Taverna El Glop

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taverna

From the outside I thought this place was a hole in the wall, but once we got in and were taken to the “other” dining room, I realized this may instead just be a very rustic old school type of place.

We got along amazingly well with one server who wasn’t even serving us, so he moved us to one of his tables near the kitchen. I always enjoy being near the kitchen and going back and fourth with the staff during our meal. This was no exception and this is partly why I enjoyed this place so much. Its an older place and so are the staff, so the banter is different, but all good nonetheless.

Being in Barcelona, we ordered some sangria de vino (wine-based). The ever so potent stuff had just the right amount of sweetness that I didn’t even notice the alcohol. Keeping with the Barcelona trend, we also requested to have pa amb tomaquet (Catalan for bread with tomatoes). Bread with tomatoes is such a staple here in Barcelona that many places such as this do not care to put it on their menus anymore.

From the menu, we decided to have steamed mussels, snails with aioli and tomato sauce, rabbit and snail paella and pig trotters. I was craving some pig trotters because of the fantastic pig trotter canaloni we had a couple of days earlier in Can Valles (more on this later). Once we ordered, our server told us that this would be too much for us. I didn’t care to listen, told him we were hungry and continued to say we would eat it all. What a liar I turned out to be that evening.

Everything here was very traditional Catalan cuisine. The snails were my absolute favourite dish of the evening. The aioli provided the perfect complimenting sauce. When they served the snails to us, it didn’t look like a lot but going through all of it was a gargantuan feat, specially after having the mussels. Then came the massive paella dish. It was good, but it may have been a little undercooked. It was a little watery and could have done with some more time on the heat. The pork trotter was excellent. I love the flavour profile of pork trotter, but by the time this guy came, we were sated from the three dishes earlier. Plus, it didn’t really live up to the pork trotter canaloni in Can Valles. That will forever be the standard of pork trotter.

At the end of our meal, our server was totally right. Our orders were way too much for us but in spite of not being able to finish, we experienced a great variety of Catalan cuisine and good service and because of that we really enjoyed our time here.

To view pictures of our meal in its entirety, click through the photo set below. If you are using a mobile device, please click here for compatibility.