A Taste of Barcelona

Widely associated with avant-garde gastronomy and lavish food markets, Barcelona has become a top destination for gourmands and chefs around the world, especially after the spectacular rise of chef Ferran Adrià of the famed elBulli, soon to be reborn as elBulli1846. Barcelona is a city that attracts millions of visitors in search of art and culinary experiences while cookery apprentices from around the world arrive looking to perfect their skills and expand their gastronomic horizon. The city offers an unequaled combination of restaurants, chefs, restauranteurs, media and local government initiatives to help those who arrive seeking an extraordinary culinary experience. But how has the city established itself as a global culinary referent while becoming synonymous with cutting-edge cuisine?



This book narrates Barcelona’s urban and culinary development from the Middle Ages to the present, tracing the origins and the growth of the culinary prestige of this part of Catalonia. Barcelona has been a cosmopolitan center since the 1700s because of its location and busy port. The city has always been well supplied with food, and its residents built a strong culinary tradition enlivened by its contact with other cuisines and novel products afforded by its geographic location and the people who migrated to the area. With literature, painting, music and architecture, cooking has been a crucial activity in creating and maintaining a Catalan identity. Past, present and future visitors of the city will find a fascinating history of the unforgettable culinary importance of one of the most popular cities of Spain.

H. Rosi Song is Professor of Spanish at Bryn Mawr College and author of Lost in Transition: Constructing Memory in Contemporary Spain (2016), and co-editor of the volumes Traces of Contamination: Unearthing Francoist Legacy in Contemporary Spanish Discourse (2005) and Towards a Cultural Archive of la Movida: Back to the Future (2013). She has published widely on contemporary Spanish culture, film and literature. Her frequent travels to Barcelona over almost two decades has have shaped her appreciation and knowledge of Catalan culture and its gastronomic traditions.


Anna Riera teaches Food Studies at Universitat Abat Oliba CEU, where she started the graduate program in Gastronomic and Oenological Communication, the first of its kind in Spain. She lectures on Food & Communication at the Universitat de Barcelona. Informed by her travels in South America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, she has examined the close relationship between landscape and local food culture. She shared these experiences in her radio program Cuina'm in Onda Cero Catalunya (2006-08). A frequent speaker at gastronomy conferences in Spain, she is a writer for and member of the management staff of the magazine supplement Gourmets published by El Periódico de Catalunya.