Chic Destinations

Food Shopping in Barcelona

Chic Outlet Shopping® invited renowned food writer Tom Parker-Bowles to share with us his insights into the world of European food.

BARCELONA

La Boqueria
I know, I know. It’s hardly an inside secret. In fact, it’s one of the best-known markets in the world, adored by tourist and local alike. But there’s just no way I could write about Barcelona eating without mentioning this bold, bustling and utterly beautiful market a quick skip off Las Ramblas. In many ways, it can be an exquisitely painful experience; all those spanking fresh prawns and percebas and half dozen varieties of clam, all this crustacean and molluscular beauty, and not even a pot in which to cook them. I can but dream. Still, there’s always cortado coffee (espresso with milk) at Bar Pinotxo, along with a quick omelette studded with chorizo. There are nearly 60 fruit and vegetable stalls in La Boqueria, and alongside the endless plump, sweet tomatoes and baby broad beans, and lettuces, in every colour of the spectrum, and winking figs and pouting mangoes and tiny new potatoes and long peppers and short peppers and fat peppers and hot peppers, are plants and berries and stalks that could almost be alien. But there’s no time to work out what they are, because you have to find the rabbit shops, and poultry stores, and coxcombs and bull’s balls, and sheep’s head, and veal brains, and tripe, great sheets, swinging in the wind. There are stalls just selling blood cakes, or salt cod, or olives or anchovies. This is the best food market on earth, no question, selling not just its own, hugely varied, national, edible treasure, but the best produce from across the globe. Get there, marvel and thank God for the Boqueria. A cathedral of good ingredients, this is pure culinary heaven.


Jamonisimo
A little removed from the usual tourist trawl, Jamonisimo is a shop, with tables, that takes its ham very seriously indeed. They come, as all the best Spanish hams tend to, from acorn-fed Iberian pigs, reared in three separate regions –Andalucía, Salamanca and Extremadura. One farmer oversees each ham from start to finish and there’s a minimum of 30 months’ curing time. The fat is exquisite, sweet and nutty, melting on the tongue, while the meat is equally elegant, sliced paper-thin and packed full of the sort of flavour that sends the taste buds into fits of excited glee. Of course there are plenty of other suppliers of excellent Iberico ham. But I’m not alone in my love for this shop. Ferran Adrià, Paul Bocuse and Joel Robuchon are all fans. High praise, indeed, from three of the world’s greatest chefs.

Jamonisimo
Provença 85; 08029 Barcelona
Tel. 93 439 08 47
Fax 93 324 81 54
jamonisimo@terra.es


Colmado Quilez
It’s been open for more than 100 years, and service can be, well, idiosyncratic, to put it politely. But this delicatessen is as much as part of the Barcelona tour as Cal Pep and the Picasso museum. The range of wines and spirits is immense and if you’re a whisky lover, then you’ll find heaven here. But the food is equally comprehensive. Tinned goods dominate, but they’re top endless foie gras, caviar and white asparagus, anchovies, mussels and clams. There are also oils, cheeses, hams, vinegars, salamis, herbs, spices and pretty much anything else you can think of. Even the windows are works of art. The service might be stuck in the 40s. But the experience is every bit as sweet as their own brand of Cava.

Rambla de Catalunya 63, +34 93 215 8785,. Open Monday to Friday 9am – 2pm, 4.30pm – 8.30pm, Saturday 9am – 2pm
www.lafuente.es

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