The Hazzards of Prix Fixe Dining in Barcelona

At 9-12 Euros for a three-course meal, menu items can go quickly. And as they do, sometimes new menu items appear predictably and yet as if my magic: usually Ensalada mixta as a starter and Butifarra a la plancha (so ubiquitous throughout Barcelona that I chose this perplexing fave regional dish as the signature photo for this site).

Today's sidewalk pizarra toyed with our 2 p.m. hunger by promising us Coliflor gratinada followed up by my new favorite fish, Mero a la parilla. (Which folks more worldly than I will immediately recognize as your common Atlantic grouper.) We were over an hour earlier than our usual 3:30 arrival and still half the menu was ya agotada.

I ended up eating watermelon soup (Crema de sandía), veal stomach with garbanzo beans (Callos con garbanzos), and some overly sweet flan pudding concoction called Tocinillo del Cielo. None of this was anything I would want to eat again, but neither was it terrible.

(Just for fun, the recipe for this last dish, the Tocinillo, calls for 25 eggs yolks, 4 cups of sugar, 3 cups of water—and nothing else! Maybe a bit of vanilla or a spritz of lemon juice for the real gourmets...)