Editor’s note: Since moving to its new location in L’Eixample, La Perla de Oro has changed its focus from sandwiches to tapas and its menú del día.
Anouchka hails from Extremadura, land of jamón and some of Spain’s best dry-cured sausages. Julien is French and an expert on wine. Together, the husband and wife run La Perla de Oro (“The Gold Pearl”), a pint-sized former colmado (old-style grocery) just off Las Ramblas, where top-notch bocadillos, or baguette sandwiches, are just one of many attractions.
Since opening in 1939, three generations at La Perla have supplied their Raval neighbors with cured sausages, cheeses, preserved foods, salted fish and dried legumes. They became known especially for their bocadillos. When Julien and Anouchka Gautier took over the place from the previous owners in 2008, they kept all the charm as well as the reputation as sandwich makers of distinction, and they also updated the grocery and the bocadillos with gourmet ingredients and a bit of French savoir-faire.
In La Perla, the Gautiers have forged a fine union of ingredients and sensibilities from both sides of the Pyrenees. Garlic braids, dried chilis and herbs, and cured hams hang from the ceiling, French and Spanish wines and tins of duck confit and membrillo line the shelves, and an impressive cheese case holds court at the rear. The tantalizing selection of French, Spanish and Italian cheeses can be purchased to take home or ordered off the menu. Diners can describe to the waiter their preferences – strong or subtle, fresh or aged, firm or meltingly lush – and he’ll put together a quartet for tasting or combine a selection with olives and cured meats.
La Perla also serves a variety of appealing French-inflected tapas, including luscious goose rillettes (a kind of rustic pâté) on toast, a light and elegant smoked cod liver, a remarkable homemade duck foie gras mi-cuit (literally “half-cooked,” but actually slow-cooked fresh liver) available occasionally on weekends, an intense carpaccio of cecina (sliced smoked meat) served with parmigiano cheese and arugula, juicy artichokes in olive oil complemented by salty shards of dry-cured ham and that Burgundian favorite of snails with butter, garlic and parsley. Customers can even order fresh oysters in advance to enjoy at the table with their tapas and some excellent wine or cava selected by Julien.
And what about those famous sandwiches? The Gautiers have the ideal showcase for their excellent ingredients between two slices of baguette. Besides the ever-changing Bocadillo de la Semana (“Sandwich of the Week”), there are cold sandwiches such as the rillettes with cornichons (those tiny tart, crunchy, pickled gherkins), and wild boar headcheese with mustard and lettuce, as well as sandwiches served warm, including the paprika-infused sobrassada, a soft and spreadable dry-cured sausage from Mallorca, with cheese and honey and butifarra, a traditional Catalan cooked sausage, with tomato, onion and lettuce and topped with garlicky romesco, a sauce made from peppers, almonds and breadcrumbs.
The Gautiers haven’t forgotten to give their predecessors their due. The Bocadillo de la Casa – the classic combination of tuna with piquillo peppers and olives – is still on the menu after all these years.
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