Da Greco Restaurant, Barcelona

Da Greco came with quite a recommendation; our big boss had been twice and had apparently liked it very much. And he's Italian – so the local guys figured it must be a good Italian restaurant if Marco liked it. So when the monthly business review meeting went to Barcelona, the locals booked Da Greco (well the results hadn't been great in January so thet thought they'd better give the boss his favourite restaurant!)

==Finding ...
...the city. Da Greco has a great location on the Passeig de Gracia (although their business card says Paseo de Gracia). From the outside I would never have guessed there was a restaurant behind the blanked out windows. For all we could see it could have been a shop, an office, or anything else inside. To say it's discrete and unassuming would be fair – if you didn't know the restaurant was there, you'd not be likely to notice it. There's no board outside ... more

Da Greco came with quite a recommendation; our big boss had been twice and had apparently liked it very much. And he's Italian – so the local guys figured it must be a good Italian restaurant if Marco liked it. So when the monthly business review meeting went to Barcelona, the locals booked Da Greco (well the results hadn't been great in January so thet thought they'd better give the boss his favourite restaurant!)

Finding It

We all hopped into taxis and headed into the city. Da Greco has a great location on the Passeig de Gracia (although their business card says Paseo de Gracia). From the outside I would never have guessed there was a restaurant behind the blanked out windows. For all we could see it could have been a shop, an office, or anything else inside. To say it's discrete and unassuming would be fair – if you didn't know the restaurant was there, you'd not be likely to notice it. There's no board outside or menu to tempt you in; it seems to be the sort of place you have to know about in order to find it. It's a little local secret that few tourists are likely to stumble upon.

First Impressions

Once everyone had assembled outside, we opened a heavy wooden door and headed inside. The interior was a real surprise after such an understated exterior. In a traditional Italian style, there were quite a lot of small booths but also a bizarre and eclectic collection of often very large bronzes. One of particular note was a near life-size bronze of a man riding an emu – or was it an ostrich? I always get those two muddled. Either way, a man on a very large bird.

Our table was long and oval in shape but most noticeably it was nowhere near big enough for the number of guests. They'd laid it for about 22 people and the plates were so tightly placed that there was no space for side plates. The chairs were so close together that many couldn't be pulled up to the table properly. It was crazy. We joked that nobody who liked to eat any way other than with their elbows tucked tightly to their sides would survive. Above the table was a very large chandelier – large but also very dusty and desperately in need of a damned good clean.

Whining about the wine

Normally I would expect to be asked for orders for aperitifs whilst we waited for the rest of the group to arrive. This just didn't happen. Eventually the staff brought bottled water – the horrible Vichy Catalana (which must surely be the most salty mineral water in Europe) and bottles of more acceptable still water. One of the local team chose the wine and bizarrely went for Gewuertztraminer for the white wine – surely a bit of a controversial choice for a large group. It's a wine I like a lot (when it's a good one) but it's a risky choice as most people don't know it and many don't like it. The red was from north western Spain but wasn't a type I was familiar with. Unfortunately the big boss decided the Gewuertztraminer was 'corked' and insisted on sending it back. Personally I'm not so sure but nobody was going to argue with him and even I could tell it wasn't great.

Under Starter's Orders

Eventually they came to take the food orders – by this time we'd all polished off the bread rolls which were disappointingly dull bread of the part-baked variety that you wouldn't ever see used in Italy. The local boss chose a bunch of starters so we needed only to pick main courses which undoubtedly made things easier. The menu was strange with a wide variety of prices which didn't seem to make a lot of sense. Many of the starters were as expensive or more expensive that the main courses. The cheaper main courses were very good value with pasta dishes from around €7.50 but bizarrely spaghetti with clams was more than 3 times the price of a spaghetti putanesca.

Before the starters arrived we received two massive lumps of grano padano parmesan each with a little cheese knife sticking out of the top. I'd say each of these pieces would probably have cost about £40-50 in the UK so it was quite a generous gesture. Next the assorted starters arrived with several plates each of caprese salad (mozzarella and tomato slices), large head and shell-on prawns with pink sauce and lots of thinly sliced Spanish ham. Tucking our elbows neatly in, we tucked in to the food. The colleague next to me was still reeling from the shock of the Vichy Catalan water and the saltiness of the starters and commented that before we even hit the main courses, we'd probably had more than a day's worth of salt.

Spare Plates of Pasta and Risotto

Main courses arrived with some confusion. Each pasta or risotto dish that had been ordered seemed to have triggered a couple of 'spare' plates for everyone else to taste. Thus when the allegedly 'famous' risotto parmesan arrived for those who had ordered it, there were a couple more that the rest of us could taste. I'd ordered spaghetti putanesca and several extra plates of that also showed up. I wasn't at all keen on the parmesan risotto even though it's supposed to be a real speciality of this restaurant. I thought the rice was much too hard and the sauce too sticky. I'd been warned that the putanesca sauce would be 'spicy' but it wasn't noticeably so (except to the Spanish colleagues who don't seem to 'do' spicy). There was an excellent filled pasta with ceps mushrooms that was so delicious that I took a second forkful as it made its rounds.

Three people sitting near me had ordered a 'three-pasta' offer which meant they got first a small plate of the filled pasta, then a small plate of the spaghetti putanesca and finally a small lasagne. This seemed like a good option and if I'd been there in a smaller group, I'd probably have tried something like that. The colleague to my other side was tucking into a nice fillet of turbot which he again commented was 'salty'. Living in the UK we're no longer used to salty food and since the food industry has been under pressure to reduce the salt content of just about everything in the UK over the last few years it makes us very sensitive to over-salted foods.

Temptation at Dessert Time

Desserts were all on the heavy side and most people opted for the relatively light choice of sorbets and ice-creams which came in a wide range of flavours. My over-salted colleague asked me if I knew what Tarte Tatin was and after I'd explained it, I'd pretty much talked myself into having the same choice. Well I guess I can kid myself that the masses of fat and sugar were offset by a hefty dose of apple. Finding a traditional French dessert on an Italian menu in Spain was a bit of a surprise but there were other more predictably Italian options such as tiramisu. The Tarte Tatin was very good and one colleague pronounced it almost as good as her own recipe.

With a few coffees at the end of the meal and the bill paid, it was time to attempt to extricate ourselves from the table, find our coats and hit the cold night air. We had a better look at the bizarre bronzes on the way out and then headed back to the hotel. For me it had been an interesting restaurant but not one to which I'd rush back. It seemed that more effort had gone into the décor than into the (rather second-rate) food and it certainly wasn't up to the standards of even a basic restaurant in Italy.

Recommendation?

I discussed the meal with a Belgian colleague the next morning and he told me that he'd popped upstairs to use the toilets and seen a giant and very empty table upstairs that could have easily and comfortably sat the entire group with space to spare. He felt cheated and disappointed that we'd all been squeezed into far too small a space and I was inclined to agree with him. He also commented that he thought all the food was far too salty so it wasn't just us grumpy Brits that thought the chef had been a bit heavy-handed with the salt-pot.

 

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