Want to know more about traditional Barcelona cuisine?
The Catalan capital is a modern and avant-garde city, and Barcelona cuisine, although careful to maintain its roots, is constantly evolving at the same time. The new culinary delights of great chefs with international reputations have become another of the city’s great tourist attractions. What’s more, events, fairs and culinary exhibitions, such as the famous Forum Gastronomic Barcelona, make it the perfect setting for doing business in the sector.
Even so, traditional food and authentic Barcelona dishes remain essential to understanding the gastronomic culture in which chefs and the city’s most important restaurants operate. Based on typical Mediterranean produce, including fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, fish and olive oil, Barcelona’s culinary map is certainly something that makes it unique.
Although visitors to the city simply have to visit one of the cutting‑edge or Michelin-starred restaurants in the city, there’s certainly no shortage of tasting opportunities when it comes to the more typical cuisine of Barcelona. Find out more in this post on dishes you should try during your stay to get to know more about Barcelona’s culture and traditions through your tastebuds.
La Escalivada, typical Barcelona cuisine
La Escalivada is one of the oldest recipes in Barcelona and can be found in any good restaurant. It’s a tasty dish consisting of pepper, aubergine, onion and roasted tomatoes, all served with oil and salt. Usually, anchovies are added to this bed of vegetables, although other accompaniments (meat, fish, etc.) can also be added.
This traditional dish comes from the rural villages in and around Cataluña, Aragon and Valencia. Its name refers to one of the oldest cooking techniques in the region, which consisted of roasting vegetables directly on the embers. To date, the cooking process remains similar, although many variations of the original recipe can be found.
Calçots con salsa romesco: Barcelona cuisine
Without a shadow of a doubt, this is one of the most authentic and well-known dishes in Barcelona cuisine. And the calçots are even the star of one of the most iconic festivals in Cataluña: La Calçotada. Calçots are a variety of green onion that are mainly found in the interior and western part of Cataluña and grow throughout the winter months. It’s worth noting they’re also protected by ‘designation of origin’ status.
Normally, calçots are accompanied by a sauce, for example, romesco, which is typical of the Tarragona region. It’s made from roasted tomatoes and garlic, bread, almonds and roasted hazelnuts, dried red pepper, with a dressing made from olive oil, salt, vinegar, pepper and rosemary.
Like the escalivada – and the great majority of typical dishes you’ll find in Barcelona, for that matter – you’ll see many variations on calçots con salsa romesco. One of the key variations that has become popular in recent years is to add a spicy touch to the sauce with chilli peppers or paprika.
Typical Barcelona cuisine: butifarra
Another meal that simply can’t be missed from a tour of typical Barcelona gastronomy… a fresh sausage made from minced pork and flavoured with salt and pepper. Although the butifarra has now spread throughout Spain and, today, can be found in lots of regions, it is originally from Cataluña.
There are two main types of butifarras. On the one hand, fresh ones, which must be cooked before serving and are normally prepared on the grill. And, on the other hand, cured butifarras, known as fuets, only have to be sliced and can be eaten directly. What’s more, butifarra serves as an ingredient in many typical Barcelona-style dishes, such as meloso rice with butifarra and smoked paprika, or the famous butifarra with beans.
As you can see, Barcelona cuisine is extensive and covers everything from tradition and culture to the most avant-garde and experimental delicacies. These are just some of the most well‑known and typical dishes but, of course, there are plenty of others you can’t afford to miss on your next visit to Barcelona… we guarantee you’ll love it!
Categories: barcelona
