Bar Inopia - Recommended

Intro
Bar Inopia - Recommended
C/ Tamarit 104
08015 Barcelona, Spain
Phone: +34 934 245 231

Bar Inopia is the restaurant of Albert Adria, pastry chef of the world renowned El Bulli restaurant which is the immediate reason I wanted to check it out. Although this restaurant is owned by the Brother's Adria, there is not a foam to be seen any where. Instead, this place has the best canned ingredients and does some solid tapas. Overall, I give the restaurant a 86/100.

Our Menu
1) Gilda - anchovy, peppers, olives **
2) Chicharricos de cerdo - pork cracklings *
3) Ensalada de tomate con cebolla tierna y ventresca de bonito Tuna, Tomato, and Scallion Salad ***
4) Patates Braves *
5) Croquettas **
6) Bomba de l’Eixample ***
7) Bikini de Pernil *
8) Piña con piel de lima y melaza de caña ***
9) Cireres al Perfum *
10) Poulpe a la Galicia

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

Dish Comments
1) Gilda is the classic pintxo that you see in a lot of pintxo and tapas bars. Pintxo being the tiny bites held together by a toothpick. A really fun dish with salty meaty anchovies combined with crunchy and sour peppers with a great olive.
2) Basically, pork cracklings that were store bought. Nothing special here, but still fun.
3) This is the first stand out WTF dish. The canned tuna here was out of site - great tuna flavor, really rich, and turns from meaty to almost creamy. The combination of the tomato and scallions were such a revelation that they really perfectly matched. Definitely a dish I will try to recreate.
4) Supposedly, the best patatas braves according to Batali - basically fried potatoes with a creamy and spicy sauce. These were decent, but no where near the best - flavors of the potato and the sauce were a little underwhelming . Supriginsly, the best I've ever had were at Tia Pol in NYC when the place first opened up.
5) Insanely creamy croquettes. Slightly crispy on the outside and creamy and light on the inside. Flavors was decent, but the texture was dynamo.
6) Another WTF dish. Again, slightly crispy on the outside, a creamy thin layer of potato, and inside flavorful really moist ground beef (flavorings of cumin) and spicy sweet sauce. Delicious stuff. Nice play of textures and flavors for each of the well constructed layers.
7) A good ham and cheese sandwich. Nuff said.
8) A ridiculously wonderful dessert. Sweet, juicy pineapple topped with lime zest and molasses which added a nice citrusy and sweet kick. Completely wonderful on the palate.
9) We saw everyone eating these cherries and we had to have some. Cherries were steeping in a liquorice liquor and sprayed with some more of the liquor combo at the end. Very bright, pleasant combo which also made the cherries very juicy.
10) These ocotopi were incredibly tender, but had obsolutely zero flavor. Kinda bummer...the olive oil was incredibly rich though.

Overall Restaurant Experience (86/100)

• Food 8.6/10 – Expecting a phenomenal tapas bar, but ended up with a solid one instead. The canned tuna was out of this world, but everything else was mainly good with some being great. The fried dishes had some ridiculously good textures though.
• Service 8.5/10 – The servers were very nice and incredibly helpful. It was funny that they looked like NASCAR drivers wearing the bar inopia t-shirt with a ridiculous amount of sponsors.
  
• Atmosphere 7.5/10 – A narrow white room with only one table. Around the bar, their are stools but around the back you can eat, but it's standing room only. In the front of the bar, you see all the cooks preparing the food for you like most tapas restaurants. Crowds consisted mainly of young couples - there was one group of middle aged women. Big problem is there is no reservation (only for the big table) and the wait is absurd. About 45 minutes for a Tuesday night at 7pm.
  
• Price 7.5/10 – Not too pricey as the whole meal was 70 euro for the both of us. However, comparing to other tapas bars it is very very expensive - and most importantly not that much better.
  

Closing Comments
Barcelona Girl warned me that this place is great for the canned products, but everything else is pretty average. Too some extent she's probably right and I don't think I would go again based on the wait. Too many other great tapas joints to check out...