Each year at the end of May, more than 12,000 penyistes and 200,000 hungry visitors devour 12 tons of snails in one mere weekend in the city of Lleida, the capital of Catalonia’s interior. The Aplec del Caragol (“Snail Gathering”) is now an internationally known gastronomic event of impressive magnitude. Just under two hours inland from Barcelona by car and an hour by high-speed train, Lleida is an easy trip worth taking, especially in late spring, when friends and families gather to eat and drink with abandon. Typical foods prepared by the colles (gangs) of penyistes (participants) who register together and participate in the Aplec every year (sometimes for decades without fail) include paella, fideuà (a typical pasta preparation), grilled meats and sausages, stews and salads. However, the tender, tasty land snail is the main attraction.

Spain – and of course Barcelona – has always been a breeding ground for creative types in the kitchen. There’s an ever-increasing number of restaurants that take as inspiration first traditional preparations and update them with ingredients from a global pantry, yet keep their local soul intact. It’s a common thread among many young chefs in this town, and it has created a culinary scene that feels modern, unexpected – and personal. Let’s throw in an additional twist: a chef who’s not Spanish.

Some restaurants are enjoyable because they continually offer surprising, innovative creations, while others we like for the opposite reason: because they are reliable in their simplicity and homey traditional preparations.

Coca is a word used in Catalonia and neighboring regions for many kinds of baked doughs and pastries, both sweet and savory. The Catalan and Occitan word has the same root as “cake” and comes from the Dutch word kok, which entered the local lexicon during the reign of the Carolingians in Catalonia (759-809)

Editor’s note: We regret to report that El Kaiku has closed. “We have paper tablecloths and napkins on the tables for two reasons: to not forget our roots as a workers’ canteen and because we prefer to spend the money on good product for our customers.” That was how Rafa Alberdi explained to us one of the keys to his restaurant, El Kaiku. Located in Barceloneta in front of what was once shipyards, the working man’s bar was transformed into an excellent neighborhood restaurant, where diners can enjoy cooking with traditional roots and modern leanings made from locally harvested seafood and other ingredients. The lovely terrace, one of our favorites in this city, is a boon as the weather warms up.

Update: Poncelet Cheese Bar is sadly no longer open.  In the first part of our series on Catalan cheeses, we wrote about very old traditions – going as far back as the Middle Ages and perhaps even further – including the practice of transhumance by shepherds in the Pyrenees. As cheese expert Eva Vila explained to us, up until the 1980s, many artisanal cheeses were hard to come by; they could only be found in the small, often remote villages or farms where they were made.

Bars and literature are like bees and flowers: two separate worlds linked to each other through a symbiotic relationship that benefits both. Writers and characters have been the natural inhabitants of taverns and pubs in Dublin and London, bohemian cafés in France, Vienna and Madrid, and, of course, the old neighborhood restaurants and bodegas of Barcelona.

Update: Poncelet Cheese Bar is sadly no longer open. Many gastronauts come to Barcelona in search of tapas or cutting-edge cooking, but rarely cheese. We think that should change. Catalonia, after all, produces the greatest variety of artisan cheeses of all the regions in Spain, with more than 150 kinds at last count, many of them made by small producers or in milk cooperatives in the mountains using both pasteurized and raw milk from cows, sheep or goats. While in the past, in order to taste these cheeses, one had to travel to the often-tiny village where a specific cheese was made, nowadays it’s much easier to find them at markets, specialized shops, restaurants and bars in Barcelona.

In the windy coastal region south of Barcelona, surrounded by the wide vineyards of Baix Penedès, entire families are decked out in winter gear and ready to eat … some salad! In the late 19th century, the word xató (pronounced “sha-TOH”) first appeared in writing in the Catalan press. Just as the name for the dish paella is borrowed from the name of the pan that is used to prepare it, xató originally referred to a sauce, but is now the name for a specific salad preparation. Practically unavoidable in the towns of Baix Penedès, Alt Penedès and Garraf (sub-regions that lie between the provinces of Barcelona and Tarragona), xató is surprisingly rare on restaurant menus in Barcelona proper, just under an hour away.

Pere Valls Isart is passionate about his restaurant, Bilbao, which his family bought, with the name already in place, in 1954. “This is the thing that I most love in the world,” he told us. “This is my life!” Bilbao is an old-school neighborhood restaurant of the first degree, with two comfortable rooms appointed with mismatched vintage – yet impeccably maintained – marble tables, colorful paintings, photos, drawings and infinite memories.

Salt cod has been a staple on the Iberian Peninsula for centuries, but in the last few decades overfishing and changes in eating habits have resulted in a significant drop in bacallà consumption. Only recently has the fish begun returning in greater numbers to our tables, and it has also become the focal point for an annual gastronomic celebration: La Ruta del Bacallà. There’s a popular saying on the Iberian Peninsula that there is one cod recipe for every day of the year, but in truth, the number is upwards of 500. In Spain, there are hundreds of cod recipes dating from the Middle Ages, with a multitude of regional variations. The most notable and sophisticated ones come from Basque country and Catalonia.

Here we are in the Bishop’s Belly, La Panxa del Bisbe, which is not the midsection of a Catalan priest, but both a restaurant and a mountain. The latter is one of the peaks of the sacred Catalan mountain of Montserrat, so-called because its shape evokes a small head over a rotund, pronounced belly. It’s frequented by numerous mountain lovers, like Xavi Codina, chef and owner of a restaurant that he named in honor of the peak. The restaurant La Panxa del Bisbe sits not in Montserrat, but in upper Gràcia, in Barcelona, very close to Codina’s home.

Editor’s note: We regret to report that Can Manel has closed. We don’t mind winter in Catalonia because it means the return of calçots, our beloved spring onions, and calçotadas, the wonderful celebrations that bring people together to eat them. While tradition usually calls for calçot eating to take place in the countryside, there are plenty of places to enjoy them in Barcelona as well. Since 2012, when Can Manel was reopened by the new owners Joel Balagué and Ana Roig, this homey eatery near the Sants train station has become a point of reference for the urban calçotada.

The story begins around 1975, when the bar La Barretina – then a hot spot, now long gone – began serving leche de pantera (“Panther Milk”). This milk-and-liquor concoction, with roots that can be traced to the Spanish Foreign Legion, was so strong that the hordes of students who flocked to this port-area alley along Barcelona’s Carrer de la Mercè would literally spill their guts nearly every night across the wide flagstones that separated the bar from its neighbors.

The name of this appealing Gràcia eatery is a play on words, an amalgam of la taberna, or “tavern,” and lata, or “tin.” Owner and head chef Juanjo Martínez has dedicated his restaurant to the culture of canned food and other uncanned treasures that are linked to traditional Spanish tapeo and rituals like vermut hour, which always include preserved foods.