Jamonisimo, Barcelona

September 4th, 2009. 12PM.

This is it. The Best Ham In the World. I do feel like it changed my life, albeit slightly. Conversations about ham will never be the same again, because other people will praise the merits of Parma, or Iberico, or San Daniele, but I'll know that I had The Best. Of course, I don't have a lot of conversations about ham, so it won't be much of a problem. I should also say up front, "Thanks Chuck."

Be warned: this is a bit outside the normal bounds of the tourist areas. Do not try to walk there, as we did. It's picturesque for a while, then you get bored of the picturesquity of block after block of 6-story buildings and quaint squares at every intersection, but you still have the second half of the walk to get through. Also, note that they close from 1:30 to 4 or 4:30, so you'll need to eat on an American schedule. You could go somewhere for a proper lunch afterward, if you were a glutton for punishment.

So yeah, we were pretty happy when we finally got there. However I was a bit confused on first appearances, because it just looks like a deli  - fine, a deli with a whole lot of pig legs hanging around, but after only a few days in Spain I already thought that was normal. And a very clean, cool, modern deli at that, which was a bonus after a long, hot walk. I don't know what I was expecting - more restaurant, I suppose. Certainly I was confused at not seeing any tables, because I had been expecting for months to settle in to one for big plates of ham. It was a bit awkward getting started due to language issues, but once we talked to the Italian assistant, he set us straight and we got to work. They do have tables in back - two of them, in separate nooks that also hold fancy cookbooks (El Bulli, Charlie Trotter, etc) and racks of wine - and we claimed the bigger one with a resolution to eat ham until closing time.

I like to think the history of Jamonisimo goes like this: basic corner butcher really likes ham. Starts selling good ham. Starts looking for the best ham. Finds it. People start beating a path to the door. They can't resist eating on the sidewalk as soon as the ham is sliced. The butcher says "Why not sell them some cava too?" and renovates the shop to include two tables just for those odd customers who insist on viewing a butcher shop as a restaurant (the renovation appears quite recent). Famous people visit. Worldwide fame ensues. That brings us up to date. But to be hospitable, there's a proper menu, and it includes different varieties of meat, various cheeses, and the odd vegetable to make you feel like you're not just eating ham.

It's the varieties of ham that are really stunning though. We were stunned. You may actually find it too fussy if you just want slices of ham - not only can you choose between three locations (Andalucia, Salamanca, Extremadura), but you can also choose which part of the leg you want the meat cut from. For some reason it never ocurred to me that the front tastes different from the back tastes different from the top (this is in 'living' view, not 'slicing' view). But they sure do, and of course each origin of pig tastes different too. Regardless of the location, each of the legs is handled from birth to ham by one farmer (of course, they prefer to say 'artisan'), cured for a minimum of 30 months and made in quantities of only 8,000 per year. This only sounds like a lot if you don't think about industrial production volumes. For instance, the US alone slaughtered a shade under 84 MILLION pigs in 2009 through September (most recent USDA national data, I think).

Here's the key word: industrial. As a result of Jamonisimo, it has entered our vocabulary as a derogatory term for food. After we started eating and drinking, we all got more friendly - I think they were waiting to see if we'd be weird, but after several plates of ham we were buddies. And eventually we got around to asking the waiter what he thought of various hams. The best thing that's available in Japan is, I think, Prosciutto San Daniele, which is Italian but does come from the north and not too far from Spain. So, we said, as an Italian, what do you think of San Daniele. "Well," he said, "it's OK, but it's industrial. We don't really have a ham culture in Italy." Imagine that? An Italian says (paraphrasing) "Y'know, Italians really don't understand cured ham. That's why I came to Spain to work in this shop and study ham." Telling, damning, interesting, however you want to put it, we liked to hear it. Everyone likes to think they're clever.

Enough of the pontificating, let's get to the porn. Being American, I can't resist something labeled 'EXTREME', so even though this was from Extramadura, which probably has nothing to do with extremism, we started with it. This was just a plate of the good stuff, not Jamonisimo's 'tasting in textures' treatment. More on that later.

Shoulder of Extremadura, just to see what it's like...it's not even worth trying to describe these. They're just the best ham you can imagine.

Even after that we started thinking the pork was a little heavy. We ordered tomatoes, and the waiter popped out to get them. I hope the green-ness means they're an heirloom Spanish variety, but I'm not sure.

You know what these are? They're the best anchovies in the world. I think they were actually labeled that way on the menu. After growing up with anchovies being a bit of a punchline, something people would refuse to eat, I've come to the point where I like anchovies crumbled up in sauces or pastas, and I'm OK with whole ones on pizzas. But these were an entirely different species. They were incredible. As they should be, at almost 2 euros per fillet.

Spanish cheeses are a little limited in range, but nice. I think this was manchego and idiazabal, both of which come in at a really nice points on the soft-hard and sharp-mellow scales as far as I'm concerned. With some quince paste. Again, tasty, but an afterthought.

I was really worried before we arrived that my companions wouldn't be up to the challenge. I was wrong, and I'm sorry. We also ordered the mixed sausage plate to see what it was like...you'll recognize the salami-like thing nearest the viewer, and also the chorizo on the far side (both of which were, predictably, awesome). The thing I had read about but not had is the lomo in the middle.

It looks almost like a processed capicola (industrial, but I still like it) but is made rather more extravagantly from cured pork loin, which of course comes conveniently in this shape. Again, awesome. Yawn.

Why we didn't go 'whole hog' on the first order is beyond me, but for the second main plate (again, thanks for the stamina, guys!) we went for the Texturas of Salamanca. This means you get a three piles of slices, each from a different of the leg. I'd like to say I formed a distinct preference for the front or back or tip or whatever, but it's really too specific for me. The differences in taste and texture were clear at the time, but the memory is fuzzy!

Fuzzy...

All of this made me very happy. I'd like to think Luigi had a pretty good time too. [I'd like to think his name was Luigi, but I didn't ask.] He certainly looks happy. It's good to be proud of your product and watch people enjoy it.

We closed the place down! And went directly for a siesta.

Jamon jamon!
++93 439 08 47

Taller de Tapas, Barcelona

September 3rd, 2009. 9 PM.

Almost a week in Spain and no tapas crawl? I honestly wasn't that broken up about it. If I understand correctly, the point of tapas is to eat small plates of fresh, simple, tasty food while drinking in a convivial setting. In Japan that's available in a thousand places every night of the week. Still, it's inexcusable not to take in that local color, so we headed to El Born and the few streets with the most tapas places. This is actually a two-part review, but the second place was so crappy that it put us off going on to a third place. Bastards.

Taller de Tapas is well known, large, clean and professional. This may or may not be a good thing - a place like the nearby El Xampanyet is smaller, less clean and much more charming. But the food is supposed to be good at TdT, and I like the fact that they have tables. I know standing to eat and drink is part of the culture, but I can't get into rearing up on my hind legs, even if it means consuming chunks of roasted flesh with sweet peppers. The staff at TdT were dressed well and standing outside to welcome us in.

The menu seemed a bit like an embarassment of riches; we tried not to overorder. As always, I wanted to drink cava but tried to avoid seeming overly bossy about food by letting the group go for sangria again. Meh. TdT is dark, atmospheric in a recently-renovated way (probably newly-constructued, actually, but still with lots of old-seeming stonework), not that crowded but still noisy. The staff rushes around without seeming to see much, but it's not hard to corral one of them and order more food.

Croquettes are a normal tapas item. These were normal.

Big plate of grilled mackerel, bones and carcasses removed. Being Asian (kinda), we're happy to eat this stuff, maybe more than American tourists. It seems different from Japanese mackerel. Not better, just different.

Pread smeared with a thin layer of tomato is also a standard thing at tapas, and in fact in Spain. This was probably the best version we had anywhere, but it was far from being exciting.

Chorizos were pretty good.

The little green peppers that get roasted and served up in big plates taste just like Japanese shishito to me. Are they related? In any case, it's funny to eat something in Spain that you can't get in America, but can buy in 20-packs in any Japanese supermarket.

With all that food ordered in one rush, we took a little breather...just long enough to stick the camera out to the side of the table and get a picture. And start thinking about when we should cut things off so that we could try another place...

And then we received some 'main' dishes - country sausage with beans, one of the best things we had. I love a good sausage, in large part because I have them so rarely.

And again a piece of steak with pepper. This steak wasn't as good as the ones at Cervesaria Catalana. You should just go there. In fact, while I liked Taller de Tapas, and strolling around El Born at night, my basic review of the tapas scene is "Just go to Cervesaria Catalana". That said, we didn't get in to Cal Pep or El Xampanyet, and didn't try to go to Paco Meralga or Quimet & Quimet. But based on my own judgement of my own judgement in judging places from the exterior and menu, I'd say there's no place in El Born that matches CC.

We stopped the food at that point and headed out. With streets as interesting as this, who needs good food? Well, I for one still do, but it's a neat area. This street was deserted except for a stylish loungey restaurant place, but the streets next to it and intersecting it were some of the most busy around. We walked some more before picking another place.

Badly. This seemed to have a rougher, more casual aspect than TdT, but that roughness extended to the food preparation.

Meatballs. Can't go wrong with meatballs.

Fried squid. Bready, a bit soggy.

Spanish menu difficulties; probably wouldn't have gotten these deep-fried dough balls if we had known they were deep-fried dough balls. Not good.

Some in the party were still agitating for paella; I was still agitating for black rice, cooked with squid ink. We satisfied both dimensions with this dish. Unfortunately it wasn't much to write about.






And here we accidentally ordered a tripe soup. Again we didn't know it was tripe, and in the relative confusion of ordering a bunch of things we didn't know exactly how much we had gotten. When this came we tried to protest that we hadn't ordered it, and the waiter, bless him, pointed at one of our party and said "SHE ordered it." Which was true. In any case, we didn't eat much of it.



Ah well. A sad and uninspiring end to the evening. Things did get a lot better the next day when we visited some more tourist attractions and had The Best Ham In the World.

Taller de Tapas (via Laietana)
++93 481 62 33

Rias de Galicia, Barcelona

August 30th, 2009. 9 PM. If you're following, you'll see that it's still Sunday of this trip, day 2 of 7. This could take a while...


Really, we did some touristy things too. Here's the other famous Gaudi apartment building, Casa Batllo. We just stood outside and looked at it, which I think yielded most of the value (considering that we had already been to Casa Mila and seen the interior detail there). I can't help thinking of Gaudi more as an artist than an architect. While his ornamentations are completely unique, the spaces and the way they fit together don't feel much different from anyone else's work. This is especially true at Casa Batllo, which is a Gaudi remodel of an existing building and thus must have faced more interior constraints (although he seems to have tried mightily, converting the doorways to mouths and the roof of the main stairwell into a wave, and it seems the ornamentation may be more elaborate and better-preserved). At Casa Mila you can get a better idea of what Gaudi would have done with a free hand - the apartments are curved around the central light well despite the exterior walls being mostly straight. Both aspects are interesting, but I like modern art more than classical, and am happy to give up ornamentation for an interesting use of space. Digression stop:| At this point we fell asleep for a good 3 hours.

Rias de Galicia is a famous seafood restaurant. Perhaps the famous seafood restaurant. Botafumeiro is the other one, and appeared in our guidebooks, but I've seen RdG described as better if pricier, and we weren't there to save money. The taxi driver knew it by name alone. We were fashionably early at 9:30, but definitely not fashionable since several of use were wearing short sleeves and/or shorts. And denim. More on that shortly.

You'll know you've arrived when you see the greeting committee smiling at you. While the iced display here is pale, scrawny and pathetic in quantity terms compared to the Bangkok's mighty Profisherman ("If It Swims, We Have It", you don't see monkfish every day, nor are many of the other items common in other countries. And one has to believe that the quality here is higher. One kept telling oneself that as one sat and looked at the prices, which one had been warned about but not fully prepared for.

The broad, smiling reception we got from the waitstaff was comparable to the surprised, toothy, displeased expression of this (I think) barracuda. In an absolutely priceless moment, the maitre d' literally stopped and looked us up and down, pausing for a beat before deciding to seat us. His smile was strained for the rest of the evening, but I admit that this is a top-end restaurant and many other patrons were wearing evening dresses, jackets, etc. We were seated upstairs, which I read is the foreigner ghetto, but late-arriving Spaniards sat there too, so maybe there's no bias on that front. Anyway, it would make sense to have all the non-Spanish speakers in one place.

You should go here for things like this. Not others. Razor clams are uncommon where I'm from (or any of the places I've been from), and eating things like this was a prime reason for wanting to visit - eating things like this at absolutely top quality. Somewhere else (that I can't find now, I read that the name of the restaurant refers to a region of old rivers of the coast of Galicia - formerly above, now below the ocean surface, and by virtue of their unique geography forming a unique breeding ground for seafood. Uniquely tasty. The produce here is supposedly imported from there.

These cockles are pretty common in Spain, but from the first bite of their barely-steamed, gorgeous taste, I was convinced we were in the right place. And this was just a snack to get the table started, gratis. Excellent.

Razor clams, or razor clam on my plate. Throughout this portion of the meal, the staff brought small plates of shellfish and carefully doled them out to the 4 of us. This is because the maitre d' discouraged us from ordering full portions, and it wasn't hard because we were already discouraged by the prices. A half portion was generally enough to fit 4 creatures (except here, where we were advised that they would need to charge us up a little to get 4 clams in the order). It should already go without saying, but this was extraordinary - the plate of razor clams at Le Cinq was decent, but this was excellent, with a unique texture and taste.

And when we get to 'unique', we can't go by the barnacles. This is a crappy picture of an incredible item; you can get a much better one from Chuck (thanks in advance). Despite reading about them, I couldn't figure out comfortably how to eat them - you're meant to grasp the 'claw' end, twist and pull...but nothing happened. I ended up peeling away the claw to get to the soft, juicy, almost veal-like shellfish within. I'm told by reliable sources that the waitress hovered by my shoulder with a horrified expression during this process, as if I was violating a sacrament. I would eat these any time for the sweet, salty, meaty goodness, but at 5 Euros per bite it's merciful that you don't see them in Japan. Except perhaps on the bottoms of ships.

RdG was out of the best quality prawns that night (or else they told us that because they judged we weren't sufficiently skilled eaters after my barnacle performance). That meant we were stuck with these guys, largish prawns costing 30 Euros for an order of 4. I don't want to malign Japanese seafood or anything, but this was the single best prawn I've ever eaten. Speechless. Wish I had a whole plate of them. Unfortunately this was all the shellfish we ordered, and it was time for our...

Order fail. We all ordered fish main dishes. Let me tell you right now, unequivocally, you should go to RdG and order nothing but a full portion of the shellfish that interest you. The main dishes are acceptable and large, but dull by comparison. For the same price you could get another 4 razor clams or another 4 prawns, or a big plate of octopus. I regret our ordering pattern, significantly, because we could have eaten 2 or 3 times as much shellfish for what we paid overall. Damn.  Oh, I think this was sea bass. Huge piece of good fish. Yawn.

Monkfish with chick peas in a non-curry sauce that I can't remember but was an acquired taste lost on me. The prawn on top was not one of the famous ones, and the cockle-like things around the side, despite appearing similar to the inspired ones earlier, were one of the very few things in recent memory that made me want to gag when I ate them (both of them, for confirmation purposes). I'm reminded as well that monkfish tail is a big, meaty item, and huge portions may be excessive.


I'll cut things off there without showing off the other two mains or the large, acceptable, dull desserts. I can't stress this enough - I wish I could go back to Rias de Galicia wearing pants and a jacket, order a nice bottle of wine, and do nothing but eat shellfish for 2 hours - as well as all the cetaceans that we missed. I'm tortured by the memory.

Rias de Galicia
++93 424 81 52

Cerveseria Catalana, Barcelona

Events of August 30th, 2009. 3 PM.

Barcelona has lots of attractions for between-times when you're not eating (as I get older I like more and more to use those times for sleeping, but your mileage may vary). This post's gratuitous shot is of the roof decorations at Le Perdrera, one of the two Gaudi apartment buildings that make up what I came to think of as the Holy Quaternary (including Sagrada Familia and Park Guell). We did the full tour here, which includes an apartment, the attic gallery (formerly used for cooling and for servants to hang out laundry) and the roof, which is notable for the up-and-down stairs, these monuments, and the views both to other buildings and down the interior light well. I'd like to think that this building is more interesting since it was designed from scratch and thus the interior is also more organic and flowing, as opposed to Casa Batllo where Gaudi tacked the famous melty facade onto an existing building. But that facade is certainly more impressive, and I don't know a thing really.

Afterward we did some aimless walking around the neighborhood, hoping to see other architectural marvels. While we didn't see much, strolling around a clean, spacious, unfamiliar city on a Sunday afternoon in late summer is rarely a bad thing. We walked down a lot of blocks, through the clever angled plazas that are designed into all the intersections, and then it happened.

It was already 2:30 or so, and we were actively wondering what to do about lunch but had no specific plans. As we crossed one intersection, there was a sudden voice calmly saying "We should go to that place." It was like the Voice of God! Perhaps I exaggerate, because it was my voice, but someone did make the VoG comment. I had seen Cerveseria Catalana mentioned on various lists, some of which called it 'the best tapas in Barcelona'. While I'm not given to grandiosities like that, I didn't have a better tapas elsewhere (and yes, I definitely missed your favorite spot. I missed a lot of places I would have gone to given the time and enthusiasm).

Another thing mentioned frequently in reviews of this place - it's crowded. I think we were secretly relieved after walking past a dozen lightly-trafficed establishments to find that this place didn't have a table for us, nor a space at the bar. A bonus of the casual Spanish attitude is that it's OK to wait casually. As I said, there wasn't even space at the bar since the bar is such a normal place to stand and eat. In this picture, which I swear is not the approach shot for an upskirt on my Dining Companion, you can just see the rest of my party outside on the pavement crowding a small, frightened, soon-to-be-empty jug of sangria. Personally I would have preferred cava sangria, or just cava, but everyone has their own tastes. At some equally popular bars later in the week, cirlces of people were sitting outside on the sidewalk with a bottle of cava in the middle of the group and bowl glasses all around. A sort of Spanish spin-the-bottle, but the bottle's full. And you don't spin it.

It's good to push the horizons a bit, especially when travelling. In Spain, I've read that the focus on seafood leads to extraordinarily good results, especially in the canned arena. There are evidently bars that focus on drinks and canned seafood, and not at all in a cheap way like those street bars in Japan that have canned corned beef and 1-cup sake. One preserved/canned item that's a bit of a stretch for most Americans is anchovies - famous in Spain, somewhat reviled in America. I think this is because the best Spanish anchovies have yet to make their way through the 'foodie' crowd initiation and into the popular consciousness. Suffice to say that if all anchovies were as good as these, there would be no lack of people eating them. And they were resoundingly not the best anchovies we had all week.

These, however, may have been the best cuttlefish we had all week. Quite sizable, these buggers. When you say "cuttlefish," I first think "Nonsequitur?" and then realize what you're on about and think of something on a 2-inch scale. The bodies alone on these guys were 3 inches, which was somewhat frightening at first. You want your cuttles to be, well, cuttley, and at this size they're starting to present an octopus aspect. But with this beautiful grilling, firm but soft meat, and a schvitz of lemon...

And then to the main event - montaditos. This being Barcelona, and Cerveseria Catalana, you should expect your items to come on toast. Toast that's been rubbed with tomato to soften up the staleness. Depending on your personality, these may or may not be easy to order. I found it challenging to get the attention of someone behind the counter (in my case it turned out to be one of the Filipino houseboys wearing the white coats with gold epaulets. Seriously, they're dressed that way.) because so many people are crowded in ordering and eating. But we had already been graced with a small table at this point, so all I had to do was specify our number, then start pointing. 4 of each please!

Nothing fancy here, just good ham on toast. Yes Dad, the white part at the bottom of the picture is pure fat. You'd still like it.

I'm mildly unsure what this is. Just from looking, I think it might be lomo, which is of course a dry-cured pork tenderloin (although I didn't know this until later in the week when we visited the World's Best Ham Shop). On top is certainly a little pepper, of the shape that in Japan is spicy only once in a surprising and painful while. These, I think, were spicy all the time.  

Never feed autumn eggplants to your daughter-in-law, that's what I always say. Fortunately this particular montadito didn't feature autumn eggplant, because it was August and 90 degrees, and I also wasn't with my daughter-in-law (for obvious reasons to numerous to number). This was toast with roasted pepper, eggplant and anchovy, and a weirder or tastier combination we didn't try. This should give you some ideas for home.

To really bulk things up, mini veal steak montaditos. Oh my. Soft, beefy, beautifully grilled, just big enough to make you feel you've eaten steak, and with those darling little peppers again...a challenge to eat standing up, as they were so juicy that you'd be spattered in no time.

When I went to the bathroom I was quite surprised by the inside of the restaurant. There were only seats for 20 or so outside, and the bar was dark enough that you couldn't see too far in. But once you were, there were 3 big rooms there, all packed with tables packed with people packing away the food. And more of those Filipinos with the faux Admiralty jackets. It put me very much in mind of Joe's Stone Crab, where they also serve very normal food, in very high quality, for serious prices, in a casual but classic environment populated by Latin waiters in eveningwear. And you have to love it.

I have some regrets about this lunch. I mildly regret that we didn't ask to transfer to one of the cooler tables during the period when it got hot on just our table due to the sun approaching its peak (at 4 PM!). I regret that we drank sangria instead of cava. But mostly I regret that we lost stamina and couldn't stay longer in order to try the seafood side of the bar beyond the cuttlefish above. I would have loved to get through some fancy Spanish shrimp and razor clams. Fortunately there was dinner to come that night...

Hmm, I don't think they have a web site. But it's kind of on the opposite side of the block from Casa Mila, the southwest corner. Ish. Look for tables and people waiting.