At Barcelona Secreta, we don’t envy Madrid for many things, but there is one that sometimes hurts us: the pride and defense they have for their gastronomic culture. It’s no secret that finding “authentic” bars is less difficult there than here, and that while in winter they have plenty of cups of cocido to warm their hands, here we are still fighting to ensure that escudella doesn’t lose ground to ramen. But it seems that this is changing.
In the heart of the Quadrat d’Or in the Eixample district, where the neighborhood became strong at its birth, Veracruz has been reborn, a Galician bar that has remained as it was but that Gerard Sans, Marcos Costa, and Grey Mora have turned into a real food house, where the food is accessible, where the dish of the day is “clar i català” (clear and Catalan), and where even the TV stays on forever showing the news for passing diners. Oh, and where you can find something else: a pot of escudella that hopes to stay on the stove for all 365 days of this year.
The eternal escudella
The myth of the eternal soup exists: that broth that one can keep feeding forever, and which they say was common in many eras, when it was not so easy to light a fire and there was not as much variety of food to make a new soup every day. Veracruz’s isn’t exactly like that (Gerard takes it off the stove every two or three days and restarts it), but the concept is the same: to have a dish of Catalan soup always available and ready on the table.
A generous dish: €10.50 per pot (easily enough for two), which serves as a starter for a menu without set meals but with a dish of the day, always featuring recipes from “radical traditional Catalan cuisine,” as Gerard put it. Radical does not mean inventive, but rather radically traditional: lentils, fricandó, butifarra amb mongetes, andon Thursdays, of course, rice.
The ingredients are well sourced: I wish everyone could talk to Gerard like we did, so he could convey the honesty of his pantry: eggs from Calaf, poultry from Torre d’Erbull, meat from Cal Tomàs, and offal from Menuts Rosa, from the Boqueria Market. The rest comes from the Concepció Market.
The eggs for the tortilla de butifarra del perol i mongetes (as I said, radically traditional). The poultry for chicken croquettes, which, along with monkfish and shrimp croquettes, are a must. The meat for the aforementioned escudella and the offal for the cap i pota, which is also respected here (although it is served with tripe). And from the fish market at La Concepció, the ingredients for the other stew, the Sarsuela, their most ostentatious dish (although, for us, the least necessary). Well combined, for less than 20 euros you are out and well fed.
Veracruz’s opening hours are also a statement of intent. Open continuously from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on weekdays, the restaurant focuses on the daytime rhythm of the neighborhood, eschewing long dinners to concentrate on the daily menu and quick but comforting stews. It’s everyday cuisine that feeds the neighbors and workers who are looking for something more than a chain sandwich and find here this refuge of radical Catalan food that we wish were more common and less radical in the city.
You may be interested in: Restaurants serving authentic Barcelona and Catalan cuisine