Top Restaurants in Barcelona: Must-Try Dining Spots and Hidden Gems august 19, 2024 – Posted in: Spain, Travel – Tags: Barcelona, Breweries, Food, Holiday, Restaurants, Reviews, Spain, Vacation

Guide to Good Restaurants in Barcelona

There’s a plethora of excellent restaurants in Barcelona, and in this article we’ll tell you where you can find them! Located in northeastern Spain right on the coast and surrounded by the Serra de Collserola mountain range, Barcelona offers a diverse culinary scene. On one hand, you’ll find hearty mountain cuisine with rich stews, and on the other, a Mediterranean kitchen brimming with seafood and squid.

The city has an abundance of Michelin-starred restaurants, but locals also enjoy dining out frequently, often just for a quick snack. Consequently, you’ll find numerous restaurants and bars across the city serving tapas, pintxos, and bocadillos. Tapas are small sharing plates, pintxos are slices of bread topped with various ingredients and bocadillos are sandwiches.

In Barcelona, you can certainly expect to enjoy all the delightful tapas you’re familiar with from the rest of Spain. Ham, Manchego cheese, and patatas bravas are common on the menu, and they are definitely worth trying. However, Barcelona also has its own unique cuisine. As the capital of the Catalonia region, the city offers Catalan specialties. If you see a menu with català in the heading, you’ll find local dishes.

Catalan Specialties

Among the Catalan dishes you must try are:

• Fideuà – a paella made with pasta instead of rice
• Botifarra – a spiced sausage similar to our medister (but even better!)
• Pa amb tomàquet – a slice of bread with tomato, garlic, and olive oil
• Arròs negre – seafood and black rice colored with squid ink
• Crema Catalana – similar to crème brûlée but made with milk

You’re probably also familiar with the Spanish croqueta, the crispy ball filled with ham or mushrooms. In Barcelona, you can find a similar dish called bomba, made from mashed potatoes. Be sure to try it!

Some Tips for Restaurants in Barcelona

Before we dive into our restaurant recommendations, it’s important to understand the dining times. Most breakfast cafés start opening around 8-9 am. Lunch is served between 12 and 2 pm, and dinner starts at 8 pm and continues late into the evening. This schedule makes sense in a city that gets very hot in the summer, with people staying in the shade from lunchtime until late afternoon.

Below, you can read about our recommendations for restaurants in Barcelona where we managed to dine. Restaurant visits are a big part of our vacations. We don’t necessarily eat expensively, but we always eat locally and with regional ingredients. We are also always on the lookout for great food experiences and prefer to try something we’ve never tasted before. Keep this in mind as you decide whether to follow our recommendations.

So, let’s get to the table!

7 Great Restaurants in Barcelona

Can Paixano

Can Paixano is located by the harbor in the city’s old fishing district, Barceloneta. The small bar serves sandwiches with heavenly fillings of ham, sausage, and peppers, but you should especially visit for the atmosphere. From lunchtime onward, the bar is packed with patrons standing up to eat and drink. An endless stream of sandwiches and tapas are passed over the counter, and laughter and lively conversations in Catalan fill the air.

Can Paixano also has its own Cava brand. This sparkling, slightly sweet wine is also available in a pink version, which tastes even better! Buy a whole bottle – trust us and just do it! If you want to take some Cava home as a souvenir, there’s a small wine bar at the back of the restaurant.

The Pintxos Street – Dedicated to Delicious Snacks

Pintxos, or pinchos as they are also known, are essentially a piece of bread topped with a variety of ingredients such as ham, goat cheese, croquetas, salmon, and more. The combinations are endless, as is the selection. These small pintxos are elegantly arranged in long rows on the bar for both lunch and dinner.

The pintxos system varies slightly from bar to bar. In some places, it’s self-service, but in most bars, you point out the pintxos you want. The waiter then warms them up and brings them to your table. Locals love to enjoy pintxos with a large glass of Cava, Vermut, or beer, and occasionally wine.

Most pintxos cost between 1.5 – 3 euros, and you pay for each stick left on your plate. It’s a good idea to choose only 2-3 pintxos so that you have room to do as the locals do and roll on to the next pintxos bar, where the selection will be new and different.

Pintxos Bars on Carrer de Blai

In Barcelona’s El Poble Sec neighborhood, you’ll find an entire street dedicated to pintxos bars: Carrer de Blai. We were so enamored with the concept that we had to visit the street two nights in a row. Therefore, we’d like to share a bit about the different pintxos bars we visited.

Start at the small and cozy L’Atelier de Blai, where their goat cheese with pepper is a must-try. A bit further up the street, we also dined at La Tasca de Blai 12. It was the cheapest spot on the street with a self-service setup, a bit chaotic but quite fun and very local. From there, we moved to the small and charming bar La Esquinita de Blai. This place was so packed with Catalans that it was almost impossible to get a seat.

We’ve saved the best for last. The queue at Blai 9 can be quite long, and that’s completely understandable. Their pintxos are beautifully garnished, fresh, and truly delicious. If you have time to visit just one place on this street, choose Blai 9. Arrive early to ensure you get a seat.

Update:

In 2024, we returned to Pintxos Street again, as we now call it. This time, Pincho J really impressed us. We had to go back two nights in a row for their delicious brie pintxos with peanuts. The bao buns with pork cheeks and the filo pastry bowl with sobrasada sausage were also exquisite.

In general, the quality of pintxos bars on Carrer de Blai can vary. One thing is certain: Blai 9 remains the best, closely followed by Pincho J – so you can confidently dine there. For all the other restaurants, make sure to pass by around 9:30 pm and check if there are locals inside. If there are, it’s a good sign!

Salts

Salts is located right by the cable car to Montjuïc Mountain. Most tourists come by metro and therefore don’t pass by, making it a bit of a hidden gem. However, there’s a restaurant here that is definitely worth a visit. Not so much for the food, which is delicious and tasty bites, but because the long terrace bar offers the most spectacular view over Barcelona.

In fact, the restaurant was originally built as a swimming stadium for the 1992 Olympics. While you enjoy your botifarra sausage or patatas bravas, you can look down into the pool where the swimmers landed after their impressive dives. It must have been absolutely amazing to witness the competition from here!

Bilbao Berria Barcelona

In the Gothic Quarter, right by the Cathedral of Barcelona, you’ll find the restaurant Bilbao Berria Barcelona. The name alone hints that this is a Basque restaurant, from another of Spain’s northern regions.

The menu, however, features many Catalan specialties, and we tried albondigas de rabo (oxtail meatballs), cauliflower popcorn, huevos rotos con chistorra (fries and fried eggs topped with a spicy sausage), and a delicious serving of crema catalana.

Some Tips for Dining Recommendations in Barcelona

This article is written based on our extended weekend trip to Barcelona in January 2023. We ended up at Bilbao Berria on a Sunday evening when many other places were closed – thankfully! However, we generally found that many restaurants in Barcelona are closed on Saturday nights, all day Sunday, and often Monday as well. Perhaps it was because we were traveling off-season, or maybe it’s the case year-round, but we’d like to stress that you shouldn’t save your best dining experiences for Sunday evening.

Be sure to check the restaurant’s website for opening hours. Our experience is that the hours you find on Google Maps are often incorrect. So use the links provided here and check for yourself if the restaurant is open when you’re hungry. And don’t forget to make a reservation right away.

Also, a Great Tip for Craft Beer

At Fàbrica Moritz Barcelona, located right by the “Universitat” metro station, is definitely worth a visit. We stopped by on our way home from Pintxos Street and only had beer from their microbrewery. However, we could see what other guests were being served, and this is definitely a place we’ll dine at next time we’re in Barcelona!

The Moritz Brewery, where the beer bar is set up, tapped its first beer in 1856. Today, it is one of the trendiest spots in Barcelona, and brewing still takes place in the large kettles. It often goes without saying when drinking beer, but be sure to visit the restroom in the basement, where you can get a good look at the brewery. Here, you can really sense the proud brewing traditions of the past.

And for next time…

Since we only had a short time to eat our way through Barcelona, we’ve already decided that we need to return. Before we left, we asked our network for recommendations on great places to eat in Barcelona. And then the messages started pouring in about the best restaurants, tapas bars and bodegas in the city!

As mentioned, we didn’t get to try everything this time, so the list below is as much a reminder for ourselves for our next visit to Barcelona. We haven’t dined at the places listed below yet, but we look forward to doing so. The recommendations came from our friends who love food as much as we do – so you might as well book a table at one of these spots now. Also, be sure to bookmark this page, as it will be updated when we return to Barcelona.

Here’s where we’ll eat next time…

Bar Cañete – very popular! Book a table well in advance, preferably when you book your hotel. Spanish tapas on the pricier side.

Tapas24 – one of Barcelona’s most popular tapas bars.

Quimet & Quimet – one of Barcelona’s oldest and best-known tapas bars.

Granja M Viader – old-fashioned pastry shop with churros and crema catalana.

La Cova Fumada – family-run tapas bar through generations in Barceloneta by the harbor, where you must try the bomba.

Food Markets in Barcelona

And finally: when you’re in Spain, you should definitely visit a local food market. La Boqueria is right on La Rambla, the major shopping street. The food market is a bustling maze, and offers as many sensory experiences as there are vendors. Here you can get small bites like oysters, croquetas, and ham, and buy a little souvenir to take home. Be sure to admire the large mosaic, Pla de l’Os, by artist Miró, which marks the entrance to the market.

La Boqueria mainly consists of food stalls with prepared food. It’s eaten standing up since there are limited seating options. If you prefer to visit authentic food markets where locals buy their fish, fruit, and vegetables, head to Mercat de Sant Antoni or Mercat de l’Estrella.

More Tips for Your Trip to Barcelona

Find a Great Hotel in Barcelona

Barcelona is a big city, and it can be a bit overwhelming to figure out which hotel to choose. Most tourists opt to stay in the old quarter near all the major attractions. If you click on the hotel we stayed at, B&B Boutique Ca La Maria, and then click on “Show on map,” it’s easy to see. Look for the area between Avinguda Diagonal, Avinguda del Paral·lel, and Arc de Triomf. This is the most popular area for a vacation in Barcelona.

As you can see, the hotel we stayed at is in the Eixample district, right next to the Provença metro station. From here, it was easy to reach all parts of the city and attractions, and since we stayed at the end of La Rambla, it was also easy to find our way back home. It’s a newer neighborhood that’s nice and relatively quiet, where you’re just a bit away from the busiest areas.

About B&B Boutique Ca La Maria

B&B Boutique Ca La Maria was the perfect hotel for our family vacation with a teenager. This small boutique hotel is located in an old mansion apartment with stucco and incredibly high ceilings. Our apartment had a small entrance with access to the large bathroom. The entrance also led to our private living room and further into two huge bedrooms, each with its own really good bed. We had the largest apartment in the hotel, but we also met several couples on romantic getaways – so the hotel suits them as well.

In addition to our own living room, the hotel also has a common lounge area, as you can see in the picture above. A lovely breakfast was served here, and for the rest of the day, there were free drinks, fruit, and cake. All in all, we can’t recommend the hotel enough!

Read more about the hotel here B&B Boutique Ca La Maria and see all the other hotels in Barcelona by clicking here. However, Barcelona is an extremely expensive city to live in, with high costs for housing, dining, and daily expenses. If you’re looking for more affordable hotels, we’ve written an article about living cheaply in Castelldefels, a charming seaside town just outside Barcelona.You can also conduct your own search for hotels in Barcelona right here:

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