Barcelona might not show up on those global city ranking lists that consulting firms and banks like to trot out to prove they aren’t all just all evil corps trying to keep us in the system (I’ve obviously been watching too much Mr. Robot). But for anyone that eats, the city is arguably the best city in the world for food and all the pleasures that goes with it.
But earning such a delicious reputation is a double-edged sword. At the same time, the city must satisfy the insatiable swathes of tourists that swell the city three-fold every summer, while also appealing to the sharpened palettes of those that stick around once the sun has set on the bottomless pitchers of sangria.
And this is where the dichotomy between the eating habits of tourists and locals is most painfully obvious. To be a great food city, the items scrawled on the chalkboards must be as relevant to those that arrive by cruise ship, as it is to those that arrive on Barcelona’s iconic red bikes, to which only locals have access.
I use the term tourist broadly, I’m not accounting for the edge case food tourists, that probably know the city’s gastronomic map better than me. And I recognise that all tourists want to ‘eat where the locals eat’ but the reality isn’t nearly as romantic.
So in no particular order, these are the top challenges facing the world’s best food cities as they try to remain as tantalizing for tourists and locals.
To eat ‘a lo grande’ by day or night
Locals eat a large meal in the middle of the day with plenty of time on either side to eat, drink and relax. Tourists want to be productive during the day and not miss even a single Gaudi tile, instead preferring to wait until the evening for feeding time. Sometimes it all comes down to the sheer size of the plate.
Breakfast becomes lunch, lunch becomes dinner, dinner becomes the midnight snack
For my first six months in Barcelona, I felt like I was suffering from the culinary equivalent of jet-lag. I didn’t know when to be hungry and got nervous when heading out to dinner with friends. I remember sitting in a bar watching the clock tick past 8, 9 and 10pm until we finally began discussing what and where to eat; not even the olive-laced vermouths could quiet my growling stomach. Let’s not even begin on the second breakfast that slots in at 11am or the lunch that might begin at 2pm but would surely not be over until most of the world would usually start thinking about dinner. The tourist arrives in Barcelona with an itinerary that predicates an early breakfast, a quick stop for lunch, and a dinner time that comes hard on the back of a full day of activity. Restaurant menus are demanded come 6pm by the bum-bag wearing masses, but lay the cutlery anytime before 8pm and you risk becoming a laughing stock amongst the local foot traffic that gets heavier as the night gets longer.
Paella, paella, paella
We all love paella, but we also want the Viet Pho, a Roman Pizza Bianca, Mexican Carnitas, Ethiopian Injera, a plate of creamy Middle-Eastern hummus and and a good Japanese Maki. And this is where the city’s culinary overlords need to decide on menu diversity to keep local taste buds piqued, while also milking the cash cow that comes in the form of a saffron scented pan of rice. None of us want to fall into a tourist trap, but when in any major food capital, it’s too hard to go against what we’ve seen on the glossy blogs and grams of the insidious travel bloggers that make all of us question what sort of miserable life we are truly living. In France we want to sit down to a sizzling tray of Escargots in parsley butter, if we’re in Campania, it’s a big plate of Spaghetti alle Vongole, in Tokyo we want a seat at Sushi Genki, even if there’s not one single local in sight. The challenge remains to satisfy the beautiful cliche and fill menus with Spain’s greatest hits, or aim for a local niche that may win you local hearts and stomachs, but not necessarily land you fat stacks.
Be careful if you’re eating with a passport
Tipping in Spain is simple, at a bar, you’re leaving the change from a tenner, in a restaurant, you’re filling the plate with jumble of gold and silver coins, amounting to little more than a knock-off drink for your server. And the vicious self-fulfilling prophesy completes itself; servers pay heed to this motivation with forced smiles and a constant state of disinterested distraction. They know to expect just loose change, and are also aware that it’s unlikely they’ll ever see the unfortunate tourist again in their lives; the culinary one-night stand is a cruel one. Good service shouldn’t need an incentive, but anything good in this world generally demands a pay-off of some kind. And without the incentive of a generous local clientele, or a foreign one that we might be forced to serve more than once, service will always suffer. The challenge to strive for a balance between the exaggerated welcome that visitors might expect and the efficient and effective service locals demand.
I call these ‘fun coupons’
The moment you happily hand over €4.50 for a bottle of water at the airport, money becomes more of a bendable concept, no matter how many sophisticated exchange rate calculators we might have on our iPhone. Because we travel to experience the new, to escape the old, and in these new unfamiliar environments, comparing and evaluating prices across borders becomes the type of activity in which only the worst kind of fun sponge would engage. We open our wallets wide when traveling, ‘we’ll never be here again’, ‘it’s a once in a lifetime’ and my favourite: ‘experiences like these are priceless’ (don’t forget that it was a credit card company that invented this warm and fuzzy slogan). But for anyone that lives in a city long enough, you know what money is worth, and you become strategic on who to give it to. We all like rolling around in bathtubs full of greenbacks, but exploiting a higher willingness to pay from one diner means losing the long-game and waving goodbye to the customer who will come back week after week, not just once in a lifetime.
Do you have the menu in English?
Traveling like a local is a beautiful utopian vision of the world. You imagine yourself cozy in the corner of a cute Parisian cafe full of effortless French style and the wafting aromas of caramelized shallots and fresh tarragon. You order wines by the bottle, spread your baby white rolls with thick swipes of salted butter and start to speak with an accent. But if you stop to look around, you have to admit your conversation isn’t as nearly as passionate, you bulky backpack keeps falling off the back of your chair, your colourless English is off-key in a beautiful symphony of noise that only European languages can achieve, and any grudging acceptance of your presence vanishes the moment you gingerly whisper your food preferences and allergies to your waiter. Because as much as tourists want to eat where the locals eat, locals want to eat where only locals eat. So you go to openings and grudgingly enjoy what was, up until that first international food blogger posts their first finely filtered snap of what was, up until you refreshed Instagram, your favourite local.
There is no easy answer and Barcelona is not alone in facing this fork in the culinary road. Give tourists what they want: providing the photo opportunities guidebooks encourage them to return home with (Paella, Jamón, Sangria and a crackable Crema Catalana). This strategy probably generates high enough returns to get establishments through a slow off-season, thereby making any shrewd business owner to truly question the value of providing a service for the harder-to-please local crowd. But what about the entrepreneurial chef that wants to stay true to a vision and create a concept that just might win over the fan boys and girls that press their faces up against the kitchen glass, but for how long will that noble cause be fought when there are paellas to defrost and reheat.
So every time i’m asked by friends visiting my city on some local hot-spots, I hesitate, because the answer isn’t maybe what they want to hear: I want to say ‘Go to Red Ant – amazing Thai fusion, try La Malandrina for amazing Argentinian meat, go to Flax and Kale for really innovative vegetarian, pay a visit to Shunka for really classy Japanese or check out Rosa Negra for some on-point Mexican.’ But when they ask for a place with paella and tapas, I reluctantly pull out the oversized sponsored map dotted with the Big M, Starbucks, and chains offering what is only a paella by name.