On the waterfront: Sitges 

My discovery of Catalan cooking dates to an almost comically unsuccessful stint as an English teacher in Barcelona in the mid-eighties. I had a gap between two jobs in New York and a close friend’s brother, who was then living in Barcelona, told us a school there was looking for two native English speakers to run English conversation classes. My pal had a two-month hole in his schedule, too, so we applied and were hired despite the fact that neither of us had any teaching experience. The school specialized in teaching business English to executives, so reporting to work on our first morning on two hours of sleep and with nearly medical hangovers, we discovered that we were expected to wear jackets and ties at the school–a problem, since neither of us had brought either, and that there were two classes, one for men and one for women. It seemed a no-brainer to me that the women would be easier and more fun to teach than the men, and since my friend came to the same conclusion, we flipped a coin, and I lost.

There was an open communicating door between the two classrooms, so I could see and hear what my friend was up to, and I knew that things weren’t going very well when I heard him pose the following question to his ladies: “Do you like birds#8221; Silence was the appropriate response to this gambit, and silence was what he got. Meanwhile, my besuited men emitted a pleasant fugue of Puig Agua Lavanda and were shy and very polite. I explained, with major omissions, who I was and where I was from, and offered up that this was my first visit to Barcelona, a city I found very beautiful. Murmur of appreciation. Then I asked them what I should see in their city while I was there. A few murmured responses–Sagrada Familia, etc. Next I heard myself saying, “Do you like to barbecue in Catalunya#8221; My friend next door whopped with laughter at this one, but until you’ve tried you’d striking up a conversation with a room full of total strangers in dark suits old enough to be your father, I’d suggest you hold your fire. To my great surprise, someone raised his hand. “We do like to barbecue, and right now is the season of the calçots,” said a good-looking older man in the front row. Calçots “Special onions of the springtime.” Now someone else joined in. “We make them grilled and mother (sic) them with romesco.” Romesco (a delicious Catalan mortar-made sauce of almonds, peppers, garlic, olive oil and sometimes tomatoes) But how to mother them “You roll the onion in the sauce like a baby.” But of course you’d never smother a baby.

Soon we were well out of the gate, since I’d inadvertently found a subject that impassioned this room full of accountants, copy writers and lawyers. They told me where to go to eat calçots, which are indeed delicious, and they became my tutors in one of the Mediterranean’s great kitchens, since they’d come to our morning classes with restaurant recommendations written down on little scraps of paper and deliver oral recipes for their favorite dishes. Meanwhile, next door, I was still hearing things like, “Do you like cats or dogs?, which was almost the equivalent of a phrase from a German-English phrasebook my grandmother owned, which had became a family joke: “Excuse me, Madame, but there’s a cinder in your hat.”

Some years later, my fledgling knowledge of Catalan cooking got a big boost when I met Marimar Torres, the California winemaker from the distinguished Vilafranca de Penedes wine family, while I was doing a story on her family for a nice and now sadly defunct wine-country living magazine based in Napa, California. She cooked a superb lunch for me at her family’s house in Sitges and gave me a copy of her wonderful cookbook, Catalan Country Cooking, which I worked my way through in my kitchen in Paris over the course of the following year.

Despite my best efforts, however, many of the dishes in this book taste much better in situ, because the ingredients they require are not easy to find in Paris, so I always keenly look forward to my trips to Catalunya for the chance to eat its wonderful food.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not always easy to find really good and authentic cooking in the more tourist-oriented beach towns along the Catalan coast, and this is why I was so looking forward to dinner with friends at the restaurant Mare Nostrum in Sitges the other night. This table had come highly recommended by several of the delightful people at the terrific Pares Balta winery in Vilafranca de Penedes and had also been confided to me by the butcher where I shop when Bruno and I are on holiday by the seaside. The egg lady in the market had mentioned it, too, so when we decided to meet our South African pals for dinner, we booked here.

Arriving, it was a jaunty looking place with a taut white awning equipped with ceiling fans sheltering a terrace with well-spaced tables mostly occupied by handsomely groomed Catalan couples and families–the sartorial reflex to a certain relaxed formality in Spain is a wonderful visual tonic, and the welcome was warm. Sliced salami and good warm bread with a bottle of excellent olive oil arrived immediately, and I instantly had the sense of being in a very well-run restaurant with a sincere desire to please. Bruno and I try to eat our arroz (rice) dishes or fideus (short vermicelli) dishes at noon, but the South Africans had just arrived in Spain, so we agreed to throw the dice for rice, which was the only way to decide which one we’d eat, since everyone wanted something different, they’re served for a minimum of two, and they’re even better when made for four.

First, though, some nibbles, and they were wonderful–a mix of tender battered baby squid and flash-fried pimientos de padron, those delicious little green peppers from Galicia that you eat whole, and some delicate, perfectly fried and surprisingly airy salt-cod fritters. With a bottle of chilled 100% xarel lo (local cepage) from nearby Vilafranca de Penedes, the meal was off to an excellent start.

The rice dish was outstanding, too. Cooked in fish stock, the short grain rice from Valencia was still al dente and was an unctuous casserole generously garnished with tender baby artichoke hearts, squid, peas, and peppers, with two rather overcooked prawns on the edge of the plate for decoration. Unlike many Catalan rice dishes, this one came without aioli, but it was so richly flavored and even a little sweet from the artichokes that aioli would have been gilding the lily. Next week when I’m back in woefully rainy Paris, I know this dish will come to mind someday when I’m holding a dripping umbrella in a crowded Metro car, because for me, the best souvenirs you can take home from any holiday are always gastronomic.

After we’d finished slices of homemade fig tart, one of the charming owners of this restaurant served us complimentary shots of some local firewater that went down easily after such a hefty feed, and we learned that this restaurant opened in 1950 and is now run by the third generation of the Marti family, who have an exceptional gift for hospitality. This is the seaside restaurant you always hope you’ll find while you’re on holiday, so special thanks to Maxime Bazart for the wonderful recommendation.

Now if only I could break Bruno of his penchant for elaborate post-dinner cocktails…. But then again, he probably wanted to fling my snifter of very good brandy over the railing, too, and happily we were walking home.

Passeig de la Ribera 60, Sitges, Tel. (34) 93-894-3393, www.restaurantemarenostrum.com, Closed Wednesdays, Average a la carte 50 Euros.

The post POSTCARD FROM CATALUNYA–Mare Nostrum, Sitges–Very Good Catalan Seafood Cooking, B+ appeared first on Alexander Lobrano.

To be sure, Aeroports de Paris, the organization charged with running Paris’s airports, seems to regularly announce (much-needed) improvements, and recent renovations of several of the older terminals at Charles de Gaulle are indeed an improvement over the crowded faded seventies spaces they replaced. Ditto recent refurbishing at Orly, Paris’s other airport.

Unfortunately, however, Paris airports still regularly rate a ‘D’ (poor), at best, when it comes to feeding travelers. And I, for one—many colleagues, including my pal David Lebovitz, have publicly moaned over this state of affairs for a longtime.

It absolutely mystifies me, too, since you’d think that in the post 9/11 era, when most of us inevitably end up with more time than we need on the other side of security because prudence has us guessing our timing conservatively, ADP would recognize that there’s a gastronomic goldmine to made from feeding people who decide to offer themselves a really nice meal before boarding their flight. You’d also think that some higher power that be in France, which is, after all, the world’s leading tourist destination, would have long since recognized that Parisian airports represent a vital opportunity to showcase the vaunted gastronomic reputation of France. Millions of people who’ve never set foot in Gaul have a vague idea that it’s associated with great grub and elegance, so why not pour it on if their only experience of the country is a couple of hours behind customs between flights?

Instead, even in the newer terminals, what you end up with is some weird, gimmicky and expensive-for-what-it-is outlet from chef Guy Martin, at best, or similarly over-priced and just plain dull faux health-food at AKKI, a “healthy” eating chain. Things are so lousy in terms of anything edible at Paris airports that the arrival of a PAUL (industrial bakery) at Orly struck me as a major game changer.

Nothing could possibly cast Paris’s pre-flight mediocrity into a sorrier and more vividly unappetizing light than the superb lunch I recently enjoyed at Barcelona airport’s magnificent Terminal 1 at Porta Gaig, a really excellent restaurant that was opened there last November by Barcelona chef Carles Gaig, who trained under Juan-Mari Arzak and owns two outstanding restaurants in the city.

Porta Gaig, Terminal 1, Barcelona Airport

Finding ourselves at the airport rather early at the end of a wonderful seaside Catalan holiday, Bruno and I read the very appealing menu posted outside of this place and decided this sleek dining room paneled with pale beech wood and furnished with comfortable vanilla-colored modern leather armchairs at white linen dressed tables would be just the ticket to lift spirits dampened by a sudden severing from the sea, sun and Spanish warmth.

What followed was a really excellent meal. Bruno was delighted with a starter of anchovies on pa amb tomàquet, or fleshy pink Cantabrian anchovies on toasted bread dressed in classic Catalan style with garlic, crushed tomato and olive oil, and my canelons, cannelloni stuffed with hashed roast veal and served gratinated in a light Bechamel sauce and a Gaig classic, were sublime. Bruno, who, in his love of salads, is probably almost the more American of our pair, loved the elegant Caesar salad he had as a main course, and my baby squid with artichokes in a ruddy almost funky sauce of chorizo drippings and roasted tomato puree were delicious. The little squid contained that wonderful milky juice you find only in the freshest of these cephalopods, and the carefully turned artichoke hearts were clearly fresh. I thought that the deconstructed crème Catalane that Bruno ordered for dessert would be gimmicky, but was proven wrong—it was a pleasantly light dessert with strong flavors of caramelized sugar and eggy custard.

If the food was terrific, the other glory of this table was that the wine list allowed me to finally snag a rare bottle of the white Priorat that I’d been assiduously hunting down all week long to no avail (2007 Mas d’en Compte, FYI). Bref, this was a superb and very reasonably priced meal that left us not only profoundly well-fed but with a freshly budding desire to return to Catalunya again as soon as possible. And surely this is exactly what Paris airport eateries should be aspiring to—promote both Paris and France.  So hey, how’s about a branch of Benoit at 2E or 2F at Charles de Gaulle—Alain Ducasse is such a consummate pro he could pull this off to great advantage, and hell, maybe a couple of Frenchie’s wine bars or Le Verre Vole’s here and there Why on earth doesn’t France care more about its gastronomic image, and don’t even get me started about the food in the French train stations or on French trains.

Barcelona Airport Terminal 1, Tel. 34-93-259-6210, Open noon-5pm. Average two-course meal 30€.

The post PORTA GAIG, Barcelona, B+, and Why the Sad Ongoing Gastronomic Turbulence at Paris Airports? appeared first on Alexander Lobrano.

Grilled baby clams at Cal Pinxo

Happily shacked up in a seaside house on the coast between Tarragona and Barcelona, Bruno and I have been binge-reading, napping, and swimming all week, but we bestirred ourselves when friends from Perpignan who are vacationing in Sitges, the lovely resort town just south of Barcelona, called to see if we’d join them for dinner. Having worn nothing but a T shirt, shorts and flip flops all week, it was sort of a grind to get dressed to drive up the coast a little ways for dinner, and truth be told, I wasn’t wild about the idea of finding myself in a restaurant again. Avidly covering the Paris and French restaurant scenes all year, it’s vital to me to hang up my hat every once in a while and eat simple food that I’ve cooked, and knowing Sitges well, I also very much doubted that we’d have a good meal. Why Despite its rightful popularity–it’s a charming little town with a peaceable kingdom mix of vacationers of every stripe from all over the world, the restaurants are generally mediocre at best.

As if they’d read my mind, our pals reassured us that they’d booked in a wonderful seafront restaurant where we’d get to eat really good traditional Catalan food. Bruno wrote the name and address down, and I was docile enough not ask any questions in the car. When we parked under a stumpy palm tree on the waterfront, though, I had a sinking feeling we might be going to Cal Pinxo, the Sitges branch of a Barcelona restaurant that has repeatedly disappointed me during the last few years. And this is exactly where we ended up. I have had a couple of better than average meals at the Sitges branch, though, so I kept my fingers crossed.

Oh well, whatever, I thought, we’ll eat simply and I’ll keep my mouth shut, since as I’ve said here before, there’s nothing more tiresome than the relentless expert. So we settled in over a bottle of middling white Catalan wine–I’d sort of hoped for a white Priorat, one of my very favorite Spanish wines, but there were none on the list, and ordered grilled clams and arroz negros, or rice cooked in cuttlefish ink and garnished with cuttlefish, clams and fish. Even though SItges is a major international resort town, the waitress’s boredom in dealing with three French nationals and an American was grand opera, which set me to wondering why the tourist factor is such a relentless snare when it comes to good eating. Tourism is, after all, the world’s largest service industry, and most people from western countries, if they’re lucky, are tourists more than a few times in their lives, so why is it that there’s so much prevailing contempt for foreigners in the restaurant industry Today, more than ever, these supposedly know-nothing foreigners are likely to have a pretty deep knowledge of the food and wine of the country they’re visiting, but this just doesn’t seem to permeate the membrane of hauteur that often wiltingly prevails in major tourist centers, Paris included.

Well, the clams were delicious–sweet, succulent, fresh and sauteed in parsley and olive oil until they popped open and drained their juices to create a simple, natural mop-it-up sauce, but the black rice was such a letdown that I wondered if the nefarious international food-service industry hasn’t come up with a factotum of squid’s ink (it doubtless has). And the shrimp in this preparation were obviously frozen, the chunks of cuttlefish flabby, and the small chunks of fish anonymous and mushy.

With a languid sea breeze and great conversation, this was a pleasant evening, but I was very happy to return to our white-washed bougainvillea blazed bungalow and our own cooking for the rest of the week, since I could happily eat barbecued prawns and tuna steaks grilled with petals of really good chorizo until we head back to Paris. One way or another, Cal Pinxo in Barcelona or Sitges is not a restaurant that I’d recommend to anyone craving good Catalan cooking.

Cal Pinxo, Passeig de la Riberos, Sitges, Tel. 34-93-894-8637. Average a la carte 45 Euros.

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