La Tomaquera - rude catalan cuisine at its best

"come any closer and the bread gets it"

However you look at it, La Tomaquera is “special”. There’s no telephone, they don’t accept reservations and if you ask to see the wine list, the waiter will march off chuckling to himself, only to return (much) later with a carafe of house wine – you’ll drink what they drink. And that’s after he’s served the locals at the table next to you first, even though they arrived ten minutes later.

What may be brusque to some is charming to others, but lets be honest - you’re here for the food and that's what will get you hooked.  They know that as well as you do, and as they casually slide an appetizer of delicately boiled ous de guatlla (boiled quail eggs) onto the chequered tablecloth, you may just catch a proud glimpse in the waiter’s eye. Of course, Catalan cuisine wouldn’t be complete without the classic pan amb tomaquet (bread with tomato), in this place a Do It Yourself version, rubbing whole tomatoes onto the toast followed by a generous glug of olive oil and sprinkle of crunchy sea-salt. 




Then it comes to the grill, a banquet of juicy, grilled conejo (rabbit, a catalan delicacy), botifarra (typical Spanish sausage) and porc. In most cases a parillada is the best option for larger groups, a selection of mouth-wateringly tender, locally sourced cuts. The caracoles (snails) and alcachofas (artichokes) are other catalan specialities well worth a try. And that’s before you’ve even considered the famous crema catalana or rice pudding.

BCN Barcelona - layers of

Well as my first blog post I suppose I should write a litle bit about what i'm hoping to achieve... basically I've set up this blog as a motivation to begin making new work - work being photography-related - and as a place to put my various creative wafflings (hopefully making more sense out of them n the process!)

Between graduating in 2008 at Falmouth University College with a degree in Photography, moving to and setting-up a new life in Barcelona with various other distractions, I haven't even really thought about beginning a new project but have been taking snapshots of life here from time to time.

I'll start with posting a few snaps i took recently as sort of photographic sketches and a few ideas I've had recently,

This snapshot of leaving the metro (either at Maria Cristina or Poble Sec if i remember correctly) has given me an idea i'm thinking about for a potential project at the moment. The idea is to take well compositioned photos of the view leaving the metro. Using the metro alot in Barcelona, it's always a sort of relief to leave and see the sky again. This could also be done at night.

Something else that strikes me about living in a city is the experience of living in various different layers, and moving through them during various points of the day.

Firstly, at ground-level you weave through the maze of streets, alleys, squares and buildings but can also feel the rumble of the metro beneath you. Then there is the labyrinth of underground passages as you go into the metro and these layers merge as you leave again. And of course the buldings themselves, going into each one and looking out there is literally an infinite number of vantage points, places to hide and places to be found. Going up to Montjuic literally feels as if you are moving into the sky and see the city as a blanket of buildings below. This feeling of moving throughout the different layers of a city is always with me as I move around Barcelona and would like to explore this idea further.