
Many times a beer and some tapas is all we need to be happy. There is always an excuse to go from bar to bar in search of the best pincho: a first date, a dinner with friends or to show your guiri friend the best tapas in Barcelona.
After an exhaustive search, and having had to unbutton our pants, we have determined which are the best tapas bars in the city and what you have to order in each of them.
And success lies in specialization, so we recommend the must of each of the bars and wineries, because probably what they serve in them you can not find them anywhere else.
Whether they are bombas, croquettes, bravas or tortilla, we have decided to share our best kept secret: where to eat the 17 best tapas in Barcelona.
Table Of Contents
- Anchovies with their fried raspa, the specialty of Jai-ca.
- El Vaso de Oro's grilled steak with foie gras.
- The bomb of La Cova Fumada
- Bacallà "a bras" Bar Gol
- La Esquinica's tapas mañas
- Can Cargolet's artichokes (and its snails)
- The capipota of Can Marlau
- The bravas of Tomàs de Sarrià
- The best chapatas are at Quimet d'Horta.
- The Russian salad of Contracorrent
- The pescaíto frito of Bar La Plata
- The omelette skewer at Bar El Pollo
- The croquettes of Pollería Fontana
- Quimet & Quimet's preserves, the best tapas in Barcelona.
- Try the fried eggs at Quim de la Boquería.
- Tortillas of all kinds at the Tremendo Bar
- Torrezno de La Carol
- Meatball stew in La Cañada
- Pimentel, roda al món i torna a tapejar al Born
- Público and its pickled mussels salad.
- The oxtail sandwich at Bar Canyí.
- Tapas24
Anchovies with their fried raspa, the specialty of Jai-ca.
At first glance, you might expect a touristy locale. But its history and reputation in the neighborhood precedes it, elevating it above tourist stereotypes.
Bar Jai-ca is a temple of popular, unpretentious tapas in the heart of Barceloneta . And a place like this should have a star tapa for which they are known throughout Barcelona: Cantabrian anchovies with their fried raspa .
A dish that makes flag of the saying with which we started the article, since most of the time,the simplicity of a dish is what makes it something truly iconic, becoming one of the best tapas in Barcelona.
📍 C/ Ginebra, 13
El Vaso de Oro’s grilled steak with foie gras.
The name is funny, because proud of their own craft beer, they created a special and unique glass to throw it. Delicious beers in a ‘pielsen’ glass, and on top of that, frozen.
After opening your mouth with the drink, we tell you about their food: irresistible. You can’t, you have to try the butifarra, the bravas… and their specialty that everyone talks about in forums, the grilled steak with foie.
📍 C/ de Balboa, 6
The bomb of La Cova Fumada
One of the most mythical bars in Barcelona. A lifetime tasca that opened in 1945 and today stands out for maintaining its authenticity in a city where so many others tend to homogenization.
La Cova Fumada would be a good tavern in any other town in Catalonia, or in any neighborhood far from the center, but in La Barceloneta a bar like this one fulfills a double mission: to satisfy the tourist’s desire for treasure hunting and to nourish the locals with uniqueness, quality, good prices and a bit of nostalgia.
Its artichokes, its ensaladilla, its sardines or its onioned squid are essential, but if La Cova Fumada is popularly known for something, it is for having invented the bomb of La Barceloneta.
📍 C/ del Baluard, 56
Bacallà “a bras” Bar Gol
Bar Gol is another of our favorites in the city. This tasca is, as we defined it before, is “a house in the neighborhood of Sant Antoni”. From this place we highlight the torreznos because it is easy to become obsessed with them or their bacallà “à brás” recipe, but you could highlight anything from their menu.
Don’t be scared off by its traditional air or its name, so orthodox. At Bar Gol you eat well and feel better. The waiters are charming, like a family. Good vibes, good food and fresh beer.
📍 C/ del Parlament, 10
La Esquinica’s tapas mañas
As it is a bar mañico, everything has its -ico. Pataticas, pimienticos, or caracolicos. The essential? Well, its Aragonese and Navarrese products. In their menu you can find chistorra from Navarra, jamoncico from Teruel….
In addition, you move away a little from the center, becoming an even more authentic bar where you can escape from tourism. But beware, this does not promise you that the place will be empty, on the contrary. You will have to squeeze a little, but we promise you that it is worth it.
📍 Passeig de Fabra i Puig, 296
Can Cargolet’s artichokes (and its snails)
A mythical of the Catalan cuisine of all life. Can Cargolet is especially famous for its snails, from the basic ones to the snails with crayfish or rabbit. But their grilled artichokes, which melt in your mouth, are something you have to try.
📍 C/ Comte d’Urgell, 17
The capipota of Can Marlau
Can Marlau is the first restaurant owned by Ferran Soler, who was head chef at Albert Adrià’s Bodega 1900. They only serve tapas and dishes with excellent seasonal products, such as their Russian salad or a tomato salad with smoked sardines and pistachio oil.
However, it is the spoon dish that makes this bar the official “rebañadores” paradise. Their capipota, is made with white beans instead of chickpeas, a technique that adds butteriness and has earned it a prestigious place among the best tapas in Barcelona.
📍C/ de Paris, 161
The bravas of Tomàs de Sarrià
Another classic dish that has been making a name for itself for years and years. Edu, from @bravasbarcelona, told us a lot about it when we did the route through the best bravas in Barcelona.
Edu explained to us that Tomàs was not in the number one position in his ranking because it deserved a position above, zero, the lifetime title of the best patatas bravas in the city. A good all i oli and spicy oil on top. Nothing more.
📍 C/ Major de Sarrià, 49
The best chapatas are at Quimet d’Horta.
Bocatas, tortillas and liquor. This is what attracts the attention of this typical tapas place in Plaza de Eivissa, open since 1920.
Although back then it was called Bar del Loro (because it literally had a parrot at the door and everyone knew him) it has now become a reputable bar where you can have tapas by the bucketload, and have fun snacking on their little bottles of liquor (some have counted up to 3000).
Just to see the place is worth going, the facade and wooden doors are original (recovered in 2006 at the request of the City Council). But after marveling at the local so well preserved and so neighborhood, you will stay to try some of its 37 types of tortillas, or their entrepanes, which occupy up to three sheets of his letter.
📍 Pl. d’Eivissa, 10
The Russian salad of Contracorrent
The Russian salad is another of those dishes that do not serve to test the quality of a place. It seems so simple, but it is so complex. From the quality and cooking of the potatoes to the texture of the mayonnaise. From the type of vegetables chosen, deciding between tuna or bonito or changing it for another more daring ingredient, as is the case of the one we choose.
It is very difficult to decide on just one salad, but today we want to talk about the one from Contracorrent, which prepares it with roast chicken. The chunks of well roasted meat, salted, give it a different touch to the traditional salad, but they transport us to the same plane of the one we have eaten all our lives. There are others (such as Buenavista), but this one at Contracorrent is already among the tops of the city.
📍C/ de Ribes, 35
The pescaíto frito of Bar La Plata
That Bar La Plata continues to resist despite (or thanks to) the tourist avalanche of the streets where it is located is a surprise and a joy. A Barcelona tapas bar loaded with charm that enamors locals, surprised that something like this can still survive in the Gothic, and tourists, joyful to stumble upon such an exotic corner. In La Plata you can (and should) order many things, but above all its fried fish.
The fried anchovies are the kings of the bar, but you should also make room for its skewer of butifarra omelette and its tomato salad.
📍 C/ de la Mercè, 28
The omelette skewer at Bar El Pollo
A renovated lifelong Barcelona tapas bar that, for some reason, has become very trendy. Located on the border between Raval and Sant Antoni, El Pollo has an updated gastronomic offer in which tortillas are its main hallmark.
The classic one is already very good, but they also have tuna and mushroom with truffle, which make this tapas place a temple to the original omelette.
📍 C/del Tigre, 31
The croquettes of Pollería Fontana
This is not a poultry restaurant (for pollo a l’ast, here); nor is it in Fontana, but in the neighborhood of Gràcia.
What they do have in this tapas restaurant are spectacular roast chicken croquettes, a tribute (just like the name of the place) to the grandparents of its founder, Nil Ros.
📍 C/ de Sant Lluís, 9
Quimet & Quimet’s preserves, the best tapas in Barcelona.
To get a bar specializing in canned food to have this success is very commendable. Quimet&Quimet is a must stop in Poble Sec.
Its small place with walls full of bottles has everything a canned food lover could wish for: from the most basic (anchovies, cockles, mussels) to its montaditos, such as loquats with anchovies or salmon, yogurt and truffled honey.
📍 C/ del Poeta Cabanyes, 25
Try the fried eggs at Quim de la Boquería.
It’s true that it’s not a complicated dish. Anyone is worthy of his grandmother if he ‘knows how to fry an egg’. But having fried eggs at La Boqueria (the temple to Barcelona’s tapas), accompanied by a squid roll with wasabi mayonnaise, is a recommendation you wouldn’t expect to find on this list.
Quim Marqués took over his little territory in the Boquería a few years ago, becoming the owner of the most sought-after stools in the city. Apart from some fried eggs, we recommend you to let yourself be surprised by his seasonal mushrooms or eggplants.
📍 Market of La Boqueria, La Rambla, 91
Tortillas of all kinds at the Tremendo Bar
Close to the hustle and bustle of Plaza España, but in a hidden corner of Sants, is Tremendo, a bar that is worth the trip even if you live on the other side of the city, especially if you like tortillas.
They make all kinds, the last time we went we tried one of calçots with romesco sauce on top. The calçot was not inside the omelette, but you had to suck it into it. If you go, you can’t miss their mythical caramelized onion omelette or any of their stews, which have little to envy to those of your iaia .
📍C/ del Consell de Cent, 12
Torrezno de La Carol
La Carol is one of those places that I wish there were more. In fact, one of the owners is Alberto Moyano, creator of the blog En ocasiones veo bares (Sometimes I see bars), who reviews wineries that he wishes there were more in Barcelona.
This is a traditional bodega, where torrezno is the emblem of its cuisine. They bring it directly from Soria and they produce between 25 and 30 kilos every week. You will also find skeins, chicharrón de Cádiz, and a whole assortment of sausages.
📍C/ d’Aragó, 558
Meatball stew in La Cañada
La Cañada is a pleasure. In the line of the bars of all the life that have been remodeled to live a second life, changing everything to change nothing, La Cañada is one of those that have left more things of all the life than new. Well-drawn beers, good music and a little good food are enough to make a bar feel like a second home.
And among the few well brought tapas are the spicy Moroccan meatballs, destination of the Republican exile of the grandparents of JuanPe González (Banda Municipal del Polo Norte), the promoter of this bar with the actor-artist Nico Baixas and Lina Ruiz. Those meatballs, along with the roast pork loin and some selected sausages from Spain, are the excuse to arrive, but the great atmosphere that is always assured, the reason why one ends up staying.
Pimentel, roda al món i torna a tapejar al Born
The identity of the Borne is difficult, because in a neighborhood where the city was born there are hardly any places that remind us of the city. In a gentrified neighborhood, with a good part of its hotel and catering business dedicated to tourism, the offer is particular.
In a few meters there are authentic sweet cathedrals that overshadow the original cathedral and restaurants that add quality but are not always made to represent the local food or to serve the day to day, those neighbors of Barcelona who seek not so much the exception of going out to eat extravagances in a central neighborhood but the everyday life of having a drink and a snack under the house on any given day.
For them, hopefully, the Pimentel was born, a good, nice and cheap bar, which is what is asked of a neighborhood bar and which is, sadly, an exception in the center of Barcelona. A bar where they cook with enthusiasm, as they did when they cooked for neighbors and not for tourists and that, in a kitchen with young chefs, means a menu where almost everything sounds like the usual, but we want it as if it were new.
By the way, a little while ago it opened its first cousin, Casa Pepi, in the Clot, with a more substantial and less experimental cuisine, and in search of the tapas of a lifetime. It is worth a try.
📍 Pimentel – C/ dels Carders, 11
📍Casa Pepi – Carrer de la Sèquia Comtal, 7, Sant Martí, 08018 Barcelona
Público and its pickled mussels salad.
Público, like many of Enrique Granados’ restaurants, is a large-scale project. Big premises, big investment, big expectations. But unlike many places in this street, made too much for the gallery, Público has found the balance of building a place that exudes power with an offer to match, which makes this restaurant (and bar, and wine store, and fish grill …) in a great option for a great tribute in the area.
The Public is, at the entrance, a fresh fish bar where you can choose the piece, if you want to have a big feast. In the middle of the place is a wine store where all the bottles of the menu are exposed and sold at cost price (with a corkage fee of 8€ if you want to drink at the table). And at the end of the place is a dining room that revolves around an open kitchen, almost a sushi bar, from which one sees great dishes of traditional cuisine reformulated with grace and very well executed.
The best example is the Russian salad with pickled mussels. Few dishes are more reinterpreted than this one, and few more successful, lately, than this version, classic at its core but well accompanied by the ulzor of the shrimp and the acid umami of the pickled mussels.
More: stuffed squid. This is a Catalan cuisine dish that is scarce because of the work it takes, and here they make mar i muntanya stuffing it with black sausage, ceps and hazelnuts, with a suquet and fesolets de Santa Pau. If only there were more stuffed squid in Barcelona, if only there were a champion of this great dish, a true example of mastery in the kitchen. Other classics: tartar on brioche, the already classic parmentier with egg at low temperature, but here with a foie gras, all unctuous…
And to drink, if you can let yourself be accompanied by a wine pairing, let yourself be accompanied. If not, don’t forget to allow yourself a final glass of their sweet garnatxa solera wine, made especially for them and kept in a giant demijohn in the middle of the bar . This is how the tributes are crowned.
The oxtail sandwich at Bar Canyí.
Bar Canyí is the version of Slow and Low, a Michelin-starred restaurant whose owners have opened, 20 meters away (in the old Galician O’pazo), a neo-tavern of those that abound now in Barcelona, where the tapas of all life are treated with care to serve on the same aluminum bar always tapas that those same aluminum bars had ceased to see.
Thus,the two chefs of Slow convert all the work that has brought them a Michelin star in Slow, in tapas worked as their meat in sauce, their pickled rovellons, very tasty classic croquettes, a gilda of the best we have tasted and a Russian salad with a ventresca of category.
But the best comes with the Slow and Low heritage. The burger of oxtail grilled at low temperature, shredded and accompanied by Japanese mayonnaise and sriracha, topped with homemade pickled gherkins and a nice brioche. A beast of a bite worth returning to the restaurant for.
Shout out, by the way, to three more tidbits. The first is the bomba, with meat but also jowl, for the extra gourmand. The second is the place, beautiful, where the skeleton of the O’pazo has remained but has been made up a little and left a door with a great typography.
And last but not least, the music. Francesc Beltri (half of Slow and Canyí together with Nicolás Vega) is a music lover and DJ, and has a collection of vinyls that are the only thing that sounds in the bar, adapting to the “mood” of the moment. “We want joy, rumba, we’re running late, we have to close for the day, punk at full blast”. Being a bar canyí is not only about food.
Tapas24