The Food File is on a brief holiday, currently sunning itself on the sand by the Spanish seaside. In the interim, I'll be putting up more posts on my other blog, From Bath to Barcelona.
This was the last evening of our stay in Barcelona. In fact it was the last day of our two-week visit to Spain. But it was March 11 and, after following the awful news from Japan all day, we weren't feeling much like living it up.
Nonetheless, we decided to go and have a look at Tickets. Not that we were expecting to do more than press our noses against the windows and peer inside. After all, this is the new venture involving Ferran Adria and we knew it was booked solid three months ahead.
So here's a video (handheld and shaky), which gives the idea of what it's like on the outside looking in.
After watching the doorman giving short shrift to the Spanish family with their wailing baby, we felt justified in our decision not to get dressed up for the evening. He wasn't going to let us in with all the glitterati anyway, was he?
Turned out he was. Not to the eating area of Tickets, though, but to the in-house cocktail bar at the back. It's called 41 Degrees — the latitude of Barcelona, it seems — and it's the flashest part of the whole place.
Better yet, the bar snacks are all tidbits that were first developed at El Bulli and served there over the years. Such as the "green olives"...
I'll drop a whole post shortly about the rest of the snacks (now up here...) For the time being, here's our cocktail waiter shaking up another martini for me.
Well, obviously Tokyo — or at least Shibuya — didn't go big on the Spanish national sweet-tooth snack. The San Ginés churros shop at the top of Spain-zaka is already dead and boarded up. It didn't even last a year.
All that's left is the menu outside...
...and a small corner of the original outside decor:
Now the only place in Tokyo (that we are aware of) where we can pick up churros is here – in Hiroo...
Donosti — nickname for Donostia, the Basque name for the city known to the rest of Europe as San Sebastian. It's a lovely place, close to perfect in its layout and architecture (not to mention its outstanding gastronomic possibilities).
From the medieval churches, streets and plazas of the old city... .to the art nouveau detailing on the buildings in the new(er) neighborhoods, it's an outstanding place just to stroll around.
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