Restaurant Review - Spanish inquisition
Tapas prove top draw at Duluth’s Barcelona
“Is there gold leaf on that toast?”
My dining companion is wriggling in his seat for a glimpse of the $5 pan con tomate as it glides by on a waiter’s tray. Five bucks may not sound pricey for four pieces of “toasted Spanish country bread topped with crushed tomatoes and roasted garlic olive oil,” as Barcelona’s menu so alluringly proffers. But if there were a recipe, it would read exactly like this: Toast bread. Rub with cut side of halved tomato. Drizzle with olive oil. Three slices are included with the selection of Spanish cured meats and are much like the giveaways you’ll find in cheap bars across Spain. They’re damp with tomato in the middle, and chewy-stale around the edges. They possess nothing that justifies charging almost as much as the restaurant’s cheese plate.
If the crowd on a recent Friday night at Barcelona is any indication, however, our gripes are merely the ranting of the tightfisted. The way-OTP Spanish restaurant’s parking lot is crowded with the caliber of automobile you’d see behind the gates of nearby Atlanta Athletic Club. The candlelit cocktail lounge is chock-a-block with the well-heeled and well-coiffed sipping Cosmos over the din of a flamenco performance.
Swathes of vermillion — the room divider, lamps, a vase here and there, posts by the bar — and fluted, mahogany-toned columns lend a richness that camouflages the former Ruby Tuesday location’s institutional feel. Yet that which, under the dimmest of lights, seems suburban swanky at night is astoundingly sterile come lunchtime, when midday light reveals the seating area is almost entirely beige.
Armed with the knowledge that students from the Basque Culinary Institute of Bilbao in Spain work their way through the restaurant’s kitchen in three- to four-month externships, I’m hoping the smoke-and-mirrors won’t extend to the food.
We begin with a feast of tapas. The batter-coated strips of calamari lean toward excessively salty, but the morsels of squid within possess a startlingly fondant tenderness. An accompanying ali-oli resembles runny bechamel with its milky texture and blandness, and the spicy tomato sauce occupying the other sauceboat is unremarkable but for its peppery bite. Gambas a la plancha, skillet-seared shrimp, are perfectly cooked, rosy gems, though the “Basque oil infusion” promised on the menu is nowhere to be found on the plate.
Beautiful wafers of chorizo, Serrano ham and salchichòn overlap in lacy waves on the plate and melt on the tongue. Grilled quail look like tawny, scrawny bits next to an oversized tuft of roasted almond paste, but the quail turns out to be exquisitely juicy and succulent. The almond paste itself is hummus-like in consistency, with a thrilling zing of chili that sears your tongue.
We’re licking the last bits of almond paste off the plate when the house-cured jamon de pato arrives. My friend gasps. I pop a slice of the cured duck breast onto one of the accompanying crunchy toast chips and into my mouth. I nearly faint. As dark and sweet as Bing cherries, the translucent slices practically dissolve before you can chew them. They are simply extraordinary.
Riding on this crest of confidence, we eagerly await Barcelona’s seafood paella. And it’s served before we know it — before we’re even ready for it, actually. A food runner plunks it down on a corner of the table, and before you can count to three, our waiter and the rest of the waitstaff disappears. Our lack of plates and flatware goes unnoticed for a good 10 minutes as the paella cools. We can’t flag down the manager, who seems too wrapped up in fawning over a nearby group to notice the dirty plates piled on our table. Taking matters into our own hands, we remove appetizer plates from an adjacent table and stack the used dishes to the side.
Had it been hot, the paella simply would have been steaming, uncomely rice. Eating it lukewarm certainly didn’t do much for its lack of flavor, nor for its pencil-eraser-textured mussels and clams. There was no crunchy bottom layer of rice clinging to the pan that makes properly prepared paella such a treat. Two bites were more than enough.
Dessert was not the heart-stopping delight I’d heard it could be here. Three scoops of homemade ice cream — chocolate, strawberry and vanilla — had the thinness and watery flavor of ice milk. A chocolate souffle turned out to be a bland, mildly burnt warm chocolate cake.
A second daytime visit was a sad affair. Balsamic vinegar is oddly out of context in a Spanish restaurant, doused as it was onto a sandwich of Serrano ham and Manchego cheese. Squashed between two sheets of focaccia (also weirdly out of place), the sandwich tasted strangely processed and greasy. Trucha a la Navarra, fried trout stuffed with Serrano ham and cheese, was coated in a gooey, maple-syrupy almond sauce whose shocking sweetness was better suited for pancakes than fish. Almonds trapped in the honeyed slick had the texture of boiled peanuts.
According to our server, the visiting chefs are placed at the kitchen station where their skills are best applied. It’s clear that Barcelona’s imported talents are knocking it out of the park with the tapas, while everything else on the menu we tried seemed like a half-hearted afterthought. Barcelona could be an outstanding restaurant should the permanent kitchen staff learn more about Spanish cuisine.