Tonight, we dine

She said,

I don't know about you, but a beautifully decorated restaurant really calls to me. It says, wouldn't you look nice sitting at my white washed table with a glass of wine and some witty banter with your man, smiling and eating ever so gracefully. But here's the thing, most of the time I am eating everything I possibly can, so there is no room for banter, and there is usually food on my lap, oil on my dress, and maybe some type of sauce on the side of my face, i.e. not so graceful. So as you can assume by now, our first dinner out in Barcelona, was to a pretty little place called "Bodega la Peninsular". Noah read about it somewhere, and we stumbled upon it on one of our completely out of the way on purpose walks home. I peeked in, and knew it was for me, I mean, it met my restaurant criteria checklist. It was off the main drag on the corner of narrow ally: check! it was a Pinterest decor dream come true: check! The waitress looked like someone I want to be friends with: check! Oh and I mean the food looked, smelled, and sounded good on the very well designed menu, check!

And you know what, it was pretty damn good! I got the house red for a euro and some change, noah got a beer, for about the same price, and we picked a few tapas to split (our new favorite way of eating). At the end of the night we were completely unsure of what we ate, mostly because the menu was fairly undescriptive, to support the del dia theme of what's fresh in the market that morning. So we asked hey what was in this delicious fried thing on a stick that resembles the taste of the perfect mozzarella stick, and why is it black? The waitress, who I'm still hoping to some how become friends with, grabs the chef and he brings out an uncooked one to tell us all about it, in very rapid Spanish, which we were somehow able to follow...most of. And that was the coolest part. 

However, after we left, we were still a tad hungry and we said maybe one more tapa wouldn't hurt, so we head to this place that was recommended to us, "Jaica" and that is where the food magic happened, and although Bodega La Peninsular was good, I will probably never go there again knowing just how spectacular they do it right down the street at Jaica, where the wine is smooth, and slightly chilled, the calamari Andalusia is melt in your mouth amazingly fresh, and everything, is seasoned to absolute perfection. I love food, and I love Spain.

He said,
Decor? That's why we ate there? Sure the decor was fine, "La Bodega Peninsular" had all the essentials: tables, chairs, a bar and a chef. The food was rich and elegant and presented beautifully on white plates. But I haven't quite gotten used to Spanish style portions so, as Toni mentioned, we left hungry. As good as the food was nothing in particular blew off my buds. Here is what we ate: Croqueta de Chipiron (€1.90), Bomba de Barceloneta (€2.50), Buñuelo de Bacalao (€2.20), y Crujiente de Queso (€4.90) along with a beer and glass of red for €17.

The big ball of fried goodness is a "Bomba." It is basically a mixture of potato and egg, stuffed with some kind of meat, rolled in breadcrumbs and deep fried. Our particular Bomba was filled with a gooey salty mixture of beef and fresh cheese. It was small but tasty. The potato was very light and the cheese was fairly mild so you could taste the meat. After finishing one I wanted twelve more (look what you've done to me America).

The small ebony oval of fried wonderful is a "Croqueta" and yes it is the same thing as a croquette. We ordered the croquette of the day, which was squid cooked in it's ink (thus the black hue). The texture was very strange as it seemed to flake like fish and it tasted like a seafoody mozzarella stick. A delicious mozzarella stick. I had no idea what was in the croquette until we later asked the chef.

The "Buñuelo de Bacalào" might be my new Spanish favorite. It is basically a puff pastry like combination of cod, potato, chives, and egg. The egg makes it feel very light and I love biting into chunks of fresh cod. The buñuelo was easily my favorite dish.

Lastly we had cheese "Crujientes," which translates to cheese crisps. These were very similar to a cheese knish and were topped with a berry preserve. I'm not the biggest fan of these things, they were very average and Toni ate most of them.

All in all the meal was good but not great. My favorite part of the night was when the chef came over to our table afterward. We were asking the waitress about the menu, the chef overheard and he came out to show us and explain to us how he made the different dishes. He even took an uncooked croquette and bomba and split them in two to show the different layers and textures of the dishes. Fun.