Bar Boqueria - Review

Intro
Bar Boqueria - Highly Recommended
Carrer de La Boqueria
Barcelona, Spain
Phone: +34 933 182 584

Bar Boqueria was actually my second choice in the large Barcelona market, La Boqueria. The first place I originally wanted to check out, Bar Pinotxo, was closed, but there is no way it could have topped what I had at Bar Boqueria. Perfectly cooked, incredibly flavorful and fresh ingredients. Just a perfect experience. Overall, I give the restaurant a 92/100.

Our Menu
1) Mussels (mejillones) ***
2) Pig Cheek (galtas) ***
3) Tripe (callos) ***
4) Shrimp (gambas) ***
5) Eggplant Omelet (tortilla berenjena) *

Rating System
--- What the F - in a bad way * Good ** Great *** What the F – in a good way

Dish Comments
1) Incredibly fresh mussels perfectly cooked. Juicy, meaty, tender, and fresh ocean flavor. Ridiculous and it tasted like they topped it with an olive oil, garlic, parsley mixture. Just sick - seriously...WTF!
2) Insanely flavorful sauce that was heavy on the chorizo flavor and combined with tomato and red pepper. Pig cheek was ridiculously tender and had great porky flavor. Another WTF dish. Another benefit was pulling some gelatin out from the pig jaw. It was like the best bone marrow, but with this incredible pork flavor.
3) I pointed to a dish and asked what it was (in my terrible Spanish). The grill dude mentioned it was tripe and I wouldn't like it. A little irritated, I swore to the dude I would definitely love it. He gave me a sample and it was another homerun WTF moment. Very tender and great tripe flavor accompanied by a wonderfully rich tomato / red pepper broth. Perfect tripe.
4) I really couldn't take this place anymore as it was just getting too much - every single dish was ridiculously perfect. It would be like sleeping with every single playboy playmate for a year...yes, I'm referring to Scott Baio. Any who, they saved the best for last. The shrimp was amazing...tied with Moo for the best shrimp or even lobster that I've ever had in my life. Moo was the best fancy shrimp/lobster, Bar Boqueria was the best rustic version. Juicy shrimp that was so tender and such huge sweet shrimp flavor. Top that off with the garlic, parsley, olive oil thing again and I was in complete heaven. What pushed this over the top was the shrimp brains that you suck that was spectacular - like the best tasting livers that had an oceany sweetness to it.
5) After so many WTFs, this was good but not great. The planets realigned and everything was right again. Basically a thick fluffy egg omelet with sweet eggplant inside. Still good, but the first non great dish.




Overall Restaurant Experience (92/100)

• Food 9.8/10 – First time I've had basically the whole menu as the WTF's. WTF!!!
  
• Service 8.5/10 – The barmen was nice to us, but complete arses too everyone else. When he saw we were going nuts over the food, he started telling us what else we should get. We ordered way too much food and he didn't stop us, but that was fine by me. It did take a while to get their attention though, since the guy that takes your order also cooks in front of you.
  
• Atmosphere 7.5/10 – La Boqueria is a huge food market and towards the back stands Bar Boqueria. The place is basically a big u-shaped box where people sit around (kinda like a sushi stall). There are stools around the bar that you sit at and it is insanely cramped there, especially since we ordered too much food. Almost every single seat was taken at 3pm on a Wednesday and it seemed like 50% spanish speaker and 50% non-spanish speakers. I heard/spotted some Americans, Italians, Asians. It's pretty chaotic in the market and at the bar which I normally wouldn't mind, but it wasn't so great there for some reason.
  
• Price 8.5/10 – Everything was pretty inexpensive except the gambas which was 17 euro. I didn't care though, since that was spectacular.
  

Closing Comments
This is definitely my happy place zone in terms of food. It's amazing what fresh ingredients taste like...kinda reminded me of Italian food where they stress the freshest ingredients and simple cooking techniques. This place just popped though and was better than anything I had in Amalfi. Killer place. Afterwards, check out the juices in the area which you can buy for a Euro...the watermelon juice was out of control good.