Caliu de Gracia

This wasn’t where I intended to have lunch when I stepped out onto the Barcelona streets on January 5^th, unaware of how many places are closed on the day of the Cavalcada de Reis parade. After both my planned option and a backup choice proved to be closed, I walked toward the city center until I passed this little café where I saw patrons lingering at tables on the sunny sidewalk and heard boisterous laughter inside — always a good sign!
As at many little restaurants in Barcelona, the best deal here is the menu of the day (menú del día), which offered an ample selection of six options each for the first and second courses, plus a drink (beer, wine or other preference) and either coffee or dessert. While the Spanish tapas culture is well established in BCN, these daily 3-​course menus represent a more typical Catalonian approach to dining. At their best, they offer the fresh ingredients of the day in a variety of dishes, with a wallet-​friendly price point. Caliu de Gracia’s 13 Euro menu is a stellar representation of that tradition. And while the menu is listed only in Catalan and Spanish, my server did an impeccable job of graciously translating the dishes I didn’t understand with my limited Spanish vocabulary.
I started my meal with a delicious puff pastry nearly 5×7 inches in size, stuffed with goat cheese and sweet beets and topped by curly lengths of what appeared to be flash-​fried green onion. The well-​balanced blend of simple ingredients made a fine marriage of savory and sweet. Accompanying the course was a green salad, lightly salted and even more lightly dressed, but the salt served to make the minimal dressing sing with flavor and seem more than sufficient to adorn the crisp, fresh greenery. American restaurants far more expensive could learn a lesson from that salad.
For the second course, I chose the Secreto de Iberica, a grilled pork steak cut from the fatty region between the leg and belly of the Iberian pig. If you imagine a perfect holy marriage of a pork chop and a piece of premium bacon, you have some idea of the resulting miracle: tender meat interspersed throughout with juicy striations of fat. The meat was cooked to a perfect, soft and juicy medium. Alongside were house-​made apple sauce, lightly salted fries, and a stack of well-​seasoned vegetables. Again the sensation was one of humble ingredients elevated by the care given to their preparation.
Both courses were enlivened by a generous pour of a juicy and complex red wine that outshone my jaded American expectations for the merits of a «house» red. The meal was finished with a demitasse of espresso that invited a pleasant meditative reverie while sunbeams streamed sideways into the front room.
The only reason I don’t give this place 5 stars is because there are so many like it, and I am far from having tried enough of them yet to judge it fairly as one of the absolute best. But I can tell you that it offers meals of such excellence that it is a place I would happily dine every day for the rest of my trip. Places like this are the true heart of Barcelona cuisine — neighborhood places that serve their local community with unpretentious meals of ample portions and fine quality.

És unos de los mejores restaurantes de menú del centro de Barcelona.
Su especialidad son los arroces, cada día varian su menú según la oferta del mercado, todos sus platos son super frescos.
El menú es de 13 € y sus platos son abundantes. Además el
servicio es atento y rápido.
Tienen una terraza con tres mesas en el exterior, y el interior es bastante amplio.
En mi visita me decanté por Arroz a la murciana, calamares y pudding; mis acompañantes también por el arroz, parrillada de pescados y entrecot, macedonia y tarta de limón.

Wir waren auf der Suche nach einem Platz auf unserem Weg, wo man gemütlich zu Mittag essen kann und sind auf dieses Restaurant zugestoßen. Bestellt haben wir Paella Pfanne für 2 und ein Kanne hausgemachte Sangria. Bestellung dauerte ca. 40 min. wobei es nur 2 – 3 Gäste im Restaurant saßen. Wenn ich auf einer Skala 1 – 10 die Qualität und den Geschmack bewerten würde, würde ich nur eine 1 – 2 zwei geben. Die Muscheln waren überhaupt nicht essbar, Andere Meeresfrüchte hatten sehr seltsamen Beigeschmack.
Der Preis war auch extrem hoch, Paella für 2 P. 36EUR und Sangria 18EUR.
War leider ein totaler Flop.