Eating Our Way Through Barcelona’s Gracia Neighborhood With Devour Barcelona

by Janis on December 8, 2015

We love food.

We love travel.

We especially love discovering local foods in a new destination with a local guide.

During our recent pre-cruise stay in Barcelona, Spain, we were determined to find the perfect food walking tour.

After all, Barcelona has a fantastic food culture. Not surprisingly, there are many food tours offered in the city. We, however, had a few constraints:

We wanted a tour in a new-to-us neighborhood, away from the touristy Ramblas.
We needed a tour that operated on a Saturday.
We wanted a daytime tour rather than an evening one.
We needed an English-speaking guide.
Our ideal food tour is longer than two hours but shorter than six.
We were booking at the last minute.

Luckily, Mr. Jones found the Gracia Neighborhood Food Tour offered by Devour Barcelona Food Tours. We booked and showed up at the meeting spot at 10 am on a Saturday morning, which was a 10 minute walk from our hotel in the Eixample neighborhood.

We met our tour guide Rene (a California girl who spent a semester in Spain while in college, meet a local guy, married him, and stayed in Spain.) We also met our fellow tour participants: a guy from Toronto and a couple from Hong Kong.

This tour lived up to its promise:

Head north of touristy downtown Barcelona and you’ll find the charming Village of Gracia– an authentic Barcelona neighborhood that reluctantly became a part of the big city at the turn of the last century. Gracia has managed to retain its small town charm, and is bursting with some of the city’s cutest cafés, most authentic bars and most colorful food markets. Hidden among its narrow streets you will find some of the most delicious food in Barcelona– if you know where to look!

As we walked with Rene and learned about Barcelona, the Gracia neighborhood, the food culture, and everything else we could think to ask, our first stop was at the Baluard Bakery. Soon we were munching on warm almond croissants as we walked to our next stop, the Mercat de l’Abaceria Central, or the local market in the Garcia neighborhood.

If we lived in a Barcelona neighborhood, we would frequent a local neighborhood market like this one. The market has stalls with fresh produce, and every kind of food you can think of enjoying.

Rene took us first to Gloria’s, an olive stand with all kinds of pickled delicacies.

Mr. Jones has never been a fan of olives, although I love them.

He enthusiastically gobbled this olive that was stuffed with salt cod wrapped in roasted red pepper.

Did you know that Spain is the largest producer of olives and olive oil?

Since there are many sheep in Spain, there are many local cheeses made from sheep’s milk, as we learned about during a stop at a cheese shop in the market.

Rene taught us about three different types of Spanish cheese as we sampled each of them.

We left the market and headed to a store that specializes in olive oil.

Here we learned how to tell a good Spanish olive oil from a poor-quality one, and tasted three different type of olive oil. I loved the taste and the bottle design of the oil in the magenta-colored bottle on the right, so I had to bring a bottle home with me.

This is an eating tour, but you learn about many things besides food. Our guide Rene shared the history of the neighborhood, and answered our groups’ questions about everything from the Spanish economy to politics to siestas to how the typical Barcelona resident eats every day.

During the next stop at the L’Anxoveta restaurant, we got a lesson in how to make pa amb tomaquet (bread rubbed with garlic and tomato, then doused with good olive oil) from the owner.

We also sampled one of the restaurant’s “bombas,” a croquette of potato and ground beer with a spicy brava sauce, washed down with a local beer. We loved the food and the owner’s hospitality at L’Anxoveta so much that we came back that evening for dinner.

Next, we headed to Pastisseria Principe, known throughout Barcelona for its handmade Syrian pastry. I tried the pistachio, because the owner said it was his favorite and most traditional.

By now, we had walked and ate for about 2.5 hours, and were starting to feel pleasantly full. But there was more. At the next stop, Rene warned us to forget how much we did not like anchovies, promising they would be nothing like those brown things we were used to getting with a Caesar salad.

At Bodega C’al Pep, we crowded in with the locals who were filling their own containers with wine from the barrel.

We tried the local Perruchi red vermouth wine, which was surprisingly delicious, and gave us courage to try the anchovies.

Rene, of course, was correct. The pickled anchovies were nothing like any anchovies that we had tasted before. We not only enjoyed these, we ordered them in tapas bars during the rest of our visit to Spain. We also liked the Spanish fuet, a rustic sausage served on bread with olive oil.

Our final stop of the tour was at the El Glop Taverna, known for its grilled meats. Here we enjoyed grilled Botifarra sausage and escalivada (grilled vegetables) with romesco sauce, accompanied with a glass of Spanish cava.

We are stuffed with food and new appreciation of Catalan cuisine.

Rene still had one more treat. It was cremat (a combination of flan and cake) from Pastisseria Ideal, and it was the perfect last bite of a delicious four hours.

If you are visiting Barcelona and like food, we’d highly recommend the Gracia Neighborhood Food Tour from Devour Barcelona.

Have you been on a fabulous food tour? Please share where and with whom in comments below.

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