A bit of Spain @ Barca in Glasgow

Isn't it great that we can buy on-line vouchers for restaurant deals to try out different dishes at different restaurants? Anyway, my husband and I have just been to Barca (http://www.barcatapas.co.uk) for dinner using on-line voucher.

For £19, we got small portion of bread, olive oil and some olives as apperitif , seafood paella to share for main course and a bottle of house white wine.  Not bad a deal. Of course, the small print on the voucher informed us that it would take 45 minutes for paella to be ready, naturally we perused the menu and ordered 3 tapas dishes off the menu.

We ordered Gambas a la Plancha (Whole tiger prawns in lemon and chill), Escabeche de Lubina (Seabass escabeche pickled veg & potato dill scone) and Croquetas de Pescado (Fish Croquettes with a lemon & roast garlic alioli).

Whole tiger prawns in lemon and chilli

As I love sucking juice out of tiger prawns' heads, I was looking forward to do that, alas, prawns were a bit dry, still, the chilli sauce was very lovely and spicy. I wish we had more bread to dip in the sauce to wipe the plate clean ...

Seabass escabeche with pickled veg & potato dill scone

Escabeche is, I am assuming, basically a fish dusted with flour lightly and then marinated in olive oil and lemon. This was rather nice but maybe a bit fishy to some people. I liked the pickled vegetables which were refreshing in taste. I am not sure about these two potato dill scones that came with this dish - they are rather dry and I am not sure if they add to anything, however, they were interesting.

Fish croquettes with a lemon and garlic alioli

I love croquettes so these were nice too. I wish they make these croquettes bigger. They could do two bigger croquettes with more alioli sauce instead of 4 small skinnier ones which resembles to fried mozzarella sticks you get at Italian restaurants for starter.

Did we order too much before paella????

However, we did enjoy all these. Problem of tapas is that you tend to order far too much, ended up spending a lot for starters.

The house wine was fine too - not too dry and not too sweet so I guess it's a safe choice for everyone.

Not too dry, not too sweet...

Oh, I almost forgot, yes we also had some small starter olives, olive oil with balsamic vinegar with some bread.  Bread was really nice.

We had all these as we thought we would be waiting for 45 minutes or more but after 30 minute or so, our seafood paella was ready!

Barca's Seafood Paella

This is a deep-pan (?) paella with some seafood - tiger prawns, king prawns and squid rings with vegetables. Personally I would like to have a bit more saffron and less paprika but saffron is very very expensive so I understand. We did enjoy this paella but unfortunately we could not finish all, and I did not have audacity to ask for a doggy bag and probably we would be either found upon or laughed at, ha ha ha.

We then ordered coffee - flat white for me and espresso for my husband. He also ordered Spanish liqueur called Cuarenta Y Tres or Licor 43 for digestivo!  This is made from citrus and fruit juices, flavoured with vanilla and herbs and spices. The name came from having 43 different ingredients in it (yes, we have checked on wikipedia, ha ha ha!)

Digestivo - Wow, this is really really goooood stuff!

I tried a wee sip from my husband's glass (and I liked the glass too...) and I would not mind having this at home with an ice cube in it after dinner as digestive. I said to my husband that we would buy this and bring it back next time when/if we go back to Spain. He said, we can buy it in UK.  Well, he is right, it appears that you can buy it at ASDA for £17.50 a bottle. I shall check it next time I am in the shop.

Total, including on-line voucher, came to around £43 or so and service charge included, so it was not a bad deal. We could have done without those starters but what is the point of not trying different dish to experience a little bit of Spain in Glasgow!!!   Staff were nice and attentive, service was good too, despite some of negative reviews I have read on Trip Advisers.  So, overall we did enjoy our dinner and the evening.

I am off to search for another on-line deal now. See what food we can try next!

That's all forks!

Paella in Barcelona

The first time I ever had Paella was when I first went to Barcelona with my husband in early October, probably year 2005 and went to this restaurant named La Gavina (Plaza Pau Vila, 1, 08039 Barcelona, Spain) by the Marina in Barceloneta district. It was a quiet Wednesday lunch time, much less busy with tourists and lovely warm sun was shining upon us.  We were enjoying seafood paella, watching the world went by. I noticed this man sitting alone not far from our table, eating big plateful of grilled king prawns with a bottle of wine. He did not look tourists, more like a local regular who just popped in for regular lunch with newspaper for companion and he seemed to know staff well at the restaurant.  He seems that he was really savouring the taste of grilled king prawns, totally relaxed in the ambience whilst reading newspaper. I thought to myself  'What a wonderful life he has, eating seafood in such a wonderful setting in such a great city and he can do this every day if he wants to!'  He somehow symbolised the good life in Barcelona to me. I still remember the face of that man and bet I can find him if I ever see him again at La Gavina.

Anyway, we went back to the restaurant last October. Barcelona seemed much busier than how I remembered last two times when we were there. The restaurant was also very busy.  It is not a cheap place to eat but why not, we were on holiday!  We ordered a bottle of wine. For starter I think my husband ordered fish croquettes balls which came as quite a good portion and could be share with two people. I ordered grilled vegetables, which were all prepared to perfection.  This too could be shared or be a meal of its own but it was so delicious I managed to eat all. Starter were both very good.

We then had Seafood paella for two. The waiter brought to us a pan of freshly made paella to show, took it back to the kitchen to put them on plates to serve. There were so much seafood in paella - big prawns, langoustine, not to mention squids, hugh mussels and scallops.  It was just delicious but I wish they kept paella in the pan and left it on our table as I would have liked to scrape the burnt rice stuck to the paella pan, which I think the most delicious part of paella!  The service was good, staff was very professional but friendly and they also gave us complimentary glass of wine each. Overall we had a lovely dining experience.

There are so many restaurants serving paella in Barcelona as you can imagine. Many restaurants on La Rambra have menus with pictures to try to attract tourists.

In 2008 we went back to a restaurant named Amaya on La Rambra for dinner. According to a guidebook, this is a classic Basque-Catalan restaurant. 

Amaya during the day.

Inside of the restaurant.

We had local wine. I ordered grilled king prawns and my husband had seafood paella. 

I liked their vanilla ice-cream with hot chocolate sauce so I ordered this again for dessert!

In 2008 we found a restaurant named Can Ramonet (Career Maquinista 17, Barceloneta, Barcelona).  According to a guidebook, this is one of the oldest restaurants in this area and their signature paella Can Ramonet is piled with seafood and meat but as we don't eat meat, we ordered seafood paella.

Inside of the restaurant.... catering for both meat eaters and seafood lovers!

Our seafood paella.

Last year, we found a lovely restaurant named El Gran Cafe (9 Career d'Avinyo, 08002 Barcelona) in Barri Gothic district.

The restaurant has an elegant and relaxing atomosphre, white table cloths and waiters in long aprons while a piano player playing lovely music in the background.

We had a lovely bottle of rose and shared grilled vegetable between us for starter.  

The grilled vegetable came with a Romesco sauce, which is made with roasted read peppers, almonds, garlic and tomatoes, is originated from Tarragona in Northern Spain. It was really delicious!

This is half of starter as I shared it with my husband.  Orange sauce is Romesco sauce.

 We then had paella for main course.

We found the service was excellent and waiter who was serving us was very friendly. I asked him what the orange sauce was in a separate dish that came with grilled vegetable. He said it was Romesco sauce, and tried to explain to me what's inside and how to make it.  Apparently it is an accompanying dip for Catalan roasted onion.

Talking about paella made me feel like eating one so I decided to make one myself.  My husband bought me paella set for Christmas long time ago so I have a paella pan. I didn't have paella rice so I had to improvise with arborio rice (normally used for risotto) but I am sure I have seen Jamie Oliver saying somewhere on internet that this would be fine....???  I just threw whatever vegetables I could find into the pan. I chopped green and yellow pepper, onions and tomatoes. I have paprika and saffron so threw them in with vegetable stock, then arborio rice. Toward the end of cooking, I added frozen peas and king prawns and cooked further 5 minutes.
Well, it looked no where near paella we ate in Barcelona but it tasted close and delicious.  It was more like a Span-ish paella than Spanish paella. Next time I will make sure I use the right paella rice and use mixed seafood to give more seafood flavour to the paella. I may even consider buying a better paella pan next time when we go back to Barcelona!

The only nuisance is that the paella pan has to be cleaned properly afterwards and be coated with oils slightly to keep it from being rusty but luckily my husband did that for me!