Traditional Catalan Cuisine

We should start by explaining, not least to ourselves, what we are talking about when we refer to Catalan cuisine because, like all cooking that can count its age in centuries, it has so many roots it is difficult to distinguish between authentic and non-authentic. But, since we are in Barcelona and the city is our framework, we will limit ourselves to Barcelona cuisine. The recipe book is no different but the way of understanding it and using it is.

When the city began to industrialise, and really become a city, the bourgeoisie adopted a cuisine with two heads - everyday and holiday - plus French cuisine, de rigueur for their restaurant visits, which gradually began to influence the food and especially the drink. What Catalans and Barcelonians are never prepared to give up is eating well and, always, quality produce, even if it is a simple dish of beans, which popular wisdom has christened "the forty thousand virgins" or which, when accompanied by herring, becomes "the dancers of the queen of the seas".

Traditional Catalan dishes, not complicated but substantial though lighter and with fewer sauces, continue to be made today, as can be seen by the large number of establishments that describe themselves as "Catalan restaurants". It is worth remembering that very similar menus can be found at those which describe themselves as "market" (de mercat) or "Mediterranean" restaurants. In fact, they are more similar than the name suggests.

If you like eating surrounded by hundred-year-old stones, go to Can Culleretes, which opened as a chocolate house in 1786. It is the oldest in the city and on the menu you can find escudella i carn d'olla, stewed mixed meat and vegetables with broth, served first. This is the most authentic of all Catalan dishes but not at all easy to find because it takes a long time to prepare. Another restaurant over a hundred years old is the 7 Portes, which started life as a big cafe. Its speciality is rice (Catalan, of course) and another important point; it is open every day, from 1pm to 1am

Barcelona is the city of Modernisme and here you have the Hotel Espanya, with a splendid building and dining room by the architect Domènech i Montaner (who also designed the Palau de la Música and Hospital de Sant Pau), where the prices are reasonable and there is a lunchtime menu. Then there is Els 4 Gats, que freqüentava Picasso un segle enrere, i Calvet, frequented by Picasso a century ago, and Calvet, located in one of Gaudí's houses, splendid too, though the prices are high and the food very sophisticated.

The list of classic restaurants is almost endless but we should mention Chicoa, great specialists in cod, the fish from the north, and Atenes (Atenes, 42), which offers 27 snail specialities, including desserts: snails with coconut or with chocolate

Restaurants:

• Agut. Restaurant and kitchen with a “pre-war” guarantee: sopa de peix, escalivada, estofat, bacallà (fish soup; grilled aubergine, pepper and onion; meat stew; cod) and more. It is over 80 years old and faithful to its roots.

• Pitarra. Really traditional Catalan cuisine (escudella, canelons), with a modern touch like maigret, in a setting which has been converted into a museum of the life and work of Pitarra, a Catalan playwright.

• Can Lluís.Popular Catalan cooking with the odd Alacante influence or fashionable ingredient, like foie, but, above all, rice dishes and a very large dessert menu, where you are bound to get your fill.