Mitja Galta

When we first step into Mitja Galta, a long line of matrons gaze down at us from the wall to our right. Lola, Antonia, María, Fina… the photos of these women, with their names written on them, are placed one right next to the other on a ledge. Together they watch the dishes served at the tables opposite them, like protective goddesses. They are the mothers of the owners, team members and friends who contributed their favorite recipes last year for the restaurant’s special International Women’s Day menu, which ran over the course of a week in March (the holiday is celebrated on March 8). These personal variations on traditional dishes were named after their creators.

Vella Terra Natural Wine Fair

Despite its reputation as artisanal and aesthetically complex, natural wine is not about perfection, but rather connection – to time, nature, the land, other beings. And Vella Terra Natural Wine Fair, most recently held on February 9-10 in Barcelona, continues on that theme – it’s all about making and strengthening connections within the natural wine sector. For the last five years, this pioneering natural wine fair has been a meeting point for winemakers as well as other artisanal food producers, restaurateurs, consumers, distributors and educators, allowing locals and foreigners to become better acquainted with Catalan and Spanish wines. In the process, Vella Terra has raised the profile of both local natural winemakers and Barcelona as a natural wine center.

Cruix

When you hear something go crunch on the left side of L’Eixample, whether crispy bread or churros, croquettes or socarrat, the toasted bottom of paella, there’s a good chance it came from the kitchen of Miquel Pardo. The 30-year-old chef runs his own restaurant called, appropriately, Cruix (Crunch), a place to have fun with food and discover amazing rice dishes from Castellón, a province in the Valencian Community. A native of this region, Pardo mixes his granny’s sofritos with a creativity inspired by the Adriá brothers, cooking dishes that will fill the stomachs of his relatives and friends, among whom he counts the clients of his restaurant.

Blavis

Think of Blavis in the Sant Gervasi neighborhood as the restaurant equivalent of the iconic Fiat 500 or Mini – perfect for a crowded city and charmingly so. Even though there are only two regular members of staff, this tiny spot packs a powerful punch. Chef and co-owner Marc Casademunt crafts tapas-style plates influenced by local and international cuisines, which are then served by Paco, the friendly waiter. When Marc and his partner, Sonia Devesa, opened the small restaurant in 2008, the financial crisis informed their initial concept: offering an affordable daily lunch menu for workers. In the beginning, they only opened for dinner two nights per week.

Catànies Cudié

In 1949, when the patisserie that Josep Cudié had been working at as head pastry chef for a decade closed, his wife, Antonia Salleras, encouraged him to stop working for others and start working for himself. “Since you’re the creator of all these chocolates,” she said, “why don’t you just open your own business, making the chocolates and selling them to other patisseries?” Fortunately, he took his wife’s advice. Today, Oriol Llopart Cudié, also a pastry chef, is the third generation to run the business and – more importantly – to produce Catànies, his grandfather’s invention. Candied almonds coated with a special praline and bitter cocoa powder, these brown pearls are now one of Catalonia’s most iconic candies.

Agullers

When the couple Juan Pérez Figueras and Mercè Roselló bought in 1991 what is now Restaurante Agullers, it was an old run-down bar in the inner streets of Born, a neighborhood near the Port Vell area. “When I got the place it was totally ruined,” Juan explains. They decided to keep open only a long and narrow front section, creating a small bar-restaurant that specialized in fresh fish. All food was made in front of the clients, on a tiny grill behind the bar. This miniscule spot offering grilled fresh fish really struck a chord, and by the end of its first decade in business, people were lining up at the door.

GatBlau

Vegetables often get short shrift at restaurants – greens, legumes and tubers are relegated to the same tired side dishes, or just one component of many in a generic main, subsumed by the dish’s other ingredients. Not so at GatBlau (literally BlueCat in Catalan), located in the Left Eixample. This restaurant is a shrine to vegetables, showing them anew in all their complexity. Here, the personality of a parsnip, a kohlrabi or any other delicious weirdo from the garden is taken to the next level, refashioned into carpaccio, cake or even rillettes.