BCN Gastronomy

Barcelona is a city with an extraordinary number of good restaurants and cheaper cases de menjar. If we add granges, cafés offering breakfasts and lunch-time menus, the figure we get, in relation to the number of inhabitants, is three times higher than capital cities with a strong tourist tradition like Paris and Rome. How can we explain that? Basically, as a result of the habit Barcelonians have acquired over the last few decades (a habit, therefore, rather than a tradition) of eating out fairly or even very often. Until recently, restaurant prices were very reasonable, compared to other foreign cities, while there has been a spectacular growth in fast food establishments such as those selling hamburgers and pizzas and the new Japanese buffet restaurants.

There are still lots of places that do some great Catalan food and we also have some excellent French-Catalan restaurants. Most places serving Italian food are pizzerias or trattorias with traditional Italian food. What we lack is a German restaurant of some renown. Some may say we do not need one and that today the standing of Catalan cuisine is as high as any. We should certainly be pleased people are talking about Catalan food now and even more that they are saying good things about it. However, we will have a hard job getting those just passing through used to food which is not theirs and not what is generally understood by international food.