L'Arrosseria Xàtiva | Gràcia — Restaurant in Barcelona

If I could give 10 stars, I would. Buckle up, this is going to be a story… Me and my friend both ordered a menu (appetizers, main course, dessert and drinks). I have acid reflux, for which I am taking some medication. The thing is, after taking the medication, you’re supposed to eat in 20 minutes. My friend got her appetizer (a cold one) after 5 minutes. When the 20 minutes passed, I asked our waiter (tried to do it apologetically) if he possibly knows, where my appetizer is. He looked a bit flustered, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he couldn’t understand my question, or because it was a very outrageous thing to ask after 20 minutes. After a while, it became very clear, that his English was pretty flawless… But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. My entreé came a few minutes later. It was an enormous amount of fries, eggs and ham. We both tried it (after eating my friend’s entreé together), it was delicious, but we both knew, we had a very big plate of paella coming. The paella came just a few minutes after my entreé, so we switched and left 90% of my entreé on the table. We got extremely full on the (absolutely delicious) paella. We were already dying with laughter thinking about how we made a fuss about the second appetizer, then ate basically none of it. To further elevate our hilarious state, when our waiter came to the table, you could see in his eyes the exact same thought process. And that was the moment all three of us burst out laughing, me trying to signal that I understand the irony perfectly. He took the plates (one of them being the almost full, very sad plate of fries, eggs and ham), went back to the kitchen, which we could see into through glass doors. That’s when we could be witnesses to the scene where he showed the plate to all the others in the kitchen and they shared a laugh as well (we were trying to think it was laughing with us, but let’s be honest here…). After that, every damn time that waiter walked past our table and made eye contact, we burst out laughing with tears in our eyes again, fortunately, he laughed too. When we payed, the (presumably) head waiter came to our table, and with a little smile in the corner of his mouth, informed us, that we’re getting a whole bottle of wine as a gift because one of our entreés was late. At this point, our shame was so uncontainable, we tried to reject the gift, they wouldn’t let us, we got the wine (it’s nice wine by the way). To put the cherry on top, we left a bigger tip then we initially wanted to, not just because the food was marvellous, but as a way of saying sorry for being assholes. They brought back the change. (We laugh-cryingly told them to please please please take it away, and left, died laughing on the street for a few minutes and on the whole way home.) This was the best story so far on our trip here,...

I mentioned it several times: I almost never eat Spanish / Catalan food in Barcelona. There are exceptions though: when I have the opportunity to eat 🐌s, calçots or paella. In fact I used to eat 🥘 several times a month. When I came to Barcelona, 🥘 was so cheap... as it should be, cause 🥘 traditionally is a dish where you put what you have and rice is not expensive. Yet, nowadays, 🥘 has become quite pricey, and it's not something you can eat as often, unfortunately. 😔 So I basically eat 🥘 when someone comes from abroad (which, fortunately, happens quite often 😅). A few weeks ago, I got the visit of an old friend from 🇫🇷 so I took her and her family to a place specialized in 🍚 dishes: Arrosseria Xàtiva. I had been there once and I remember I liked it. But the main idea was to take them to a place where I knew they would have lots of options. See, in most restaurants, you only get to choose between 2 to 5 🥘 options. There, (almost) everything is about 🍚. We shared 3 dishes: black rice (with squid ink), duck confit rice and one "a la catalana" (mainly with sausages and mushrooms). They were all good, but the last one was truly amazing. 🤩 I was not so sure, cause I'm not a big fan of 🍄s, but everything was delicious about it (ok, I did not eat the 🍄s 😅). One of the best rice dishes I've had lately. 👏 The rice was perfectly cooked and we didn't need to add salt, nor was it too salty (I mention it cause lately I've had too many issues with salt at restaurants, and you can't really adjust the quantity of salt in a paella afterwards). The service was slow... but when you have good rice, it's always slow as rice can't be cooked in advance. 👍 What wasn't so good was the price. Just for the 🥘 (so, not including desserts, ☕ or drinks), since we didn't order any other dish, we paid €25 each. And I find this very expensive for rice... and black rice is almost the cheapest rice dish there is! I guess 🥘 can't be considered a cheap dish anymore... 😔

Quality & taste: 9/10 Quantities: 9/10 Atmosphere: 7/10 Originality: 8/10 Ratio price / quality: 8/10 Service: 7/10 How I felt...

Dinner at Xativa, Gràcia Having lived in BCN for almost 40 years, I take my paella dining seriously. My partner and I had had an amazing Sunday lunch experience at Xativa, Les Corts, so one Thursday night we decided to try the Gràcia restaurant. True, paella isn't an evening dish, but we'd both been working hard and thought we deserved a treat. We booked for 9 and arrived to a packed restaurant. I couldn't see where we would be seated but they showed us to a table for 2 scrunched between two big groups right on the main thoroughfare between the kitchen and dining room. Not good. I spent the evening getting bumped and bashed in the back by the waiters and other guests. Like being in the bumper cars. Horrendous!

The waiter first showed us an unpriced white in an aggressive marketing style that didn't bode well. When we checked the wine list, we didn't see it, so have no idea whether it was pricey or not. I assume the former. We asked for a sauvignon blanc only to be told they didn't have it, they then offered us another, which was acidic and cheap.

For starters we ordered the foie gras, which came as a frozen ball insulated inside an apple compote with a cover of what was laughably supposed to be royal jelly, but so tasteless it no doubt came from a packet. The jar it was served in had just been plucked from the fridge. Gentlemen, foie gras should be eaten at room temperature, not treated like ice cream!

The arros meloso was okay, though more of the consistency of a good fish soup without the flavour. A borderline pass.

We didn't stay for dessert. All in all, dining here was like having a picnic midwinter in the middle of the AP-7...