At first glance, Restaurant Roma doesn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary. The nondescript brown tiles covering the floors, the dark wood bar, the vaguely Mediterranean-inspired wall décor and the rectangular paper Ikea lamps are similar to those at hundreds of other midrange restaurants throughout Barcelona. Situated on a quiet street in residential Sant Gervasi, Roma isn’t somewhere you’d be likely to come across accidentally, nor is it the kind of place you’d happen to hear about, unless you (or your aunt, or coworker or a friend of a friend) lived nearby. And that would be a shame because the food at Roma is good – ridiculously delicious, in fact.

Editor’s note: This post wraps up “Spring (Food) Break 2013,” our weeklong look at the favorite foods of the spring season in each city Culinary Backstreets covers. In Spain, preserving the rituals of Lent – historically a period of 40 days of prayer, penance and pious abstinence from eating meat that leads up to Easter – was up until the second half of the 20th century mostly the responsibility of priests. Nowadays, however, it is more often the country’s chefs who are shaping the observance of Lent, by both maintaining and updating its delicious culinary traditions, which are still very much a part of Spain’s contemporary food culture.

In Spain, preserving the rituals of Lent – historically a period of 40 days of prayer, penance and pious abstinence from eating meat that leads up to Easter – was up until the second half of the 20th century mostly the responsibility of priests. Nowadays, however, it is more often the country’s chefs who are shaping the observance of Lent, by both maintaining and updating its delicious culinary traditions, which are still very much a part of Spain’s contemporary food culture.