As I said, we make little incursion in the upper area. We do so because we frequent other areas, and that is why we surprise ourselves by recommending a place that is pure uptown and yet makes what we believe is the best tortilla we have tasted in 2025.
Varela is a food house in Plaça Molina, an area where fashions hit less and so, perhaps, its macaroni or mandonguilles-style dishes are more credible.
Maybe that’s why they proudly maintain and highlight, also, other simple fusion dishes that look like very 2010, like those shrimp tacos that don’t fit in with the place but are really good. Maybe it is the locals who order here, and not the tourists, and that is why fashions last as long as their errands dictate. What a privilege for both parties.
The tortilla foam tortilla
That’s also why, perhaps, the classic dishes are refined, because here who comes here already brings them well tested from home. Hence the macaroni with Iberian feather bolognese, far superior to others who have jumped on the bandwagon now. Really, boníssims, crispy golden, bolognese (with cream?) mellow and powerful flavor … a delight.
And from there also the omelette. In the world where the omelette is fashionable here they play the opposite card to that of macaroni: surprise the neighbors with a novelty. In this case, a lightly curdled potato omelette filled with potato foam. The result is a wobbly, barely sealed UFO, which when opened reveals the lightness of the foam surrounded by the creaminess of a barely curdled omelet. A marvel, really.
It can be accompanied by coca bread with tomato (coca bread with structure, not glass bread that arrives already soggy and rubbery) and other dishes of those who go their own way, such as chicken wings “sense feina” (boneless) with kimchi sauce or squid plancha with a spicy point, both somewhat dissonant on the menu compared to the tortilla or macaroni, like those tacos at the beginning, but both frankly delicious, demonstrating that a good neighborhood eatery is the balanced meeting place between the creative whims of a chef and the capricious demands of its customers.