea that one has built and sells of oneself. You can be a frankfurter bar at three euros a sandwich, and be all you have to be, and you can be a three-star restaurant at 300 euros a plate, without reaching it.
La Terraza Martinez is one of the cases in Barcelona, a restaurant that is what it should be, because you leave happy to have been there, having found what you were looking for. The site is now celebrating ten years as a reference restaurant in the city. A place that the city has to have, because the mountain of Barcelona has to have a restaurant for Barcelonians, where to eat great rice at reasonable prices and feel, as is rarely felt in this city owned by the cruise ships that can be glimpsed from the Martinez, that the Eixample at our feet is again a little bit ours.
Fire, by W Barcelona
In FIRE, the restaurant of W Barcelona where the ember and the sea are the protagonists, they release a menu each new season.
So the ingredients are ultra-seasonal, organic and foraged, and here they combine them with the unpredictable nature of fire to create a fusion of unexpected flavors.
Dishes are a mix of simple and complex, raw and braised, meat-based and plant-centric, juxtaposing rustic bites with flavor-defying sauces.
🍲 Lobster with grilled fennel and grape salad and citrus Beurre Blanc
💸 Between 50 and 60€
📍 W Barcelona, Plaça de la rosa dels vents. Pg. de Joan de Borbó, 1
Yuku Barcelona, first class quality in a secret bar
What they do at Yuku is something that plays in another league. There the raw material is of excellent quality; so much so that it is hard to believe that such a thing could exist. Its philosophy is summarized under the concept of omakase which means trusting and leaving the menu in the chef’s hands. This is a type of menu that is normally served in Japanesesushiya that is, in establishments that have a bar with 4 to 10 seats.
Yuku’s proposal is more than clear: to generate a magical atmosphere inspired by Japanese culture within a closed-door space. All this makes one of the most unique Japanese restaurants in the city.
Secret location.
Virens, vegetarian haute cuisine
Rodrigo de la Calle’s Barcelona proposal in Barcelona , Virens, is this year among the best vegetarian restaurants in the world, and after tasting their vegetable tasting menu one understands why.
The guide that awarded him explains that the chef’s enthusiasm “ensures that dishes with vegetables as protagonists are always surprising, highly gastronomic and also silence non-vegetarians”, and we tell you that dishes like his beet gazpacho or his pickled carrot risotto become, directly, our most memorable dishes of the year.
🍲Risotto with pickled carrots
💸 Starting at 50€
Gran via de les corts catalanes 619-621
Rías Kru
From the fusion of Rias de Galicia, mythical seafood restaurant in Barcelona and Espai Kru, the place upstairs that innovated the Barcelona gastro scene by offering a menu where everything was raw, has born Rias Kru, a single space where both concepts merge, offering a menu that is a mix between a traditional seafood restaurant of high flying and a delicate menu of raw dishes.
Tartares, nigiris, tiraditos and tatakis or the famous one-sided langoustine, cooked only on one side to achieve two textures, accompany the fresh seafood brought from Galicia or fished directly in the pool that the restaurant has at the ticket. The place in Barcelona to give yourself a tribute.
💸 Starting at 7o€
Lleida Street 7, Barcelona
Assalto, Wine bar
The joke is made: Assalto takes the Raval’s gastro scene by storm and shakes it by the lapels asking it to wake up, that the big kitchen is coming. Assalto is the little brother (or big brother, we don’t know) of My Fucking Restaurant, a few meters away, a place dedicated to good cuisine and sustainability (today they only cook with vegetables). With these two places the chef, Mateo Bertozzi, has created a Little Italy in Nou de la Rambla (former Conde de Asalto street, hence the name), where he manages from the shadows one of the great cuisines that are made in Barcelona.
In Assalto he has created a restaurant and wine bar with a somewhat indefinable cuisine, which navigates between the Spanish tradition (the Granada adobo is, openly, one of the best dishes of 2024) or the Asian, with eggplants in sweet and sour cachuete sauce or Galician octopus with (lots and lots of) Sichuan pepper and gnocchi. The common traits are always very balanced dishes, a wide range of flavors and a lot of preliminary work (the bread with tomato, just for starters, is served with a sauce of three tomatoes reduced for 12 hours). Great place that is also accompanied by a wine cellar of 200 names where, outside the corsets of natural wine fashion, it seeks to have great wines that accompany as Mateo says the dishes that Mateo decides to prepare.
📍C/ Nou de la Rambla, 44, Ciutat Vella
Ultramarinos Marín
A cook with aspirations can get angry at Ultramarinos Marín because it is hard to understand why serving such simple things is so darn good. That is the secret of the trendy restaurant in Barcelona, a narrow and noisy place with a seventies bar aesthetic that even Ferran Adrià has recommended and where the cuisine is served stripped down, focused on products that are treated with great care (and many hours of knowing how to cook before putting them on the fire).
This is the only way to explain that this bar-grill (80% of its product is grilled) serves a chicken breast, something so simple, turned into a delicacy or that its sausages, homemade and cured at home, also come out nailed. Or that its allioli, a basic sauce, is the protagonist of influencers’ videos. It is enough to see its menu with dishes that are words: “potato”, “mushroom”, “squid”, “chicharrón”… the certainty that their names, like their recipes, stand for themselves.