Restaurants with views: from Diagonal to the peaks of Tibidabo

The upper area of Barcelona has a large number of restaurants where you can enjoy a succulent meal or dinner, whatever your favorite gastronomic option may be

By Daniel Vázquez Sallés

Barcelona is a tiered city. From the sea to Tibidabo, the city expands upwards and it is Avenida Diagonal, one of the longest avenues in the city, that splits the metropolis in two, from the district of Sant Martí to the neighborhood of Les Corts, dividing it into two hemispheres: the upper area and the lower area.

When eating is not merely a restorative act, in the upper area you can find magnificent places that turn a feast into pure edible lyricism. The culinary offerings are so varied that every food lover will find a place to enjoy.

Pleasure has something operatic about it, and this gastronomic opera could start at Can Boneta, a small and family-owned restaurant that offers great pleasures born from the dream of Joan, a man who traded bricks for the kitchen, concrete for the aromas of simmering, a metamorphosis that deserved to win the Time Out magazine award in its opening year. A velvety delight like its pork rib prepared sous-vide.

Can Boneta is a borderland restaurant, just like BOB, an oyster bar for gourmets who enjoy bathing their palate in the marine effluvia of oysters brought from France by Thierry Guillemet, a scholar of bivalve mollusks who turns tasting into a celebration. At BOB, it's not all about oysters, as canned goods, roes, cured fish, cheeses, or smoked foods are part of a pleasure fair. Anyone not captivated by the marinated herring had better head to a Fast Food restaurant.

Fermí Puig is an institution of Catalan and Barcelona gastronomy. A sage with magnificent didactic skills as demonstrated in radio programs and in the kitchen of Fermí Puig, his restaurant, from which he champions the corpus of Catalan gastronomy with traditional dishes filtered through the sieve of the 21st century. There is no chef in Barcelona who knows better how to bring the aromas of autumn to the stews. For Puig, the truffle is a diamond in the hands of the best polishers of Antwerp.

And if Puig is a gastronomic institution, Flash Flash, a place that finds its joie de vivre in omelettes, is an aesthetic emblem of a city that always tries to make aesthetics a hallmark. Entering Flash Flash means traveling to a timeless past thanks to the four modern minds that conceived it. Alfonso Milá, architect, Leopoldo Pomés, photographer, Cecilia Santo Domingo, and Karin Leiz. A beautiful restaurant that not only transmits good vibes but also prepares magnificent omelettes.

In Passatje Marimón, two restaurants representative of the new Catalan cuisine coexist. El Coure, with Albert Ventura's signature cuisine with classic hues, and Hisop, with Oriol Ivern's scorpionfish suquet with cauliflower and basil. And at the end of Casanovas Street, we find Casa Paloma, a place where tartares reign supreme on the menu. For those who like fish, there's the scallop tartare with ponsu sauce and salmon roe. For meat lovers, there's the beef tenderloin tartare in the French style.

A few meters from Casa Paloma, there is still a bar called Michigan which, in ancient times, was the headquarters of a Barcelona supporters' club, and in the 90s, the domain of a Galician man with an unmistakable accent who made the best potato omelette in the city. But every dream comes to an end, just like the best cooking, and the owner transferred his business and the omelettes ceased to be small hemispheres of pleasure to become the dream of a family from the far east.

There is no need to travel to the far east for the traveler, a little north of Michigan, to embark on a route of transversal pleasures starting with Els Pinxus, a restaurant of dishes and tapas whose essence lies in its fantastic fuet tartare. Tartar dreams with a Catalan aroma, oriental realities like the Vietnamese cuisine of Indochine and its sweet and sour prawns with citrus leaf and zucchini sauce.

Vietnam took many years to recover from the wounds of war, and its cuisine has been the best introduction, as is the Beefer oven and the 800 degrees used by Restaurant 130 to sear the food and create a crispy layer on the outside while keeping a juicy tenderness inside.

But if we're looking for juiciness, we must make a mandatory stop at 99 Sushi Bar, just a few steps from Casa Tejada, a classic among the classics of Barcelona. 99 Sushi Bar, a restaurant with origins in Madrid, deserves special attention. Without a doubt, it is one of the best Japanese restaurants in Barcelona for dishes that, while maintaining the essence of high Japanese cuisine, manage to blend in with refined Iberian flavors. Mackerel tartare marinated with ginger, ocal oil and ponzu, Santoña anchovy nigiri and sardine, or wild boar gyozas with caramelized onion, Arzúa cheese and pilonga chestnut infusion are a true treaty of peace between East and West.

Immeasurable gyozas like the ones seen. If we look up to the sky, we will see the Olympus of the upper Barcelona area with the Collserola Range acting as a natural barrier and the Tibidabo Amusement Park as the cherry on top of a wooded cake.

To reach the summit of that mini mountain range, there are two climbing routes that have, of course, mandatory stops for demanding foodies. If one wishes to ascend via Avenida del Tibidabo, Michelin star enthusiasts must make a stop at ABAC, a restaurant built in the house that once belonged to Doctor Andreu, inventor of some famous cough lozenges. Under the direction of Master Chef Jordi Cruz, at ABAC one can enjoy a splendid culinary symphony. Don't forget to look to your right to admire the restored Rotonda.

For those who love views without vertigo, the best thing to do is to go up the avenue until reaching the point where the Tibidabo funicular starts, and enjoy the market cuisine of La Venta, a beautiful place rooted opposite the terrace of Merveyé, a bar that livens up its cocktails with jazz music and which Loquillo, a famous rock singer from the suburbs, gave a touch of melancholic stage in his song Lonely Cadillac.

If one prefers to reach Tibidabo from the west, it is mandatory to cross Sarriá, a neighborhood with a village-like appearance that harbors one of the great national treasures of cuisine, el Tomás, a bar where they know how to pour beer without speculation and where they prepare the best patatas bravas on the planet until proven otherwise. Patatas bravas are a magnificent appetizer before enjoying the cuisine of Tram Tram, a restaurant managed by Isidre Soler, a solitary climber of the culinary world who remains oblivious to culinary marketing, offering diners a menu full of calm and emphatic pleasures such as the D.O. Segovia Suckling Pig with Puigcerdà pear compote.

And for the bravest, for those who like to discover places far from the tourist-beaten paths, it is highly recommended to reach the summit of Barcelona via Vallvidrera, a small village with the aspirations of a country. There, in its non-square, there's a popular cuisine restaurant that prepares macaroni to lick your fingers in the style of our parents' grandmothers. Casa Trampa is the fantastic epilogue of a culinary journey through the upper area of Barcelona. There, the wine with soda tastes like heaven, and it's just a few steps away from The Corner hotel.

Daniel Vázquez Sallés (Barcelona, 1966) is a writer, screenwriter, and regular contributor to various media outlets, often covering topics related to gastronomy and cinema. He graduated in Information Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and studied film at New York University. Among his bibliography, the novels 'Lena', 'Si levantara la cabeza', 'El intruso', 'La fiesta ha terminado', and 'Flores negras para Roddick' stand out, as well as the memoir 'Recuerdos sin retorno: para Manuel Vázquez Montalbán', in which the author tells his father, who passed away in 2003 at the Bangkok airport, what has happened in the world since his death.