Barcelona: Spanish expedition

Catalan tapas dishes are served at Bodega 1900, where the writer had one of the best meals of his life. Photo / Facebook

When P.K. Stowers goes in search of world-class tapas, a cosy venue leaves him happily sated.

We were four travellers in Barcelona looking for a way to celebrate the successful completion of our seven-day Catalonian hiking tour. We were a little undecided but all agreed on two things: whatever we did it wouldn't involve a lot of walking, and we were all pretty hungry.

In the end the decision was a simple one - we would have a long, Spanish-themed lunch at the best restaurant we could find.

One of the Australians in our group had always wanted to eat at Ferran Adria's famous elBulli restaurant, located in the small Catalan coastal town of Roses. But since that shut its doors in 2011 we were hoping to dine at the next best thing. Ferran's brother Albert, who worked with him at elBulli, opened the restaurant Tickets in Barcelona's old theatre district in an effort to create a more affordable version of elBulli.

Like his more famous older brother, Albert Adria is what is known as a "culinary deconstructivist" - that is, a chef who strips down a well-known dish to its essences and then puts it back together in a new or surprising way, playing with texture, temperature and taste.

Unfortunately, following a short taxi ride to the venue, we discovered that Tickets was booked solid, but they recommended Albert's other restaurant, Bodega 1900, which had opened less than a year ago. The venue had a similar philosophy to Tickets but focused on more traditional Catalan tapas dishes, and aimed to be more accessible and affordable.

We agreed it sounded like a good option and, even better, it was located directly across the road.

Bodega 1900 is not a large venue and if you didn't know what you were looking for you could easily walk past it. The venue seats 50 people (just), largely at the rear of the restaurant, but there also a couple of tables near the front doors, directly across from one of the main chef prepping areas. The interior is simple but comfortable: timber and white-painted walls, marble-topped tables with simple wooden chairs.

At first it seemed as though our lack of a reservation would prevent us from eating there as well, but as we were leaving the maitre'd called us back inside to say they could fit us in.

A selection of tapas at Bodega 1900.

Once we were seated our waitress for the afternoon, Annie, introduced herself and we placed ourselves in her hands.

We all liked her immediately and basically said "yes, please" to anything she recommended, including the vermouth cocktail starters, even though no one in our group confessed to being a big vermouth drinker.

In fact, the drink was so nice we ordered a second round later on after a couple of bottles of a great Spanish red wine.

So, what did we end up eating?

First up was a dish straight from the elBulli menu, these little green spherical balls that look like olives and burst with olive flavour when they pop in your mouth. We also tried the superior olive/anchovy variety.

Next up was a selection of local pickles, followed by razor clams in escabeche sauce, leeks in leek ash (average), fresh anchovy with olive and asparagus, and some delicious spicy squid presented as little mini squid hot dogs.

As I don't eat meat there were some items our group ordered that I didn't taste but they looked great, including Iberian ham croquettes and one of the restaurant's signature dishes, the mini meat pie.

For dessert we ordered the selection of goat and sheep cheeses with bread, the melon with white vermouth, a small chocolate tart, fresh figs with Catalan honey, and what turned out to be the single best piece of carrot cake I have ever tasted.

All up (including two bottles of wine) the bill was €238 ($376), not including the tip.

We all felt that our waitress Annie had made some excellent recommendations in what turned out to be one of the best meals of my life.

I can certainly recommend you put it on your list of things to do if you are travelling to Barcelona in the near future.

CHECKLIST

Getting there: From New Zealand, KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) offers 17-weekly flights with its codeshare partner Malaysia Airlines and China Southern, and 77-weekly flights with its Interline partners.

The writer travelled to Barcelona with assistance from Adventure World and KLM.