Barcelona tapas bar serves paradise in a can
December 22, 2005 - Agence France Presse
In another life, he would have been a cocktail wizard or a mad scientist. Instead, he’s Barcelona’s culinary king of canned food.
At Quimet and Quimet, one of Barcelona’s best tapas bars, Quim Perez not only turned the idea of tapas—Spanish finger food—on its ear, but he did it by using nothing but high-quality goods preserved in metal.
The idea sounds intriguing, but suspect: with thousands of other food choices in town, why take a gamble on canned concoctions?
The answer is spilling out the door, a permanent crowd of clients jostling to get a taste of Quim’s magic-from-a-tin.
Baby marinated artichokes, for example, still have crunch. “See these clams?” he says, holding out a box, “these can only be harvested two months a year.” It’s all like this, a catalog of delicacies accumulated by several generations of men—all named Quim—since the bar opened in 1914.
Quim and his father simultaneously exclaim in mock dismay when asked how many different suppliers they use. A quick tally yields a figure of “about 100” from all over the world on a regular basis, with another 50 or so in reserve.
It was about 20 years ago that Perez began to seriously mixing things up. One of his current compositions—a turbo-charged version of his favorite snack while in the military—is a pair of medium-sized mussels on a bed of tomato confit topped with a spoonful of herring eggs, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic glaze and a shake of oregano, served on a round of toasted bread.
Another combines a scoop of Spanish sheep’s milk cheese with a slice of unsweetened green fig paste that has the taste of green tea.
And instead of the limp, salt-encrusted anchovies that are served in many other countries, here, they’re large, plump and tasty.
Quim gets inspiration from experimentation, traveling, food shows, and even the Internet.
He explains that in Spain—unlike most place in the world—canned goods are not stigmatized. Many of Quim’s goodies come from abroad, but most are “made in Spain,” with a large percentage coming from Catalonia.
When asked to pick a favorite product, he balks until an eavesdropping employee whispers, “tell him about the clams”.
To start with, Quim never combines “the clams” (Galician navajas) with anything else, always serving them solo. He buys them “fresh” from the cannery and then puts them in storage for a year or two, a process he equates with aging wine.
A visitor—unable to repress a lifetime prejudice against canned foods—is instructed to sample them “with a spoon so you can get some of the juice”.
“It’s like drinking a beautiful 30-year-old scotch,” Quim says, gesturing to the hundreds of bottles against the bar’s back wall.
Across town, Josep Ravell couldn’t agree more, particularly about the clams. “Two years, three years, four years, they’re wonderful!” he says making the same little spoon-scooping gesture as Quim.
Ravell runs Can Ravell, a specialty food boutique started by his father in 1929. If Quimet and Quimet’s business is 80 percent tapas and 20 percent boutique, Can Ravell is the other way around.
The front of the store is stuffed to the rafters with beautiful desserts. Whole hind legs of cured Iberian ham hang from the ceiling. And hidden in the shadows is a long, wooden table that looks like it was made for special friends or backroom crime bosses.
Ravell’s canned goods are tucked away behind the counter like jewels, and as soon as he sits down, he plunks a large tin on the table with nine small cans of shellfish inside.
“This costs 600 euros (715 dollars),” he says. Then he takes a stab at explaining the price tag: “It’s tradition, it’s social, it’s a question of taste…” Ravell stops and grins.
Ravell also agrees with Perez about how to distance himself from any supermarket competition. “Every product we have comes from where it’s made best,” he says, clearly proud. “We don’t stock products you can find in a supermarket.”
“It’s not a business that will make you a millionaire,” he says, leaning over and touching an old wooden shelf, “but put your hands here and you can feel a heartbeat.”
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