Set lunch Barcelona

I always include a visit to Cafe de l'Acadèmia in the Gothic Quarter. Usually by myself, I prefer to sit at the bar with the old timers and local businessmen.
https://m.facebook.com/pages/Café-de-lAcadèmia/155222511190872

I'd avoid anywhere along Las Ramblas, far too expensive and a real tourist trap. Whilst restaurant reviews are very subjective I consider myself a bit of a food snob and after some disappointing meals we found this restaurant, http://www.maur.es/en/maur-urgell/ which is about a ten minute walk from the centre of Las Ramblas and the food was very good and a set three course lunch including 1/2 litre of house wine for €11.50 is excellent value.

We had dinner at Paco Merlago, and it was excellent. They do offer lunch, but I am not sure about set prices.

http://www.restaurantpacomeralgo.com/home/

Hi Julie,

For info:

Most of the restaurants in Barcelona, and there are literally thousands, will offer you a menu-del-dia (set price lunch) at lunchtime from Mon to Fri, some even on weekends too. Prices vary from 10-15€ in the vast majority of them, albeit at the high-end restaurants these are more likely to be from 20€ upwards.

By law, the restaurant's menu (including prices) is announced outside the premises, by the door, so the customer can check it without having to go inside. Normally, menu-del-dia is also announced there, on a separate quite visible sign. There are literally a lot of restaurants offering menu-del-dia, and you can find them always at a few minutes walk from wherever you might be, just check out for the words "Menú del dia". Many restaurants have their regular menu ("la carta") in other languages as well (ie. English or French among other), but not necessarily the menu-del-dia as this changes daily. However, waiters are accustomed to serving foreign guests so most of them will gladly help you to figure it out.

Menu-del-dia, for those not familiar with the concept, consists of a three-course meal: starter, main dish and dessert accompanied by water or wine or, sometimes, other beverages (ie, beer, Coke, soda...) that are offered, at a very reasonable price, in the vast majority of restaurants of the city at lunchtime. They tend to be a subset of existing dishes at the restaurant's regular menu, so quality is generally up to par.

The reason for menu-del-dia is to cater the hundreds of thousands of Barcelonians that, due to time or distance constraints, cannot go back home for lunch. The competition is so great that many restaurants have, over time, "sophisticated" their offer and these days it's not unusual to find some of them offering very elaborated delicacies in a "simple" menu-del-dia.

Something else, of course, is the overall quality of the restaurant in question... that boils down to the restaurant's marketing policies, the cook's abilities and the customer's expectations, of course. So, much like when eating "a la carte", sometimes it's a bit of a lottery, LOL!

IMPORTANT: menu-del-dia is normally offered in restaurants, but not necessarily in tapas bars or another type of eateries.

Also, note that most office workers will go for lunch between 2pm and 3pm and shop assistants/owners between 2pm and 4pm so expect the restaurants to be very busy in those periods.

Enjoy!

(PS: I have to grant you that some restaurant owners are a bit humorous)

Saving thread.

I had a set lunch last year at Ella y Fred, excellent. €15. It's in El Born, a couple blocks from Palau de la Musica.

One other point: The special-menu listings tend to be very non-descriptive. You'll rarely find lists of ingredients, because there's usually not room on the board for more than the name of the dish. It will be helpful to have a list of Catalan menu terms.

Uff Ann, that's a tall order, when I have time I will give it a try. In the meantime here some bits and pieces: https://www.timeout.com/barcelona/restaurants/catalan-food-dictionary Note though that menus-del-dia are offered in all sorts of restaurants, not only in those serving Catalan cuisine (the local one), therefore the list of potential dishes you'd see in a menu-del-dia would be quite large. My advice is to ask the waiter... many are used to get visitors asking :))

Thank you all so much for your suggestions! Enrich do you live in Barcelona? Do you have any musts?

Thank you all so much for your suggestions! Enrich do you live in Barcelona? Do you have any musts?

I'm pretty sure there's a Catalan menu translater out there on the internet that I came across as I was planning last year's trip, but I have no idea where I encountered it.

I never mind asking a server a quick question, but they are usually busy at lunchtime, so I wouldn't expect them to translate all the menu del dia options for me (often 4 or 5 choices for each of three courses).

When I made my post, I was thinking of these two experiences in Spain (not necessarily in Catalunya):

• I pointed to something on a menu and asked, "Is this fish?" Probably in Castilian, but at this point, I don't remember. The server said "Yes", so I ordered it. It turned out to be squid, which I happen to like, so it was fine, but most Americans would not consider squid to be "fish", though we'd include it in the "seafood" category. I don't think it's fair or prudent to expect servers to make that type of distinction.

• Salads may appear on a menu del dia list with a single adjective, the equivalent of our use of terms like "Caesar salad". The devil is in the details.

Somewhere I recieved a link to a trilingual menu document -Eng, Catalan, Spanish. I even printed it, but no reference left on the printed page. i'll try to resurrect it.

We enjoyed a set lunch at La Lluna last October - price was around 15 euro as I recall. Located in a beautiful historic boutique hotel about a block off La Rambla on Santa Anna street. Would definitely return on future trip to Barcelona.

Found it
http://www.webarcelona.net/dictionary-catalan-and-spanish-cuisine

Thanks to JC for the Maur-Urgell recommendation. This restaurant is close to the hotel where we will be staying in October. I'm not sure if we'll ever be in the neighborhood at lunch time, but we will definitely check it out for dinner.

Thanks Maria... it's a useful link indeed. I'll keep it in my notes for recommending in the future.

However, note two things: as I said earlier, most restaurants in Barcelona offer a set lunch but by no means all restaurants specialise in Catalan food (or Mediterranean food for that matter), in fact, there's a large variety of cuisines on offer -even for set menus-, so this dictionary is only partially useful.

Secondly, for those that enjoy fish, here in Catalonia fish has always been a very important industry and part of our Mediterranean diet since very ancient times, and you'll find every now and then that the same type of fish has different names depending on which part of the coast you're in. I know it can be annoying but if it helps, we Catalan natives suffer the same problem when moving about. I am Barcelonian and have my share of "debates" when eating somewhere say in Costa Brava or in Delta de l'Ebre because they use different names sometimes, especially for what we call peix de costa (literally: coastal fish) or also peix de roca (literally: rock fish, because some species live in the rocks near the coast), which relates to the type of fish caught near the coast -as opposed to high seas. There are literally dozens of species grouped as peix de costa. That's why it makes it so cumbersome sometimes to order in different parts of Catalonia. Peix de costa is often used in our suquets (typical fisherman’s stews) and also in fumets de peix (a reduced and seasoned fish stock used as base for many recipes)

For those enthusiastic about fish, these are some of the fish you'll find in fishmongers and restaurants in Catalonia and on pages 10 to 17 on this other brochure you'll see the most consumed, both fish and shellfish.

@Ann as per your anecdote about squid... in Catalan -also in Spanish (Castillian)- for us "seafood" includes everything caught in the sea, and then it is classified in either fish or in shellfish (yeah then there are further sub-classifications, but for the matter at hand it doesn't matter now). So, although squid and octopus are considered shellfish the fact they don't have a hard shell like say oysters, mussels or prawns, makes a lot of people think they're not shellfish and group them with the other major category: fish. Obviously, there could be a far easier explanation: maybe you spoke in English and the waiter wasn't proficient at it, LOL!

Could be, but I think I had the sense to use Castilian. You're right about fish names; they are a problem everywhere, in my experience. Since I like everything I've ever eaten with fins, I don't pay too much attention, basically just using the categories of salmon, monkfish, tuna, swordfish and everything else. Then there's the fillet vs. not-a-fillet distinction.

Then you stumbled with a useless waiter indeed, LOL!