Famous foods you must eat in Barcelona are readily available as a part of daily cuisine. Whenever we have a trip to Spain planned we get excited for the sites.and the FOOD! Delicious things like top quality ham and olives are part of their everyday lives. And you have to try it all to really experience the culture.
Things you must eat in Barcelona are available all over the city. Nothing on this list is hard to find. You may have to go to a seafood restaurant or market to find things, like prawns or olives, of course. But that's typical of any location. Certain eateries have one specialty while another restaurant may offer something different.
If you want to get even more information and history about these well known foods in Barcelona, we can't recommend a Devour Food Tour enough. (We have grown to LOVE Devour Food Tours all over Europe.)
They're the best for several reasons, including their wonderful guides, small group tours and where they take you. But because they also send us awesome information about the city we're going to before and after our tour. They develop a relationship with their customers and for foodies like us, that's been a positive relationship we can't get enough of.
Two of the most famous food markets and halls are:
Be sure to go deeper inside the market to not be priced gauged! The vendors closer to the entrance charge more for their food and products. The deeper in you go the better the prices are because they know less tourists venture past the first line of vendors.
The market's history can be traced back to its roots in the 13th century. Yet the market we know today was designed and flourished even further in the 19th century.
This is definitely the most touristy market in Barcelona. The avenue it's on, La Rambla, is Barcelona's most famous, open to pedestrians only.
It leads from the center of the city down to the water. The market's official name, whose beautiful Gaudi-inspired archway above its entrance proclaims its presence, is Mercat de St. Josep de la Boqueria.
Somehow the market doesn't feel quite as welcoming to tourists as San Miguel Market in Madrid did, for instance. I think it's because you can buy things like ingredients for recipes (like whole fish), which most tourists aren't participating in unless they stay in an Air BnB with a kitchen, but not as much grab-and-go things as other markets we've been to. (Even though yes, they have that too.)
A favorite item to get there is fresh squeezed or blended juice for ?1. (It is ?2 if you get it just inside the market, but half the price the deeper you walk inside.)
This food hall really blew us away. It's gorgeous but that's because it's a newer food hall in Barcelona. It's built where an old.get ready for it.parking deck used to be! Yes, a parking deck! Be sure to check out the progress photos from the parking deck times to know in the restroom. Yup, the restroom.
It's a gorgeous place to go, and they're open late in true Catalan style.
After full days of touring and site-seeing in Barcelona, Dan and I enjoyed popping in here for wine and cheese on more than one occasion to close out our evenings. (Our centrally located hotel, the Renaissance Barcelona Hotel on Pau Claris, was just blocks away.)
They are open every day from noon to midnight. Easy peasy. Their location is yet another famous avenue in Barcelona: Passeig de Gràcia.
We also consider El Nacional to be one of the best food market halls around the world.
Onto more meat of the post with what to eat in Barcelona, no pun intended.
Fideua is very similar to Paella, but its a Catalan version of the dish. It's made with noodles instead of rice. Our Barcelona Devour Food Tour guide, Alvaro, shared the best place to get Fideua in Barcelona is in the neighborhood Barceloneta, right by the water.
He was kind enough to recommend Can Ramonet. We loved it there. It had a slightly nautical theme (which made sense - it's by the water and they have lots of seafood on their menu) and the neighborhood it's in, historically working class, had plenty of character.
We enjoyed the seafood fideua below with little clams and pieces of squid. It was a huge serving. The "paella" pan it's made in is shallow (which is literally the name of the pan, which is how paella got its name, which we learned in Valencia). But it's still a fair amount of food.
Oh my gosh - if I could eat one thing in Barcelona for a day, this would be it. Why? There are SO many varieties, and I love a little variety in my meal! Ideally, I want a little bit of everything.
Pinchos, or pintxos, are pretty much a slice of baguette-type bread topped with anything. We had ones topped with eggs, peppers, Spanish croquettes, bacon, tomatoes, fish, burgers.you name it. They topped it.
And guess what? They're only ?1 to about ?4 EACH. Can you believe it?
We went to more than one restaurant, but our favorite in Barcelona's "pincho alley" was at La Tasqueta De Blai.
TIP: go in between hours to get a seat. They don't have a lot of seating and it got really busy. We arrived around 4:00pm, sat at the bar (in front of the pinchos) and witnessed more and more people coming in as the hours went buy. It can get busy.
Getting there early also helped us develop a rapport with the bartenders who were the ones serving drinks but also let us know what was on each pincho.
If you are a carnivore and you visit Barcelona but didn't have "jamón", or ham, were you even there?
One of the most delectable things you can eat in Barcelona is ham. They have two main types: Serrano and Iberican.
The latter is the pricier of the two and tastes a bit nuttier. This is because the free-range Iberian pigs eat only a diet of acorns in their last weeks of life. It gives their meat a very rich flavor.
We had a wonderful lesson in how jamón plays into the culture of the Spanish people during our Devour Tour with Alvaro. For instance, a leg of ham is a special gift to give family during the holidays. (But to learn more you'll have to take the tour!)
We even tasted various hams at a specialty store on our Barcelona food tour. It was really interesting to taste the hams in a particular, logical order that our guide, Alvaro, laid out for us. He explained each piece of ham as we tasted them.
The two pieces we're holding in the photo below are by far the best we've ever tasted. It costs ?230 per kilo! But it was all included in the price of our tour. What a treat!
Alvaro also taught us why the back legs cost more money than the front and that a black hoof indicates the pig is 100% Iberian.
We also made sure to have ham the night before we left Barcelona. Can you tell it's one of our favorite foods in Spain?
The seafood we've had in Spain has always been great. Barcelona is on the coast so things are fresh for the eating there!
We enjoyed prawns our first night in town. We've had them in Spain in the past and they're always served with the shells on. They're easy to get off, and the meat is tender and juicy (if cooked correctly, of course).
Another seafood item I l-o-v-e in coastal parts of Spain is razor clams. They literally look like long knife razors from back in the 19th century. The delicate shells of razor clams can be opened by a pro and the meat that runs the length of the shell is cooked to perfection.
They're usually available at nice restaurants that serve seafood and mollusks for whatever the market price of the day is.
Another cool thing we encountered in Barcelona was something like the display below. You'll walk into a restaurant and see the daily fresh offerings from the sea and you can choose what you want to eat. Then the kitchen cooks it and the restaurant serves it to you.
There's a restaurant with eight locations around Barcelona called La Paradeta, whose entire basis of their restaurant is this concept! If you're in the mood for seafood in a no fuss, inexpensive yet high quality kind of place this would be a great option.
We were lucky enough to try a variety of olives at a neighborhood market. We learned that there are 43 markets around Barcelona from our Devour Food Tours guide.
He arranged for a sampling of various types of olives for everyone on our Barcelona food tour. Here, we learned that Spanish people prefer pits in olives.
This is because to remove them during the curing process, they would have to be put through a chemical process to soften them to remove the pit. Many people think this affects the pure quality of the olive. Thus, pits are good!
? Book a Devour Food Tour to Secure Your Spot on your Chosen Day in Barcelona!
One night we had olives that the restaurant served us in a double-sided tray. One side had the olives, and the empty side was for the olive pits. So smart!
We never met a cheese we didn't like, whether enjoying cuisine Spain or traditional food in Slovenia. It's so satisfying to have some drinks and cheese. There are over 150 kinds of cheese in Spain (which doesn't contest with the French's varieties of cheese but hey, it is worth competing for, right?).
Spanish cheese are typically named after the region the cheese is from and the kind of cheese it is.
Try getting some cheese at a local market in the neighborhood you're staying in (or from La Boqueria if you fancy it). We also enjoyed a cheese board one or two nights of our trip at El Nacional food hall, referenced at the start of the post.
Cava is all over Spain! And we especially loved this must consume drink in Barcelona. It was the first time we really appreciated it on a trip to Spain.
This bubbly drink is made the same way as champagne, with two fermentations. (Prosecco, from Italy, for example, is not fermented in the bottle the second time like cava and champagne.)
It pretty well known that Spain is famous for chocolate and churros. (Hot chocolate to be more specific.) But on our Devour Tour, we learned that the more authentic treat to have with hot chocolate in Barcelona is a Malandro cookie. It's like a Catalan Lady Finger.
I like it a lot more than churros, which, to me, feel too fried and heavy. A Malandro, on the other hand, is lighter and a great dipping cookie. This is definitely a food you must eat in Barcelona (or maybe have a couple of them).
Did you know the Spanish had chocolate before anyone else? (Even if you think Mexico did, it's because they were a Spanish colony!) When the church banned chocolate, it was even more appealing.what is forbidden is more desired, eh? That's why there's much more than meets the eye to the hot chocolate and Malandros served in Barcelona.
Tomatoes are glorious! And the people in Barcelona love to use them - often - on bread and as its own solo dish. Here's the two most popular ways they're offered.
This is one of my favorite Spanish foods, particularly for breakfast. A tomato is "juiced" on a grater and then topped with olive oil and salt. Sometimes another spice makes it on the tomatoes if the restaurant chooses. (I first fell in love with Pan con Tomate on a trip to the Andalucia region of Spain, in Seville, Granada and Cordoba.)
I've made it at home because it's so good.but you won't find it anywhere in America on a menu. It's awesome and such a healthy topping for bread.
If a tomato is great and hearty on its own, why dilute it by serving it any other way than to slice it up, add some olive oil and serve it on a plate?
We went to Bodega Lito (a Michelin-rated restaurant) on our first night in Barcelona and loved consuming small plate after plate of the top Barcelona foods recommendations we asked for. One was the beautiful plate of tomatoes you see below.
We also learned that a specific type of juicy tomato is hung up at markets because their extra-juicy interiors make them extra soft. They're hung to protect them from bruising amongst other veggies!
The tomato juice is often rubbed on top of the bread to soften it, a practice that began during the Industrial Revolution between the 18th and 19th centuries.
The food in Europe is simply fresher than in the United States. The abundance of so many local markets ensures the ingredients are, in fact, as local as possible, whether that's the bread they use or the meat and vegetables going into a recipe.
Thus, even the sandwiches, or bocadillos, or fresher in Barcelona.
We want to point out two in particular that are typical finds you must eat in Barcelona! One is a sandwich we had the morning of our food tour with a glass of cava. (Because, why not? When in Barcelona, do as the Catalonians do!)
They have two breakfasts. The first sweet at around 8:00am (a lot of people skip that one). The second is savory around two hours later. It can be consumed with or without alcohol.
This is when we had the sandwich - a baguette with Girona pork sausage. It was delicious! It's a winning simple sandwich with great ingredients, making it a superb combination.
The other sandwich is similar: if there are quality ingredients used to make something as simple as a ham and cheese sandwich, the creation is instantly elevated.
This is the case with Iberian ham and manchego cheese sandwiches on a fresh baguette. I chose to pair it with fresh-squeezed orange juice for breakfast.
It was simple to grab this quality sandwich at the Enrique Thomas shop at Barcelona's Sants train station before our train to Valencia.
We had fried sardines as part of our typical Barcelona food meal at Bodega Lito our first night.
They're a little harder to eat because they have tiny bones you have to pick through in your mouth. But they're really good if done right and you exercise a little bit of patience with eating them.
Most American know anchovies as the Italian fish served on Caesar salads. But it's typical that they're served purely in their cured form on a small plate, as a tapa, in Barcelona.
There are two ways you can order them or buy them from a market: as "boquerones", cured in vinegar (which is when they turn a yellowish white).
Or marinated in olive oil as you see in the photo below in a brownish color. These anchovies are from a region of northern Spain called "Santoña" and are very high quality.
The vermouth in Spain is not like the vermouth you have in America, that's added to drinks like dirty martinis. It's different. And I admit I'm not a vermouth expert, but from everything I've learned about vermouth in Spain (including Barcelona) and in America, I certainly know they're very different.
Dan and I were really excited when the final stop on our Barcelona food tour was at a vermouth bar. We were otherwise too shy to go into a bar and order it ourselves. But we were all ears to learn about it with our guide teaching us.
We learned that Sundays, from noon to 2:00pm, are for vermouth in Barcelona with friends! The streets may be empty, but the bars are full. Even if you're getting a beer, it's called "Vermouth time."
Otherwise, Catalonians have vermouth and a sandwich during the day around 5:00pm when kids get out of school. (Haha - probably not a coincidence.)
We wanted to end this post on a sweet note, mentioning this seasonal pastry.
Bunyols are cream-filled donut-hole-like pastries that are produced around Easter time. They're traditional and delicious so if you're in Barcelona around March through May and see them, buy some! You won't regret it.
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