• Barcelona / El Bulli Wrap-Up

    Barcelona / El Bulli Wrap-Up

    This is my last post about Barcelona and El Bulli—thank you all for your patience as I recounted my trip in such great detail. For anyone who wants a quick all-purpose post that covers the bases, here they are: we stayed at (and loved) the Banys Orientals which was recommended by a reader, had the…

  • La Boquería & Mercat de Santa Caterina

    La Boquería & Mercat de Santa Caterina

    Wandering around the markets of Barcelona–which is an essential activity for any food lover who visits–you’re confronted with sights and sounds and smells that’ll haunt you forever. I may one day forget the spires of the Sagrada Familia, but I’ll never forget my time wandering the aisles and aisles of fresh fish (so fresh, some…

  • One Really Bad Meal

    One Really Bad Meal

    Lest you think our trip to Barcelona was nothing but lollipops and rainbows, I thought I’d take the time to tell you about our worst meal of the trip. Before I get into it, I want to assure those of you who recommended this place–and several of you did–that I hold no grudges and that…

  • Barcelona’s Best Bites

    Barcelona’s Best Bites

    How do you sum up a city’s food in one post? It’s an impossible task, and one I can’t even pretend to set out to do. I considered splitting this up into multiple posts–one on tapas, one on Bistronomics (a new restaurant trend in Barcelona, where high-end restaurants serve multiple courses for reasonable prices)–but ultimately…

  • Julie & Julia

    Julie & Julia

    “Julie & Julia” is a movie about connections. There are the connections between Julia Child and her husband Paul, her collaborator Simone Beck, her sister Dorothy, and her pen pal Avis; the connections between Julie Powell and her husband Eric, her best friend Sarah, and the one that forms between her and her ever-growing audience.…

  • Pa amb Tomàquet

    Pa amb Tomàquet

    If there’s one dish that most fully represents our time in Barcelona, that really captures the varying cooking styles we encountered but also represents the deeply rooted food culture that exists in Catalonia, that dish has to be “Pa amb tomàquet”–Catalan for “bread with tomato.”

  • Barcelona, A Reflection

    Barcelona, A Reflection

    Before I left for Barcelona, two weeks ago, I created a three-ring binder of essential information. The first tab said “Hotels” and there I printed out the confirmations for the Hotel Banys Orientals, where we’d stay for most of the trip, and Hotel Coral Playa, where we’d stay when we went to Roses for dinner…

  • Secrets of the Amateur Gourmet

    Secrets of the Amateur Gourmet

    [Here’s a bonus guest post, written my friend and cat-sitter, Travis Sentell, who stayed in my apartment for the two weeks I was in Barcelona. Here’s what he uncovered.] In the interest of time, honesty and full-disclosure, I’d like to publicly identify here at the outset as “food ignorant.” Not in the way that many…

  • Who Moved David’s Cheese?

    [Hey, this is Adam The Amateur Gourmet and it’s official: I am back from Barcelona, Spain and this is our very last guest post. Last, but certainly not least. My friend John Kazlauskas, who you may remember from our trip to Paris or his trips to Iceland and Peru or his nephew Nico, now lives…

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