Lo Que Rica Barcelona!!! The rich streets full of beautiful architects and sexy sea breeze caresses you around and my heart tingles like a little girl in hand in hand with my Emi. Slight excitement makes our walk bit more brisk not to miss anything here during our short 3 day trip. With great amount tourism in the city, even weekday early morning is already hustle and bustle with full of people. Walking down the tree lined La Rambla area center passage way, we come across THE MUST CHECK OUT attraction, the Mercat La Boqueria, St. Josep…!
The main grand entrance of Mercat de San Josep de la Boquesria or simply preferred to as La Boqueria, A large public market in the Ciutat Vella district of Barcelona. This market is one of the city’s most foremost tourist landmarks with an entrance from La Rambla , not far from the Liceu , Barceloa’s opera house. The market is absolutely diverse and rich in their selection of food and goods from fresh fruits, spices and impressive array of fresh fish and sea food and amazing low key open kitchen banquets full of made to order tapas and sea food eateries!! Come check out now the one of our world’s favorite market, La Boqueria with us!!!
www.boqueria.info/Eng/index.php
OK, That’s what is called “well stocked and well selectioned”. Wow, see you know what we are missing in NY?
The market is absolutely blessed by fresh produces and anything that you can imagine. It’s overwhelming feeling stepping in to the market.
Fresh fruit juice to go. 3 euro! And below whole or half cut Pitahayas!!
The cured meat, fresh and exotic fruits an now what..? The MARISCOS! We are in Barcelona Baby!
Everything is alive and moving in this market. The crabs, lobsters, shrimps… It’s amazing. I don’t recall seeing anything frozen here. Maybe the salt cured but not the frozen. Love it!!! I am going to have to share more pictures of fresh fish and sea food from the market, because it is really really impressive!
The sign says live Navana( razor clam) without sand!
Razor clams are really popular here. They look bit, hmmmm, what’s the word, bit slimy and bit disturbing actually. But hey wait until you taste them grilled with garlic, parsley, delicious local olive oil and squeeze of lemon… Ahhh then wash them down with chilled glass of Cava! It’s fantastico!
This…? Actually I need show this to someone is really expert at Sea creatures. I mean what would this taste like..? How would you cook them? They look like roots of the sea…
After the Tokyo’s Ginza Fish market, La Boqueria would be the next best one that I saw most various parts of Tuna being served. This is the ” Ventresca” of the tuna: The tuna belly, the fattest part and the most flavorful part of the fish. Even in Italy , most time you will see these in the cooked and jarred at higher price than regular canned Tuna. Believe me, US has the worst quality of canned tuna you can find. They are crumbs of Tuna after maybe other nations had packed the main parts. It’s impressive to see the fresh Ventresca stakes like this at the market. You can buy glass jarred cooked Ventresca at places like Balducci, Whole food at around $11.00-15.00 at a small portion.
Now getting out from the sea food section and moving on to the rest of the market…!
Now here we are finding a quite bit of Eateries with open banquets and kitchens. Beer, wine and Cava and all the Sea food, vegetables and even the desert! ahhh 2 seats please!!! I stole a pic of one of customer’s plate. It looks so yummy…!!!
Each places runs it its own way. This little place likes to display their uncooked fresh ingredients in the glass cases for the customers to glance at. The menu is on the black board and one single grill underneath dose all the job.
OK, We are staying here for lunch! And you see this guy with serving the beer? He’s the man you need to talk to for the seats. He manages the seating, beverages and bread and the staffs. Or I guess he could be the owner..?
A glass of Cava first standing while waiting for our seats and switch to a glass of white. Here we start our 3 hour long lunch together. Happy… Happy….!
We order a plate of mixed grill, mixed sauteed mushrooms, grilled sardine, octopus with cayenne pepper and go through like 10 glasses of wine… Chat and laugh and get bit silly with nice buzz…!
This quick sauteed mixed mushrooms with green scallion is a dish from the heaven. Soooooooo Goooooood!
Yum Yum Yum, It was a wonderful wonderful lunch!! Here check out the best lunch spot in the entire Barcelona,
Checking out a few more places right around the market. This is the chicest salumeria We ever had visited. Every piece of cured meat is all cut by hand. It almost reminded me of Caviar shop like vibe. The shop is right near to Kiosko Universal.
Paella!!!!!! Still waiting to find the perfect place to have the perfect paella. This looks stupid delicious… Arrrr!
A you can see the market is the place to be, the place to know and understand the culture and richness of the people in their everyday humble life they live.
La Boqueria, You stole our hearts!!!
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Just got back from 2 weeks in Barcelona. Market is awesome. You can find anything there at a reasonable price. Bought lots of Saffron to bring home.