Food shopping in Spain
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Papabubble
It feels like a step into another era in this candy store, where they make up pots of rainbow-coloured boiled lollies, just like some of us remember from corner-store days as kids. Watch the sticky sweets being made before your eyes. For all its apparent timelessness, this is a relatively new venture. Started by Australians in Barcelona, this sweet reminiscence now has shops in Amsterdam, New York and a handful of other cities.
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Oriol Balaguer
Catalan pastry chef Oriol Balaguer has a formidable CV – he worked in the kitchens of Ferran Adrià in Catalonia and won the prize for the World’s Best Dessert (the ‘Seven Textures of Chocolate’) in 2001. His chocolate boutique is presented like a small art gallery, except that it’s dedicated to exquisite finely crafted chocolate collections and cakes. You’ll never be able to buy ordinary chocolate again.
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A Casa Portuguesa
Come here to try Barcelona's best Portuguese custard tarts, pastéis de Belém. Unfortunately, because of Gràcia's draconian restaurant laws, A Casa Portuguesa had to be turned into a non-seating-and-eating kind of place; although you can taste wine and stand here for a while, you can no longer sit down for food and drink.
No matter – at the time of writing, the owners were in the process of opening a bistro on 111 Carrer d'Aragò, where you'll be able to sample the vast variety of Portuguese food and wine, and a menú del día offering typical Portuguese delicacies. The new place should be open by the time you're reading this. In this Gràcia outlet, however, you can…
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Xocoa
Tucked along cafe- and boutique-lined Carrer de Petritxol, this den of dental devilry displays ranks and ranks of original chocolate bars, chocolates stuffed with sweet stuff, gooey pastries and more. It has over a dozen other branches scattered about town.
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La Botifarreria
Say it with a sausage! Although this delightful deli sells all sorts of goodies, the mainstay is an astounding variety of handcrafted sausages – the botifarra. Not just the pork variety either – these sausages are stuffed with anything from green pepper and whiskey to apple curry!
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Patrimonio Comunal Olivarero
You could buy your Spanish olive oil at El Corte Inglés, but to catch the real essence of the country’s olive-oil varieties (Spain is the world’s largest producer), Patrimonio Comunal Olivarero is perfect. With examples of the extra-virgin variety (and nothing else) from all over Spain, you could spend ages agonising over the choices. The staff know their oil and are happy to help out if you speak a little Spanish.
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Olisoliva
Inside the Mercat de Santa Caterina, this simple, glassed-in store is stacked with olive oils and vinegars from all over Spain. Taste some of the products before deciding. Some of the best olive oils come from southern Spain. The range of vinegars is astounding too.
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Cacao Sampaka
Chocoholics will be convinced they have died and passed on to a better place. Load up in the shop or head for the bar out the back where you can have a classic xocolata calenta (hot chocolate) and munch on exquisite chocolate cakes, tarts, ice cream, sweets and sandwiches.
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Tot Formatge
On entering, the aromas of an international assembly of fine cheeses waft towards you. Little platters are scattered about with samples of a handful of the store’s products, which together form a bright display of the best of local and European cheeses.
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Hofmann Pastisseria
With old timber cabinets, this bite-sized gourmet patisserie has an air of timelessness, although it is quite new. Choose between jars of delicious chocolates, the day’s croissants and more dangerous pastries, or an array of cakes and other sweets.
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Syngluten
Those with a gluten intolerance can find eating out in any town a problem. In Barcelona you get your hands on all sorts of snacks and products and put together your own meals at Syngluten in the Diagonal Mar shopping mall.
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Olive
Wander into this stone-faced, mock-Gothic building and immerse yourself in an array of olive oils, fragrances, essences, vinegars and even juices. It’s a delightful spot for self-indulgence.
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Casa Gispert
The wonderful, atmospheric and wood-fronted Casa Gispert has been toasting nuts and selling all manner of dried fruit since 1851. Pots and jars piled high on the shelves contain an unending variety of crunchy titbits: some roasted, some honeyed, all of them moreish. Your order is shouted over to the till, along with the price, in a display of old-world accounting.
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Joan Murrià
Ramon Casas designed the century-old Modernista shop-front advertisements featured at this culinary temple. For a century the gluttonous have trembled at this altar of speciality food goods from around Catalonia and beyond.
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Ultramarinos Zoilo
This lovely deli has been a family-run business since the early 1950s. Choose from great wheels of crumbly Manchego cheese, several grades of local chorizo and the speciality: jamón serrano, which hang over the main counter gently curing and intensifying in flavour.
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Casa Quintanilla
This is the pick of many stores around the town centre offering local produce that's ideal for a picnic or a gift for back home.
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Poncelet
For Spanish and other European cheeses, this fine cheese shop is the best of its kind in Madrid. The variety is outstanding and the staff really know their cheese.
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La Oliva
For a superb range of quality deli items with an emphasis on fine wines and olive oil.
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Baco
If you’ve enjoyed sampling the food that much (and who hasn’t?), then you can take some of it home with you from this wonderful deli stocked with quality local food products such as olives and olive oil, jamón, cheeses and bacalao (salted cod).
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Fet a Sóller
Surrounded by Sóller's famous ice-cream shop Sa Fàbrica de Gelats, Fet a Sóller is an altogether different culinary experience. Mallorcan products, primarily those from around Sóller, line the shelves with olive oils, wines, almonds, jams, figs in cognac and balsamic vinegar made from Sóller oranges.
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Colmado Santo Domingo
It's almost impossible to manouevre in this narrow little shop, so crowded are its shelves with local Mallorcan food products – cheeses, honey, olives, olive oil, pâté, fig bread, to name just a few – while sobrassada hangs from the ceiling.
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