Music, decor and consulting chef are authentic, but the food is uneven
MIA STAINSBY
Sun
Jennifer Pirie and Sergio Garces ( right) are served Tortilla de Patatas ( Spanish potato and onion omelette served with tomato bread) by owner/manager Roger Creixams at the newly opened restaurant Cafe Barcelona, on Granville Street. STUART DAVIS/ PNG
It was easy to get excited, culinarily, with all things Spanish — Spain being the home of El Bulli, the restaurant that set molecular gastronomy afire.
So when Cafe Barcelona opened in Vancouver’s entertainment centre, I charged in for some tempranillo and tapas.
All the better, the consulting chef was a hot young Spaniard — Benat Ormaetxea — who’d won Spain’s Young Chef of the Year Award a number of years ago and had led the brigade in the Guggenheim Bilbao restaurant before opening his own place.
Between anticipation and eating, there was a bit of a tectonic rift.
Yes, it’s authentic Spanish tapas. The music, as well as the night and day mural of Barcelona, almost delivers you there, but the food could not sustain my enthusiasm.
There are some delicious bites, but enough are off-key to have lost me.
To add to this, servers ( often, it’s the owner, Roger Creixams, who trained as a mechanical engineer) are friendly, welcoming and well meaning, but they drop the ball when it gets busy ( and it did).
Wine glasses sat empty, and the diner next to me had to wave his glass for wine service.
Steel napkin holders dispense teeny napkins.
And the room was too cold, which might whip up appetites but certainly detracts from atmosphere.
In the bathroom, I wasn’t thrilled to see blue water in the toilet bowl.
I’ll say one thing, though. If you keep your drinks to a minimum, you can have an ample meal for less than $ 50.
Some are tapas ( hot and cold) and some are pintxos ( smaller and snack-sized).
I enjoyed the Basque sausages ( from Oyama Sausage on Granville Island).
The tortilla de patatas ( potato and onion omelette) was tepid in temperature but not in flavour.
The cabra con piquillo ( goat cheese, anchovy and piquillo pepper) was lively and had bite.
The gambras ajillo ( prawns with garlic, parsley) was fresh and nicely cooked.
Croquetas ( with ham or tuna) had a nice breaded exterior, but the bechamel filling was pasty and there was little evidence of any protein.
A grilled red pepper and eggplant with goat cheese was oily, limp and tepid.
Xaca ( crab, mayo, red pepper, egg, salmon roe) had very little crab flavour.
The two desserts I tried were both problematic. A crème brûlé was too liquid and tooth-achey sweet; and tarta Santiago, an almond pie, was bland, if not stale.
Still, the restaurant wasn’t suffering. It wasn’t the young trendoid crowd ( heavens no, when you consider the table next to us where the gents were unrelenting with lame sexual innuendo jokes), but the place was nearly full by the time we left.
I’m thinking, maybe they ought to look to Mis Trucos, another Spanish tapas joint, on Davie Street — where the chef is local and not even Spanish — for lessons in combining Spain with Vancouver’s hunger for fresh, pure flavours.