Tomato Kumato

Yesterday, I addressed tapas, the traditional Spanish taster item that allows socializing at the bar to last well into the evening. Tapas have evolved from a mere bar snack to something gourmet: a sign of the fact that Barcelona is becoming a culinary capital in its own right.

However, with this title comes certain qualities, not all of them good. One of the unfortunate side effects of an increased popularity in the culinary culture of the city is the recent addition of nouvelle cuisine restaurants.

Don’t get me wrong: sometimes I love a tiny taster dish of something foamy, gelatine or powdered, just to keep up with the trends and to see if I can stumble upon anything truly creative. However, there comes a point when nouvelle cuisine goes too far, and I have to say that the steak-frites at Brown, a restaurant above Plaça Catalunya on the Rambla, is a prime example of this.

Brown comes off as a normal restaurant: a little fancy by Barcelona standards, maybe, but with normal menu items like pizza, pasta and steak-frites on the menu. The steak was lovely: perfectly cooked and seasoned. However, the steak was meant to be accompanied by fries. After he had downed one of Brown’s potent cocktails, my eating companion was looking forward to the large pile of fries that generally accompanies a steak in this sort of dinner situation.

There were, instead, four fries sitting in a perfectly constructed square next to the large steak. None of us quite knew what to say when the dish came out of the kitchen, and so the owner of the plate promptly reached down, picked one up, and took a bite. This was, of course, when the laughing and picture-taking began, thus the presence of three, rather than four, apparently delicious fries in my photo.

I understand small plates. I adore tapas. But there comes a point when it’s just too much, or in this case, too few, and fries are one of those food items when more is almost always better than less.

In Spain, Sangria has become a sort of tourist trap: every restaurant offers it, even if it isn’t very good and is little more than bad red wine and orange juice. More often than not, the emphasis is on quality, not quantity: on las Ramblas I was served this liter of Sangria with a supremely long straw.

I’m not complaining. I’m not above drinking a liter of sweetened wine, but a true good Sangria is a combination of several ingredients that come together and mix and end up providing a drink that’s complex and delicious, not just sweet and alcoholic with fruit floating in it.

I’m sorry to say that a lot of the Sangria that I tried in Barcelona fell into the latter category. It’s perfectly drinkable and tasty, but it isn’t what I think of when I think of Sangria. The drink I was served reminded me more of a fruity cocktail like a cosmopolitan than the Spanish beverage.

How strange, then, to find that the tiny bar Alex and I fell into (literally… I was wearing very high heels that were entirely inappropriate for a walk through the 11th) served a perfectly spicy Sangria. Alex didn’t like it as much as I did, but I couldn’t get enough. Reminiscent of mulled wine, but chilled and with an orange slice, this deep red drink featured all sorts of spices and flavors that complemented each other and the wine itself. And to top it all off, a generous glass of the house-made Sangria during happy hour was only 3.50.

So you can imagine how angry I am with myself that I managed to forget to get both the name and the address of the bar. What I can tell you is that the address is an odd-numbered building before 51, rue Montreuil. I’m planning on heading back to that neighborhood on Sunday, so I’ll be sure to make a note for any of you who may be interested in a true Sangria experience, even if it is displaced from sunny Barcelona to Paris.

I wrote once before about paella, a while back, but I have to do it once more, mostly because paella in Mallorca, just as it is vastly different from the version my mother makes at home, is also vastly different from the ones found in Barcelona.

When Alex and I were in Barcelona, I let him know about my personal obsession with sticking with native food. Whenever I travel, I feel the need to always eat that which the region is known for: never mind that I may be in the mood for simple spaghetti with tomato sauce (a craving that hits more often than I’d care to admit), in Interlaken, I’m eating rosti, in Rome I’m sampling the cacio e pepe or amatriciana, and in Barcelona, I’m most definitely going for tapas or paella, which is how I managed to eat tapas at least five times during my stay in the city, and paella twice.

The first thing I noticed about this paella marinara that Alex and I ordered to share (and failed miserably at finishing) was the abundance of both tomato-based sauce and whole pieces of seafood. I had always thought of paella as a rice dish, but this pile of mussels, squid and prawns most definitely considered rice the afterthought. While this particular version was a bit too heavily salted for my liking, both of the two versions I tried in Barcelona were a far throw from the tinted yellow rice I knew. I loved it.

My main problem with paella had always been its tendency to become dry: I love the crispy, crunchy bottom layer of rice that clings to the paella pan (which this dish did not lack at all), but I always find myself sprinkling Tabasco over the rice of a “typical” (as I knew it) paella, not only to pump up the spice, but to keep the starchy grains from growing too dry. The abundance of sauce along with the massive shellfish reminded me more of similarly spirited Italian pasta dishes, where the carb becomes secondary to the fish and sauce. It’s a different method and attitude towards paella, but I embraced it thoroughly.

With all of the Sangria I tried in Barcelona (and yes, I am one of those wacky people who loves the sweetened wine decorated with slices of fruit), it may come as a shock that one of my favorites came out of a can.

This Sangria was ready-made: much in the spirit of Starbucks doubleshot (which, for the record, I can’t stand), the guesswork of ordering a drink that is so varied because of its made-to-order nature was canceled out. This left only the parts of Sangria that I love: the sweetness, the bright red color, the certain alcohol percentage… and made sure that the parts that often make Sangria an unpleasant experience: diluted ice, old fruit, an unexpectedly disproportionate alcohol content, were nowhere to be found.

I’m not saying that this canned Sangria is the best I’ve ever had: that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I can think of an incredible Sangria cava (with white wine) that had strawberries floating in it and tasted like heaven. And I have to say that pouring my own Sangria over a plain glass of ice made me realize how much of my love for Sangria is based entirely upon the fact that traditionally, the drink comes with a free snack floating in the glass. But when it comes to deciding between an unfamiliar and possibly unpleasant version of one of my favorite apéro choices or this mediocre but consistent alternative, I’d definitely grab a can (or two) again in the future.