Casa Xica Restaurant i Bar a vins — Restaurant in Barcelona

My husband and I went here for a valentines meal, we had the tasting menu and a bottle of wine - I don’t remember the name of the wine but it was very nice and reasonably priced). The 6 course tasting menu was excellent - the food was great and it was very good value. All of the courses were delicious, but a few things really stood out: the squid tartare (something I absolutely would NOT usually go for) was surprisingly tasty, the homemade pork belly and scallop gyoza were the best I’ve ever had, and the salted chocolate brownie type dessert was divine. Everything was cooked to perfection and the flavours were great. All of the food concepts were really original and a little bit different. The staff were attentive and friendly and the atmosphere was cosy and romantic. All in all, I can’t fault this experience: five stars and we’d...

I had a high expectation, because it had the “€€€” so I was like, ok it’s gonna be expensive it’s fusion, it should be very good cause there’s a lot of places in Barcelona at this price that are also very delicious. But Xica wasn’t, the portions were very small, the prices were quite high, especially for the bao and taco, I would expect there to be served 2, cause that’s how a lot of restaurants do it, but no, it’s just one and it’s like 7€. Don’t get me wrong, the food was good, just there was tiny amounts and it’s very expensive. Also what restaurant doesn’t serve soft drinks or at least home made non alcoholic drinks, like either lemonade or cold tea. They only had wine, beer and water. The waiter was very nice and cool, the place was cozy....

We really wanted to like Casa Xica and could see how they were trying to be creative, but the food was disappointing. For the price (each tapas sized dish is at least €15-18) almost every dish we had was… unsuccessful, for lack of a better word. Extremely, extremely salty and unbalanced. One dish was called “kimchi burrata bao”, but was just burrata sitting on a bed of overly fermented, way too salty kimchi (I am Korean and know what good kimchi tastes like). For the record, a “bao” is actually supposed to be a Chinese steamed bun, so not sure where the “bao” was in this dish. Definitely expected better...