Catalonia Experience
from $13,200 per person
Barcelona guide
Food and cuisine in Barcelona
Catalan cooking from the market stall to the three-star table, and the wines of the country around the city.
By Ramin Jafari · Facts checked
Barcelona eats Catalan: pa amb tomàquet, escalivada, escudella and canelons, and crema catalana, with cava from the Penedès and reds from the Priorat, and it has four restaurants with three MICHELIN Stars. This guide covers the dishes and the wines, the tables we would point you to, from a three-star tasting menu to the city’s oldest dining room, and the markets worth a morning, with what we can arrange around each of them.
At a glance
- Dishes to try
- Pa amb tomàquet, escalivada, escudella, canelons, crema catalana
- Three stars
- ABaC, Cocina Hermanos Torres, Disfrutar and Lasarte, in 2026
- The oldest table
- Can Culleretes, open since 1786
- The markets
- The Boqueria on La Rambla, and Sant Antoni in the Eixample
- The wines
- Cava from the Penedès, and the reds of the Priorat and the Empordà
Barcelona's table
Catalan cooking: the sea, the market garden and the season, on bread rubbed with tomato.
The everyday table is Catalan. Pa amb tomàquet, bread rubbed with tomato, olive oil and salt, comes with almost everything, with cheese, anchovies or cured meats if you like. Escalivada is aubergines, peppers and onions roasted in the embers. Escudella i carn d’olla, vegetables, pulses and meats simmered together, is what the city’s tourist board calls the great national dish of Catalonia, and its leftover meat becomes the canelons of Sant Esteve, rolled, covered in béchamel and baked. Crema catalana, set with lemon and cinnamon, ends the meal.
The board follows the year by its produce: the artichokes of El Prat from January to March, the Maresme’s peas in March and April, the Barcelona prawn from May to July, and wild mushrooms from September to November. Ask for them in season. And an evening of tapas, in El Born or Gràcia, is as much a part of the city as its tasting menus; for Spain’s food as a whole, see our guide to Spanish gastronomy.
Where to eat
A selection, from three-star tasting menus to the city’s oldest dining room. We can reserve these, and others, around your plans.
By the Passeig de Gràcia
Lasarte
- MICHELIN Guide
- Three Stars, 2026; held since 2017
- Kind
- À la carte or set menus
Martín Berasategui’s restaurant in Barcelona, run day to day by head chef Paolo Casagrande, has cooked his dishes here since 2006, with the season as its compass. The dining room is modern, under waving ceilings and lamps the Guide likens to jellyfish: the table for a celebration, or for anyone who wants to see cooking at its most exact.
The Eixample, opposite the Mercat del Ninot
Disfrutar
- MICHELIN Guide
- Three Stars, 2026
- Menus
- Two tasting menus, Classic and Festival
Opened in 2014 by three chefs who met and trained at elBulli, Oriol Castro, Eduard Xatruch and Mateu Casañas. Its Classic menu gathers the dishes the kitchen is known for and its Festival menu the season’s newest, both playing with shape, texture and flavour. The meal for the adventurous.
Carrer d'en Quintana
Can Culleretes
- Since
- 1786
- Kind
- Catalan home cooking: canelons, botifarra, crema catalana
In its own words the oldest restaurant in Barcelona, and run by the same family since 1958, for good food at a fair price. The menu is the Catalan table of every day: canelons, the house speciality, botifarra with white beans, duck with prunes and crema catalana, in dining rooms hung with old murals and photographs. A relaxed lunch, and the city’s culinary roots.
Ronda de Sant Antoni
Alkimia
- MICHELIN Guide
- One Star, 2026
- Menus
- The Catalan Cuisine Table, or à la carte
Jordi Vilà’s kitchen explores the past, present and future of Catalan cooking, in his own words, and the Guide finds it deeply rooted in tradition with a strong hand for fish. It sits upstairs in the old Moritz beer factory, now a home for food, its dining room mixing nods to the sea with old furniture from the city’s grand houses: Catalan food taken to its most contemporary.
Hotel Arts, by the Port Olímpic
Enoteca Paco Pérez
- MICHELIN Guide
- Two Stars, 2026
- Wines
- More than 700
Chef Paco Pérez’s restaurant in Hotel Arts, which the hotel calls a tribute to the Mar d’Amunt: Mediterranean cooking from the sea, the farm and the mountain, with international touches, in a bright white dining room, and a list of more than 700 wines: the starred table by the beach.
Avinguda del Tibidabo
ABaC
- MICHELIN Guide
- Three Stars, 2026
- Menu
- A single tasting menu
Jordi Cruz’s restaurant at the foot of the Avinguda del Tibidabo serves one tasting menu, new dishes beside those he is known for: in his words, a multi-sensory journey to savour without haste. The dining room looks onto a quiet garden set with contemporary art, which makes it the table for a long, unhurried meal.
Markets and wine
Two markets worth a morning, and the wine country within a day of the city.
La Rambla
The Boqueria
- The hall
- First stone laid in 1840
Meat was already sold on the Pla de la Boqueria in 1217, among the open-air markets along the Rambla, and the market hall that stands there now was begun in 1840. Come in the morning. We can arrange a visit with a chef, then a class in Catalan cooking with what you bought, on request.
Sant Antoni, in the Eixample
The Mercat de Sant Antoni
- Since
- 1882
- Sundays
- A book market
A neighbourhood market, as it calls itself, for the neighbourhood: food stalls through the week, second-hand stalls alongside, and books on Sunday. A good place for a tasting of what its stalls sell, which we can arrange on request.
50 km from the city
Cava and the Penedès
- Cava's capital
- Sant Sadurní d'Anoia
- The grape
- Xarel·lo leads the whites
Cava began in the Penedès, the wine country between Montserrat and the sea, and Sant Sadurní d’Anoia is known as its capital; Vilafranca, the Penedès’ town, is 50 km from Barcelona. A day among the cellars, with a private tasting and lunch at a cava house, can be arranged on request.
South-west and north of the city
The Priorat and the Empordà
- Priorat
- Qualified D.O. since 2000, one of Spain's two
- Empordà
- D.O., 55 municipalities by the tramuntana
The Priorat’s garnatxa and carinyena grow on llicorella, its slate, and since 2000 it has been one of Spain’s only two Denominaciones de Origen Calificadas. The Empordà, in the far north-east, works the same two grapes in a country swept by the tramuntana, a north wind that often gusts past 120 km/h. A tasting of all three regions with a sommelier in the city, or a day among the cellars, on request.
For the wider picture, see the best wine regions of Spain and our culinary and wine tours; more of what we arrange in the city is in our things to do in Barcelona.
Itineraries that include Barcelona
The Grand Spanish Tour
from $27,200 per person
Luxury Spanish Honeymoon
from $16,800 per person
Spanish Family Adventure
from $9,400 per person
Barcelona guides
- Barcelona travel guide
When to go, where to stay, the food, the great buildings and three days in the city.
- Things to do in Barcelona
Gaudí with a guide, the table, the evenings, the sea, and days out beyond the city.
- Four days in Barcelona
Four days, day by day, where to stay, and how to extend the trip.
- Best time to visit Barcelona
Season by season and month by month, with the festivals and the beach months.
Beyond the table: the best luxury hotels in Barcelona, luxury hotels in Spain and luxury trip planning.
Plan your Barcelona trip
Tell us your dates and who is travelling. Everything else we can work out together.
Plan your Barcelona trip Our Barcelona page
Usually answered within one business day.