Cuines de Santa Caterina, Barcelona

When we were in Spain (as almost every sentence seems to start out these days), some of our time was destination focused (El Prado! La Sagrada Familia! The Guggenheim!). And then there was the random wandering, which practically always turned out to be an absolute delight.

We started out one day chowing down on pastries from La Boqueria, then walking along the beach and the marina. We heard marching bands in the distance, very cool, but couldn't figure out if it was a holiday of some kind, or if this just happens on Saturdays in Barcelona. We headed west past the Parc de la Ciutadella (the site of some of the action in The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon), to the Arc de Triomf.

We looped around into the Born section of town and just as our lunch bell went off, we came across the Mercat de Santa Caterina. Originally one of a handful of traditional markets in Barcelona, this one has been rehabbed to within an inch of its life. It doesn't have the earthy, down-home feel of La Boqueria, but still has a lot going on, inside and out.
Outside, a group of devils and demons in appropriately Luciferian costumes had gathered, setting off fireworks and blowing whistles. We asked around and later did some research on the Web, but still couldn't find out why a mid-May Saturday would warrant marching bands and pinwheel-wielding demons. Maybe just an average day in Barcelona. Move over, City That Care Forgot!

Inside, we found one of the most exciting meals of the trip at Cuines de Santa Caterina. There was a mix-and-match menu with categories like Asian, Mediterranean, pasta, vegetarian, tapas and more printed on paper placemats. And if that wasn't inspiring enough, reader boards spread the word on the daily specials.

I love to try things that I'd never fix at home, and the calamari appetizer fell into that category. Rigatoni-size pieces of meltingly tender calamari grilled with olive oil, topped with slender, crisp asparagus and julienned calcots. The plate was painted with squid ink, dark luscious, salty, smoky and redolent of the sea. I do follow my late father-in-law's philosophy that the best meal of my life is usually the one in front of me right now. However, I'd be tempted to rank this calamari a la plancha among the most fascinating and delectable dishes I've ever eaten.

For the main course, I chose fideua, a.k.a. fideo, a kind of noodle version of paella. I actually have cooked fideo at home recently, following Mario Batali's recipe. And I remember fixing a traditional sopa seca, which is similar, on a hotplate way back in the day. I didn't really enjoy the process either time, there's something about browning the noodles, then taking them out of the pan to drain while cooking the veg and seafood that just seemed like too much fuss. But I was eager to try someone else's version of it, and this one was a winner: scallops and garlic sauteed in olive oil, with the pasta cooked al dente in stock seasoned with pimenton and saffron. The top was a bit crusty, as if it had been run under the broiler for a minute. Kind of cozy and exotic all at once. Still, I'm glad someone else did the work. Crusty but light whole-wheat bread, a glass of the house vino blanco and some agua minerale came with our entree.

We finished the meal with the postre del dia, a chocolate sponge cake rolled around fresh whipped cream, topped with a glaze-consistency bittersweet-chocolate sauce, served with vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce. What's not to like?! It was wonderful, rich but light, how did they manage that? And it would have gone wonderfully with a cafe con leche.

Cuines de Santa Caterina bordered on too fabulous in its slick decor, teams of waitstaff, noise level, and unisex restrooms in which the fixtures were more decorative than functional (motion-sensitive lights that seemed to go on and off at random, splashy sinks, tiny wastebaskets). And, we couldn't order cafe con leche at the end of our meal without moving into the bar. Though that felt rather ungracious, up to that point the service was amazing and nonintrusive and we felt comfortable lingering over our food. As was often the case in Spain, we sat down to lunch on the early side, and by the time we finished our meal Cuines de Santa Caterina had a line out the door. We had to ask for our check and didn't feel rushed to pay, unlike at some U.S. venues where the check is presented while you're still eating and talking, and the server hovers till you whip out a credit card. But our cafe con leche craving and our interest in seeing more of the city propelled us out into the sunshine before long.