Maitea | Casanova — Restaurant in Barcelona

Maitea is on several top Barcelona lists for tapas and pintxos. It's a bit further out from the touristy downtown areas but for those who dont mind the trek, it's one of the few places that are constantly open and serves food that is considered too early for Spainards! I guess North Americans hours of 5 pm and later is considered snack time and there are few restaurants opened between 5 pm and 7 pm.

This casual place is really well known for their cold pintxos ... which is essentially a single small snack sized bite that is pierced by a toothpick. Maitea pintxos are quite generous in size which can probably easily get you 2 or 3 bites per pintxos and they're very reasonable at 1.5 Euros and up. You can easily make a meal of them... all with a large slize of crusty white country bread and topped with many different things like smoke salmon, sardines, tomatoes, chilled grilled vegetables, egg, ... tons of variety. If you are interested in the hot tapas and pintxos, you have to wait till after 8 pm for those to come out. If you want actual hot dishes, you can order them here ... but compared to the pintxos, they were definitely not as good.

Good - Iberico pork ... generous portion of grilled pork with a side of soggy fries. The pork was well cooked with a bit of nice char and the flavour was wonderful. Any pintxos ... I happen to like the vegetarian ones here. I honestly believe if you come here to eat, get only the pintxos... best value, flavour and execution.

Not so good - patatas bravas (soggy and oily), fried shrimp (more like sauteed, tough, and very expensive), squid with mushrooms (heavy smokey flavour that overpowers everything).

There is very little seating here... its most likely a pintxos and standing up place to enjoy a glass wine with your plate of tapas. Service here is very laidback so don't expect to service to be very attentive. As long as here you're for a quite bite, great place but perhaps this isnt a great spot for...

My boyfriend and I came in at around 12, but they said they weren't serving lunch (aka the pintxos we had been looking for) until 1. So we decided to walk around the neighborhood and come back at that time.

We started with foie gras hash, which was a little to heavy for us. After that, we decided to just stick with the pintxos, which are little open-faced sandwiches, held together with a toothpick. They are €1.80 each and they have a selection of hot ones you can order off the menu, as well as some premade cold ones that you grab yourself. At the end of the meal, they count the number of toothpicks you have and that's how they calculate the bill.

We had so many of them (probably too many) but there were just so many we wanted to try! Plus it was our last meal in Spain so we wanted to make the most of it. I don't remember everything we had, but I really liked the Bomba, codfish with mousseline, and the smoked salmon with anchovy (?) from the cold selection.

We didn't get the chance to try any other pintxo places, but I read that there are a lot of them that offer pintxos for €1. That being said, while Maitea was good, it is a little on the pricier side. €1.80 per sandwich adds up quickly. I think next time, I’ll check out some of the cheaper places and see how they stack...

G You Google stupid "guiris" , suggesting stereotype food topics to comment. Please learn a bit about Iberian, basque, catalan culture and then, not before, suggest the topics to talk about. This place excels in Txuleton, in " tortilla de russinyols i butifarra" and " oreja con huevos fritos" . The last two dishes are signature offers of Maitea, so you, Google low cultured guiris, should suggest them to be judged and/or recommended. About Maitea: good food, a bit low quality/price ratio ( a bit too expensive), and OVERPRICED wine list. I was here for lunch, but I guess it's dinner oriented. I'm sure night's atmosphere is better. I can't understand why, with an almost empty restaurant, they assign us, a 2 people table, just next to a 8 ppl table??? Anyway, I guess I'll be back. Basque restaurants in BCN are becoming strange, after the sad end of Lagunak and, recently, the GREAT Ipar Txoko in Gràcia. Miguelón, te vi poco, pero...