Barcelona Part 3

To conclude my culinary journey through Barcelona, here are some more restaurants we visited:

Real Circulo Artistico is a restaurant, bar, galerie for local artists and a museum. The interior of the restaurant is lovely with high ceilings, dark red walls and tall windows leading out to a small plaza. They also have a lovely terace which we did not use as it was quite late when we arrived for dinner. Their wine list is short but impressive. I ordered a pumpkin soup with mascarpone and ravioli with chess and walnut filling in a light creamy sauce. The Marques de Arienzo 2005 Crianza Rioja helped us to enjoy the evening. The soup was silky creamy and the ravioli were perfectly cooked with the right balance of cheese and walnuts.

For Sofie's birthday we headed to Sesamo, a vegetarian restaurant which doesn't pretend to be more than it says on the tin. Staff here are cool and relaxed and super friendly. We were made feel welcome and as we didn't book, we had to wait a bit, but were served a glass of the house wine to ease the pain of waiting. A wait worth. We choose a platter of different starter which included buffalo mozzarella (the real thing), roasted asparagus gratin (simply great) and avocado tempura with spicy carrot dip (I didn't speak until it was finished - words would have interfered with the the enjoyment of the food). I then had Tortellini with cheese and truffle oil, Linda opted for Laksa and curry, Sofie had a mushroom pie with parsnip puree and Guinness gravy (we didn't ask for proof of the real thing). As Becky wanted a dessert she went for a vegetable soup (looking at our plates, she kinda regretted her choice - hehe).

For dessert I chose a chocolate brownie but rather than the caramel sauce it should have been served with, I asked for the cardamon sauce that is normally served with the pumpkin pie. The wine, a Castell del Remei 2006 put the girls in the right mood for the birthday party.