When I first arrived in Barcelona, one year and a half ago, I thought the typical food in Barcelona and Spain consisted only of Tapas and Paella.

If you want to try one of the best Paellas in the city go to Salamanca, in La Barceloneta.

Paella is a very typical rice dish in Spain, originally from Valencia.

When I first visited Barcelona in 2005 I remmeber doing what 90% of the tourist in Barcelona do which is to have a Paella right in Las Ramblas de Catalunya .

Even though it was good I thought it was very expensive and it had nothing to envy the Paella that my Spanish grandmother cooked, back in Colombia. The Tapas, on the other hand were good but they didn’t satisfy me completely as a full dish would normally do.

The Iberian ham, very popular in Spain’s gastronomy, is pork and it has a salty taste.

Many years later, in 2016 I finally moved to Europe and I landed first in Barcelona. In the beginning, I decided to cook at home the few Colombian dishes I knew, and other easy dishes like pasta and “Bocadillos”, which are the typical Iberian jam sandwiches with tomato and olive oil that almost everybody knows.

Luckily, six months after I met my Catalan boyfriend who loves cooking. I remember that on our official date he took me for lunh to a Catalan/Japanese restaurant called Sakura Y.

We stuffed our selves with “Gambas al Ajillo” and “Navajas”. The first ones I had tried them before in other dishes like Paella but never by themselves and cooked with garlic. I remmebered I wasn’t very excited in the beginning as I’ve never been a seafood lover but after trying these ones I fall in love with them right away.

The traditional method for preparing this dish is to cook the shrimp and garlic in a terracotta dish called a cazuela de barro.

The Navajas I had never tried or seen them before. They looked exactly like old raisers but viscous. My boyfriend was expectant to see my face Once I tried it and in fact it was a really good surprise. They were very tasty and fresh as if they have just been caught in the Mediterranoan Sea.

Navajas dish / Photo: Dakota24 on Instagram

The next day we went to La Cova Fumada wish is a very famous but modest, old restaurant in La Barceloneta known by the locals for their cooking and fair prices.

Out of the five or six plates we order, what I remember the most was “Chipirones” and the famous “Bombas”, which some say were invented in that same restaurant.

The famous Bomba is a mixture of meat and potato with All i oli, a very good spanish garlic sauce combined with some red spicy souce. The Chipirones were also a major discover, a  baby squid or very small cut­tle­fish deep fried with lemon juice. Absolutely delicious.

After one weekend with a local I discover a very wide range of typical food from Cataluya and after one year living here I know that Paella and Tapas are not the only typical dishes.

If I have to peak my favorite ones I would say the Escalivada and the “Pan amb tomaquet” are my favorite ones. The first one is a mix of vegetables cooked in the oven with salt, garlic and olive oil and the second one is hard bread with spread gralic and squized tomato juice.

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