Steak-Frites

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.