Food

Today we went on a few walks and tried some new churros at Chocolateria San Gines - crappy service, average churros. Will be going back to the other place, Chocolat another day.

We also dropped by the Mercado again, and had a few small bites to eat as we were having dinner out.

So, onto dinner - we decided to have anther tasting dinner. This time at Ramon Freixa - we arrived at 9pm, unfashionably early for Spain, to an empty dining room.

It filled up pretty quickly as the night went on.

It started with some cheesy balls, potato chips and sunflower seeds crisps.

We then had another starter which was 5 bits of deliciousness.

From the bottom right going clockwise - tomato explosion aka Gazpacho bomb, Mussel and saffron croquette, birds nest of steak tartar, black sausage with potato and a carrot and orange biscuit. These were all small bites of flavour, my favourite being the tomato explosion.

Next up started a theme that was carried on for the evening - instead of one plate - you get 3.

The central plate was a salad of different tomato types with a basil icecream - pretty tasty.

On the side was a tomato and octopus slice salad - OK but still tasty.

Lastly there was a semi grilled tomato in delicious BBQ sauce.

Next up was more vegetables - the central plate was white asparagus 3 ways, steamed, dried and pureed accompanied by a garlic sauce.

The side plate was a vegetable cake with beans, and finally the courgette custard with chruncy courgettes. The courgette custard was one of the highlights of this meal for me (and I am not really a courgette fan) but it was so tasty and creamy.

Then we had a russian salad which had a lot of things - beans, mayonaisse, egg, potato, a fake olive that tasted like an olive (how novel).

Side plates of tuna belly and a tuna soup with apple. This reminded me a lot of miso soup, but more fishy.

We then had a pidgeon sausage which was surprisingly tasty, full of flavour, with a side dish of bread with scrambled eggs and cauliflower/broccoli. This was crunchy, with a hole in the middle for the filling, and this was pretty awesome.

The last dish in this trio was pidgeon leg with mandarin - which tasted so much like peking duck it was hard to believe it was pidgeon.

Up next was roasted grouper with apricot and almonds. The weird part of this dish was the red dot - a mix of campari and amaretto which I found to be a bit full on.

To accompany this was a salad of onions with a tasty soup and also an almond cappuccino.

We then had the suckling pig with a strawberry and celery sliced salad - it went pretty well with the pork.

The pork scratchings on coca bread with crunchy bits on top was pretty cool, and I tried to pretend the pork trotters in foie weren’t really pigs feet - but it was still tasty!

There was also a turnip and tomato goo mixture - I am not really a turnip fan.

I forgot to take photos of my cheeses - so here is the last plate which was blue cheese, bacon and cream fraiche.

Up next was the equivalent of what we had at the start, but a dessert version.

There was the tiniest macaron, a white chocolate biscuit, an olive oil muffin (tasted a bit lemony), a chocolate with passionfruit inside, tutti fruitti jelly and a rasberry filled with green tea. In the middle was a golden apple - it looked like a cherry but tasted like an apple (and had apple seeds inside - it is a real fruit).

The best bit of this was the chocolate and passionfruit. When you ate it, it was like a passionfruit juice explosion in your mouth. Very very good. And an aftertaste of - popping candy - a literal explosion inside your mouth.

But wait - there’s more!

For our actual dessert we had chocolate fondant with cherries and on the side a white chocolate/vanilla icecream with watermelon in the centre. I liked the chocolate one better, and I was so full I couldn’t eat all of the vanilla one.

Another side was a coffee concoction.

At this point I thought we were done, but out came some like snacks - a small cone of creme fraiche and crazy chocolate balls.

These chocolate balls - especially one type - was unexpected. They had lemon sherbert in the middle and gave a real zing to the end of the meal.

We also got offered a chocolate selection, and I just had one.

There was a reason we hardly ate anything today - and the reason was this dinner. Overall, it was an awesome dinner - we enjoyed pretty much everything, service was friendly and we headed home to sleep it off.