La Barca del Salamanca, Barcelona

La Barca del Salamanca is one of many seafood restaurants in Barcelona's Port Olymico, a trendy place to eat and drink and watch the world go by. Back in September 2008 I was organising a training course for about 40 people and our local secretary recommended this for one of our evening meals.

Since no bars or restaurants really get going in Barcelona until at least 9pm, we'd all been out touring the city in Go Cars (cute little vehicles ...
...there at around 9.30pm. Finding La Barca del Salamanca wasn't too difficult because we had some local colleagues with us but I think even without their help, we would have found it hard to miss.

We were given a massive table seating about 40 people which was located in an enormous tented seating area. Despite the weather outside being wet and miserable, the tent was quite cosy, no doubt due to environmentally callous patio heaters. ... more

La Barca del Salamanca is one of many seafood restaurants in Barcelona's Port Olymico, a trendy place to eat and drink and watch the world go by. Back in September 2008 I was organising a training course for about 40 people and our local secretary recommended this for one of our evening meals.

Since no bars or restaurants really get going in Barcelona until at least 9pm, we'd all been out touring the city in Go Cars (cute little vehicles with on-board sat nav and a running commentary) and after we dropped the cars back at their base, our coach picked us up and took us to the harbour, dropping us there at around 9.30pm. Finding La Barca del Salamanca wasn't too difficult because we had some local colleagues with us but I think even without their help, we would have found it hard to miss.

We were given a massive table seating about 40 people which was located in an enormous tented seating area. Despite the weather outside being wet and miserable, the tent was quite cosy, no doubt due to environmentally callous patio heaters. The night before and the night after we visited this restaurant, the restaurants we used had all asked us to pre-select small set menus to ensure that service would be slick and efficient and I had wondered why this restaurant hadn't asked us to do that, especially when the waiters brought us menus as thick as a telephone directory and left everyone puzzled about what on earth was going on. With such a massive table, everyone was quite spread out so you can imagine that in no time at all, the place was bedlam with everyone having to shout to their neighbours and nobody sure what the routine was supposed to be.

One of the local colleagues stepped in and ordered a bunch of different starters so that nobody had to think too much about what they wanted and then the waiters went round the table and basically ignored the menus they'd delivered earlier and bullied everyone into having either paella, a mixed seafood plate or steak and chips. To be honest, I wasn't comfortable with the way they did this and I think everyone was left feeling they'd been rail-roaded into choosing quite expensive dishes without really understanding what choices they could have had if we'd been a smaller party.

Something similar seemed to be going on with the wine and by this stage I'd totally lost any sense of control that I'd ever had. Drinks were appearing from all sides, ice buckets plonked down at intervals and I just gave up and thanked my lucky stars that my boss was there and I could probably get him to pick up the tab for 40 people's over-priced tourist dinners.

Starters began to arrive and I can't complain at all about the variety or the quantity. Lots of Catalan bread - the local version of what the Italians would call bruschetta - were piled up on the table, dripping with squished tomato , garlic and olive oil. Heaps of Jamon Iberica were passed back and forth. My favourite were the teeny tiny fried baby octopus-like things which were absolutely delicious. Tiny fried fish and lots of great nibbly things kept appearing and I dug in like I had three stomachs. After all, it was by now so noisy that you could scarcely hear yourself think so eating seemed to be the best option.

When the main courses arrived they were absolutely colossal. I swear I didn't know whether to eat mine or climb it, it was that big. I'd ordered the seafood plate and it was easily big enough for three people. There was half a lobster, masses of giant and gargantuan members of the prawn family, squid, octopus, chewy weirdoes that looked like the inside of a crab but had the texture of octopus. I don't even know what half of the things were. There was no accompaniment ; no salad, potatoes or vegetable to break up the mass of protein I was faced with. I ate for all I was worth but there was no possible way I was going to conquer the challenge of the seafood plate. I felt annoyed and exploited that the restaurant was so obviously taking advantage of the chaos of a large group to sell us dishes that were far beyond what we needed or what we could manage to get through. I also felt immensely relieved that the restaurant hadn't been my choice and so I couldn't really take the blame when the bill would arrive later in the evening.

The amount of food wasted around the table was shocking and shameful. A rather chubby chap sitting next to me was sweating with the effort of tackling his steak and chips and about to admit defeat about half way through. But even with all the will in the world, there was just far too much food for any normal human beings to do justice to what was offered.

After the table was cleared and was no longer groaning under the weight of the leftovers, a few brave souls took a crack at dessert but most of us asked for coffees. Bottles of strangely pungent looking liqueur were dropped off around the table with lots of glasses, completely unclear whether this was something included in the meal or to be charged separately. By this stage I'd given up wondering what this feast was going to cost and was just looking for an excuse to escape from the noise and bustle of the restaurant. Whilst nobody was paying too much notice, I grabbed a few colleagues, told the boss we were off and we sloped off to head back to the hotel.

I felt physically ill by the amount of food and my system was overwhelmed by the amount of protein and the lack of any vegetables. Unfortunately my normal food habits of eating mostly vegetarian food with the odd bit of fish or sea food was completely thrown out by the food at La Barca and I spent most of the night in the bathroom and my guts really weren't back to normal for the following week.

There's nothing subtle about the food at this restaurant and nothing cheap either. I shudder to think what the bill came to for 40 people - some of the dishes we were being forced to choose for main courses were over 30 Euros per head. If you are looking for a mountain of protein served fresh and tasty but in portions that would have over-faced King Henry the 8th at his hungriest, then this might be just the place for you. But for me, it was over-priced, over-sized, far too noisy and I didn't enjoy the aggressive service and manipulative ways of the waiters. Mind you, of the three nights out we had that week, a fair few of my colleagues thought this was the best of the meals we had and loved what they perceived to be the 'authenticity' of the experience. Each to their own I suppose.

 

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