Restaurants
All over the city, Barcelona boasts a huge variety of restaurants, specialised in every type of food and cuisine, and you can eat and drink deep at all hours of the day and night. You cannot walk down its streets without encountering a restaurant, cafe, cafetería, or sidewalk food vendor. Barcelona is a bustling city, and food and drink are central to its vibrant street-life, with dining and socialising going on throughout the day and evening - and well into the night. Food in Barcelona is delicious and original, of course, and more diverse with international cuisine than you'll find in the rest of Spain. Seafood restaurants are mainly located in and around Barceloneta and the ports (with some notable exceptions), while Catalan restaurants are evenly spread throughout the city, as is an impressive variety of vegetarian restaurants. Most of the top-end restaurants as well as Japanese restaurants, are instead found in the Eixample or Zona Alta. Apart from the Pakistani restaurants, that abound in the Raval, if you are looking for Indian food, go up to Gràcia where you can find lots of Indian, Chinese and different ethnic restaurants.
Restaurants are graded by the local authorities and for lunch most offer a fixed price menu with a starter and main course, as well as the standard menu. The average price for a fixed menu is 10-15 Euro. Otherwise an average restaurant bill including wine should be 25-35 Euro.
You can also find budget restaurants which are usually a family run business where you can find a daily set menu, known locally as "menu del dîa", which includes starters and main course including bread, one drink (sometimes also house wine), service, and sometimes dessert too. With prices ranging from 6-12 Euro, these set menus are good value.
Although not always of the best quality, some of them are really good, and offer the best place to eat for budget travellers. As always, the Guía del Ocio (available at newsstands) is an invaluable source of additional suggestions.
The price shown on the menu has to include any service charge, but as most restaurants do not include the 7% VAT tax in the price list, when the menu indicates "IVA no incluido" (VAT not included) this has be added to the bill. Tips are not compulsory, but tend to be given when you are happy with the service.
Lunch starts around 2pm and goes on until about 3:30 or 4pm, and dinner is served from 9pm until about 11:30pm or midnight. Some restaurants open earlier in the evening, but arriving before 9:30-10pm generally means you will be dining alone or in the company of foreign tourists. Be aware that Spanish people have always loved going out for meals, and you will find some of the restaurants crowded, so reserving a table is generally a good idea not only on Friday and Saturday nights, but also on Sunday evenings and Monday lunchtimes when few restaurants are open. The tapas bars/restaurants on Passeig de Gràcia close at 1am, and there are a number of cafes and falafel and kebab places around that are open in some cases, until 5am.
Tapas Bars
Tapas is a very special part of Spanish life. You can find lots of tapas places in Barcelona but you will find they can get very expensive if you want to try a lot of them. Just about any manner of Spanish food comes in the form of tapas, and as such it is a very good way to go about trying the huge variety of Spanish dishes.
While most people have heard of tapas, it is not always clear to everyone how to go about finding and ordering them. Part of the problem is that the word tapas usually does not appear on menus. The word tapas comes from the Spanish verb 'tapar' (which means to cover). A tapa was meant as a free snack to be placed on top of a drink to keep flies and other what-nots out.
While many bars in Barcelona provide a tapa with a glass of beer or wine, it is by no means the norm. More typically, going out for tapas implies ordering a plate of food called a ración, if it is to be shared among a few people, or a perhaps a canapé, which is something on a small piece of bread. Also common in tapas bars are bocadillos (or bocatas) which are the typical Spanish sandwiches made with a bread roll or baguette.
Don't worry if you do not understand the menu, most tapas bars have their goods on display at the bar so you can simply point at what looks appealing to you. Do not expect to get much service in these bars, as that is not usually part of the concept.
Useful Links
Restaurants Search
La Ruta de la Buena Mesa (in Spanish)
La Guía del Ocio (in Spanish)
Everything about the world of spanish Tapas
The Spanish Wine Page
