Deep in the heart of El Born lies a medieval labyrinth of dark stone buildings and massive wooden doors, scant light, narrow passageways and dozens of colorful little shops, ateliers and hidden bars and restaurants. Of the last, La Cua Curta is one of our favorites, a family restaurant specializing in cheese fondue, unusual salads, carpaccios of meat and fish, homemade pâtés and a remarkable veal steak.
Fondues were always the go-to special dinner in the home of Carmen Cid and Luis Barberá, especially when their children Alex, Carmen and Inma and other relatives and friends joined them. More than 30 years ago, Luis and Alex hit upon the idea of opening a restaurant offering the vegetable fondues that Carmen served at home. Today, the family owns two such restaurants, one in Cambrils (a beach village in Tarragona province), where Carmen is still cooking and Alex managing, and the original venue in Barcelona, which nowadays is run by daughters Carmen and Inma.
The first restaurant, in El Born, sits in an 18th-century building, an old olive oil shop that was in business until the 1930s. When the space was renovated for the restaurant in 1982, the family kept the interior arches, the original hand-painted tile and the pulleys that were used to move the big oil vats. Today, these elements, along with the old marble tables in the room and the family’s collection of tribal masks, modern paintings and travel photos, provide a warm atmosphere with a personal touch that makes Cua Curta the perfect place for intimate but informal dinners.
The restaurant is best known for its cheese fondue, which is served with slices of baguette and cut-up potatoes, carrots, apples, grapes and strawberries. The menu offers a variety of European cheeses, but for the most authentic Catalan flavor, we recommend adding a touch of Tupí to a base of Emmental and Gruyère. Tupí is the name of the clay pot used for the fermentation of this old Catalan cheese from Pyrenees, as well as of the intensely flavored cheese itself, which is made primarily of sheep’s milk, sometimes also with a little cow’s or goat’s milk, and fermented with a bit of high-octane liquor.
To complement the fondue, Cua Curta offers a variety of carpaccios, or thinly sliced veal, duck, cod, tuna, salmon or mango dressed with ginger, berry or pepper vinaigrettes. The homemade pâtés include a soft and creamy country-style version with raisins and prunes and served with onion confit, pomegranate seeds and slices of olive and whole-grain bread. Among the unconventional salads, there’s one made of rice with a mushroom vinaigrette, as well as our favorite, which combines lettuce, orange segments, strawberries and Parmesan and is dressed with a melted chocolate vinaigrette – the perfect union of vice and virtue on one plate. And then there’s that fantastic veal steak, which comes from animals raised in the Pyrenees. It’s liberally coated with herbs and truffle oil and comes to the table mounted on an ingenious little spit, cooking over its own flame and emanating the wonderful fragrances of the forest.
Homemade desserts include a lemon cake sprinkled with Ratafía, a Catalan digestif made with more than 30 herbs, and the Xixona, a soft nugget of semifreddo. And last but definitely not least is the licor de crema d’arroz that caps it all off. This artisanal rice liqueur hails from the Delta del Ebre, at the end of the Ebro River in the very south of Catalonia, which is also where Carmen and Luis’s family comes from. White, dense and sweet, the liqueur is made from Catalan rice by a local producers’ cooperative. A percentage of the proceeds from sales of the drink goes toward protecting the delta’s natural habitat.
Warmed all over by the melted cheese and flame-cooked steak and fortified by the liqueur, we are happy to venture out again into the mysterious, winding passageways of El Born, on the lookout for other culinary surprises around the next corner.
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