Restaurant Can Cortada, Barcelona

Oh man, that was a lot of food. When in Catalonia, eat Catalan food, right? We got heaps of it tonight, ranging from all sorts of salads, to salted cod, to roasted sweet peppers. This place (Avda. de l'Estatut de Catalunya, s/n, 93-427-2315) was apparently known for good Catalan food.

My favorite of the bunch had to have been the stack of bread seen above. Puzzled? Yeah, we weren't quite sure what to do with it either until we got the demo. Basically, grab a tomato and a clove of raw garlic and cut each in half. Then rub garlic across the bread, effectively using the coarseness of the toast as a built-in grater. Afterwards, do the same with the tomato before sprinkling on salt and then generously dousing the thing in olive oil and spreading it all across evenly with a knife. It was heavenly. It was basically like bruschetta but tastier and without the need to balance all of that diced tomato on top (although the labor was left to the diner in this case). I couldn't stop eating this, nor could I resist the little greasy grilled artichokes that they brought by.

There were some things that I didn't quite like though. The biggest letdown was probably the snails, which were merely done with a bit of tomato rather than the usual French variety with butter and garlic. This effectively made the thing taste like what one would imagine snails to taste like if it weren't for the usual butter and garlic. I guess there really is truth in the saying that if you put enough butter and garlic on something, you can even make snails taste good. I'll easily come back to this place though. The medieval building on its own was quite a sight to see.