Shopping Heaven: Barcelona's La Boqueria

La Boqueria, the oldest mercat in the city, is one of Barcelona’s gems and one of its greatest tourist attractions.  While a municipal market is about the practical matter of buying food, the Boqueria is an aesthetic and sensual pleasure as well. 

A 19^th century iron and glass modernista structure, the Boqueria is located on La Rambla in the heart of the city.  In its early days, it was an open market outside the city walls (which ended at what is now La Rambla), making it easier for the farmers to bring their goods and not have to encounter officials at the city gates nor pay the taxes required to enter the city with their goods.  When the city expanded, the market remained where it was, eventually becoming a central location.  It was porticoed in 1840 and covered in 1865.  It now has 300 stalls and is the biggest mercat in Spain. 

The food on display throughout the market is laid out beautifully.  When you walk up and down the aisles, the stacks of fruit and vegetables become colorful geometrical abstractions -- patches of pink, yellow, brown, or green.  Bring them into focus and they're pomegranates, lemons, kiwis, and artichokes.   

The tremendous variety of food includes all the summer fruits and vegetables that we're used to in California plus a few I've never seen before.  There are stalls selling meat, others with sausages, or poultry, or cheese, eggs (where you can buy even just one egg if that's how many you want), bread, olives, every imaginable cut of salted cod, and of course fresh fish and seafood which makes up a big part of the Catalan diet.  Unfortunately fish is whole and intact, but they will clean it and even debone it if you ask.  But if you ask to have the heads removed they’ll look at you funny.  Here the smaller fish like sardines and trout are served with heads on.  But if you don’t like that, you should at least save the heads to make a fish broth.

To be honest, some of the displays of meat -- particularly those of hanging dead rabbits or little skinned dead piglets with their heads still on -- are far less appealing than the peaches, oranges, and green beans.  Meat is simply more appetizing when it doesn't look like what it really is.

For the six months each year when Ferran Adria (one of the world’s greatest chefs, who of course buys only the best ingredients) was not making culinary magic at El Bulli on the Costa Brava, he was shopping every morning at the Boqueria to conjure up culinary alchemy at his nearby laboratory on Carrer Portaferrissa in the Barri Gotic.  Shopping every morning is typical here.

Every mercat has one or more bars that serve food and drink.  They tend to buy their supplies fresh from their neighbors who then come to eat what they’ve cooked.  The food is always very fresh and often wonderfully good.

Pinotxo (Pinocchio), a tiny bar just to the right of the main entrance, is one of several bars where you can eat in the Boqueria.  It is owned and run by Joan, a middle-aged man who wears a crisply ironed shirt, a bow tie, and a smile no matter how oppressive the summer heat and humidity.   Joan works with two nephews and two other helpers.  There are five of them working behind the twelve-foot counter with stools for ten in front.  The food is fresh, homemade, and delicious.  If you want to know what they have today, you ask, there being no carte (menu). 

When I lived in Barcelona, the Boqueria was my main place to shop and I visited Pinotxo as often as I could, mainly for morning coffee and pastry – lunch being a bit pricey for my budget.  Once when I came for breakfast and asked for a café amb llet (coffee with milk) and a croissant, they had me wait a minute while someone went to a neighboring bar to buy the croissant for me because they had run out.  This kind of care and service ensures a devoted following. 

The food at Pinoxto is excellent typical Catalan fare and there is even a book about it titled Pinotxo: La Vida i la Cuina.  Unfortunately, it is in Catalan and not available from Amazon.  On the other hand, Colman Andrews’ Catalan Cuisine, the definitive Catalan cookbook is in English and is available.  Andrews gives you suggestions for the best substitutions of American ingredients for any Spanish ones that are not easily available in the U.S. as well as background to the recipes, making this a very useful and readable cookbook that allows you to conjure up your own Catalan dishes, wherever you happen to be, and even if you couldn’t buy the ingredients at the Boqueria. 

Two Deaths

Santi Santamaria, one of Catalunya’s great chefs, died on Wednesday of a heart attack at the opening of his new restaurant in Singapore.  He was 53 years old and carried his love of food with him in the form of a beer belly that probably had more to do with foie gras than beer. 

Santamaria was the first Catalan chef to earn three Michelin stars for his restaurant, Can Fabes in Sant Celoni, north of Barcelona.  Unlike his younger and more famous colleague, Ferran Adria, who heads up El Bulli, rated best restaurant in the world for four years running, Santamaria didn’t dish up weird food.  Adria is probably a genius, certainly an artist, and a self-proclaimed deconstructivist, engaging in what they call molecular gastronomy.  Santamaria believed in cooking with the freshest natural ingredients, and was closer to slow food than to culinary physics.  In fact, he recently embarked on a public dispute with the chefs who deconstruct food.  I am quite proud of Adria, adopted Catalan that I am.  I am proud of all the Catalans who do good and impressive things and help make Catalunya better known and respected throughout the world.  But it is Santi Santamaria’s restaurant that I would prefer to dine in.

Not on the same plane, and yet for me a monumental event was the death of my car, the infamous Citroen Xsara that ate its weight in oil.  It wasn’t a violent death but rather a quiet passing, sort of like an elderly person who gets out of bed in the morning and collapses dead on the way to the bathroom.  In fact, it was very much like that.  I had started it up, made my U-turn at the corner (not legal, I don’t think, but now that I have my Spanish license, I can do whatever I want), drove two blocks towards the village when I heard a small noise after which the engine died and never would come back  -- not for me, not for the tow truck driver, and not for Geroni, my mechanic.  It seems to be inoperable -- not that it couldn’t be repaired, but it would be a very expensive repair costing more than the car is worth.  I was told it was something to do with a broken belt that damaged parts of the engine – important parts such as valves or pistons.  Whatever.  My mastery of Catalan has not yet (nor will it ever) extend to all possible engine parts.  I am only grateful that it happened here on a small street with virtually no traffic and not out there on the highway with lots of cars and trucks speeding by.

I have been looking for a replacement car, would love to get an even older Citroen 2CV, but I won’t.  I will be more practical and simply get the cheapest thing I can find that runs.  And in fact, I’ve closed in on a Nissan sedan, although sadly, it isn’t actually running.  But it’s in the shop and hopefully will be any day now.  Having no wheels of my own, I’ve hitched rides with Eve (sometimes she lets me drive, but I am using this unfortunate event as a means of getting over my riding-in-a-car-when-someone-else-drives phobia so I can rejoin the world of normal people) and have even endured a short ride with another friend, George, in order to see that same Nissan that a friend of his has for sale.  I have also taken the local bus to the village and walked back, so that the unfortunate demise of my car has also provided me with a good excuse for incorporating more exercise in my life.  However, since I can just as well get exercise if I have a running car, I hope they fix the Nissan soon so I can buy it because life out here in the middle of nowhere without a car is even less fun than life with one.