At Casa Bofarull, Los Caracoles Barcelona, Spain.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012
If you hear that this restaurant is a challenge to find, that would be an accurate observation, especially if you don’t turn at just that left exit along La Rambla that leads you minutes down the lane to the restaurant, when walking from Plaça de Catalunya towards Rambla del Mar, but instead navigate from within the Gothic quarters of the city, or elsewhere.
Carrer de la Volta dels Tamborets in La Barceloneta.
This visit to the restaurant actually began from a walk from the seafront of La Barceloneta whose seaside boardwalk cafés, pubs, clubs and W Barcelona (a sister to W Singapore) hotel adding urban glamour to the landscape helped this seaside front of Barcelona gain its repute as having the “the best urban beach in the world” and overall “third best beach in the world”, according 2005 Travel Channel show World’s Best Beaches.
The open kitchen.
It doesn’t matter how many times I come back to Los Caracoles, what draws me still, is the absolute unpretentiousness of the place, written into the very design of the open kitchen where the glowing red of the stove exudes just the very heartbeat of Casa Bofarull.
Paella mixta
Profiteroles con chocolate
It didn’t matter too, that whether the restaurant was at peak hours or not, there were always plenty of friendly smiles and attentiveness to service. In particular, I’ve witnessed how the conducive and warm environment often invited guests of completely different tables to begin conversation, sharing stories and perspectives of their travels to the city, where some guests even end up ordering similar foods to each respective table in conviction that this was something they could not leave the restaurant without trying!
In this case, being a dessert person, it was certainly the profiteroles con chocolate that contributed to a sophisticated end to the symphony of this dining experience. Just perfect.