Travel
We asked our teams to give their advice on the "must see" places from their homelands. Below is an introduction to our five top Barcelona restaurants, and to the left are links to Gdansk, The Efteling, the Cabo De Gata Natural Park and Le Puy.
Barcelona - a culinary guide
We opened our Barcelona office in 2004. We chose Barcelona for a number of reasons: we had contacts in the city; it's easily accessible from Cambridge via London Stansted and Luton airports; and as a lively and cosmopolitan city, we believed that it would be relatively easy to recruit the multinational staff we needed.
Three years later, we are delighted that we chose Barcelona, and many of our staff have had the pleasure of visiting the city on business and to enjoy its magnificent leisure and cultural facilities. We have decided to share with you some of our personal highlights in the hope that you might also get the chance to enjoy them.
Let's start with our top five restaurants. In three years, we've only just scratched the surface of the Barcelona restaurant scene, so we have selected our five favourite restaurants for the quality of the cuisine and the general ambience.
Top of the list is Jean-Luc Figueras, which serves imaginative modern French-Catalan cuisine, all of which is beautifully cooked, presented and served. All in all, Jean-Luc Figueras is one of our three favourite restaurants in the whole of Europe for fine dining. The restaurant is located in a lovely room formerly used as a studio by the celebrated fashion designer Cristobal Balenciaga, and is spacious, with large tables, beautiful linen and cutlery, and friendly, attentive and professional staff. The tasting menu (seven courses and amuse bouche for around 60 euro, with wine) represents excellent value and provides an enjoyable introduction to Figueras' cuisine, and we have yet to find a better breadmaker in Barcelona. Reservations essential.
Lying just outside the centre of Barcelona in the suburb of Sarria is Vell Sarria, which serves traditional Catalan cuisine to the highest standards. Vell Sarria is very popular with the locals, especially for Sunday lunch, and our favourites include brilliant prawns baked in oil and garlic, and superb pata negra ham. The monastery of Pedralbes is a short walk away and well worth a visit if you have time. Reservations essential.
Head to the top of the Rambla de Catalunya, turn left onto the Diagonal and walk for about 800 metres, and you will discover Daps, a modern restaurant with clean decor and imaginative food, prepared with an extremely light touch and presented with artistic flair. Unusually for Barcelona, Daps serves a really good salad, while their confit of duck with pigs' trotters is both delicious and succulent.
In Gracia, an area of the city full of bars, restaurants and cinemas and close to the main shopping street, the Paseo de Gracia, is Can Xurrades. With a lifesize caricature of a chef outside, and very popular with the locals, Can Xurrades serves generous portions of traditional Catalan food in a lively atmosphere.
And completing our top five is the Antic Magatzem in the city's Eixample district. Antic Magatzem advertises itself as providing cocina de la abuela, or grandmother's cooking, and she must have been a great cook with some unusual ideas to accompany her repertoire of traditional Catalan dishes. The cold soup of melon with chunks of ham was delicious and refreshing on a hot day, and we have always found the staff very friendly and cheerful. A few tables outside.
Contact details
Jean Luc Figueras
Carrer Santa Teresa, 10
08012 Barcelona
Tel: 93 415 2877
Vell Sarria
Mayor de Saria, 93
08017 Barcelona
Tel: 93 204 5710
Daps
Avda. Diagonal, 469
8006 Barcelona
Tel: 93 410 9089
Can Xurrades
Gran de Gracia, 57
08007 Barcelona
Antic Magatzem
Carrer Aldana, 8
08015 Barcelona
