A taste of home

Proust, madeleine, secret chambers of memory and emotion unlocked, yadda yadda yadda. Highbrow literary allusions aside, there’s no taste like home – your mother’s cakes, grandmother’s stews or just a plain old pb and j. Living abroad those are some of the things you never knew you’d miss so much.

Ricky Mandle and Mónica Navarro know all about how taste can transport you to another world – that’s why they started Delishop. He’s from New York, she’s from Barcelona and they both love food. So they created Delishop products as a way to travel the globe through the world of flavors from all over. They work with artisans to make special pastas, sauces, chocolates, teas and a whole bunch more under the Deli Shop brand (by the way, nice packaging!) And they created Delishop shops to sell their creations along with all sorts of foods you remember from childhood at home. Wherever home might be – frantic for Marmite – rest easy, you’ll find it here. Saurkraut in Reisling wine? Ditto.

Anyway, we were talking about missing home and the food that makes it home. And holidays? Ouch! Are you one of those homesick Americans gearing up to work through Thanksgiving tomorrow thinking of loved ones gathered around tables drooping under the weight of family recipes and holiday cheer? If you can’t go home for Thanksgiving, candied yams or cranberry relish might help take away the sting and you’ll find them, along with delicacies like Pop-Tarts, Newman’s Own salad dressing, Crisco for your pies, macaroni and cheese and marshmallows, at Delishop. You can take a bite, close your eyes, click your heels and remember that there’s no place like home.

Wait, just one more thing! Banana Quik? When did that happen? That was not part of my childhood – how dare they! Is it any good?

Delishop

L'Illa Diagonal

Tel 93 410 797

Hours: m - sat 9:30 - 21:30

Mallorca 241

93 215 1546

Hours: m - f 11.00 - 14.30 and 16.30 - 21.00 and sat. 11 - 21

Travessera de Gràcia 141

Tel 93 238 9945

Hours: m - f 11.00 - 14.30 and 16.30 - 21.00 and sat. 11 - 21

Kooky Cookies

Everyone already knows Kukis – it’s no use explaining who they are. Even if you haven’t seen their adorable shop tucked away in the upper reaches of Sarrià, your best friend got a box of them when she had a baby last year or you saw that someone gave a box to your child’s teacher last Christmas (why didn’t you think of that instead of another scented candle?!)

So this is really just a reminder that for everything from the adorable to the spooky, you’ll find something to brighten a party or make a great present or just brighten someone’s day.

And PS – if you need something truly personal (or just plain personalized) they are the people to turn to for sure!

My honey

Sometimes when you’re walking down the street, immersed your own world, something catches your eye and you are compelled to change your course (especially if you’re like us and can always be enticed by a fun looking window display, even if it means that you have to cross a busy street.)

Well, that’s what happened just the other day. Walking down Mayor de Sarrià, in a hurry, a labelless jar and a small sign called out and lo and behold there it was, in all its golden glory – the best honey ever. Really, the best.

As the proprietor of the colmado said, you may be able to find honey this good, but not better. All we know is that it comes from a beekeeper near Valencia and it’s spectacularly creamy and that you have to try it. (Check out the pictures of the beekeeper once you’re there.)

Yummi gummi?

Just when you thought you’d seen it all, the scary crazy world of gummi candies comes up with something so outlandish that it stops you dead in your tracks.

They’ve come a long way from the days when gummi worms were innovative. Gummi flan may be more or less culturally relevant, gummi brains might make you squeamish and gummi hot peppers might make you think twice but you can’t help but wonder about the mind that created the gummi croissant.

We’ve only seen them at one candy shop – could they be a collector’s item?

Check out the Peter’s sweet shops:
Ronda General Mitre 108
Pedralbes Centre – Diagonal 609-615
Manila 45
Plaça Artós 11
Asturies 26
Marqués de Sentmenat 48
Centre Comercial Eroski de Cornellà de Llobregat

Recessionary Measures

Everyone’s feeling the crunch and the newspapers have nothing on us – anyone who goes to the grocery store knows that inflation is killer and the recession is a reality. So if your family can’t kick the Actimel habit in spite of the dent it puts in your food budget, check out Mercadona’s version for a whole lot less (like 1,19€ per six-pack – wow!)

Is nothing sacred anymore?

You have to fall in love with buñuelos de cuaresma – they’re little fried doughs infused with anise and covered in sugar crystals. You also have to wonder what something so good and so not austere (especially in the cholesterol department,) has to do with Lent.

They glisten in bakery windows everywhere on Wednesdays and Fridays and you see people in the street eating them out of greasy little bags and wiping their hands on their pants (they thought you weren’t looking.) And it used to be that they were only around during Lent (hence the name, because otherwise they would have to be called buñuelos of something else.)

But lots of people must have fallen in love with them indeed because now many places have them all year round. But what if we get tired of them? What if we forget that they mark the passing of the year during that long and terrible stretch between Epiphany and Easter when there are no holidays? Too much of a good thing might just be too much in this case! (Sorry Mae.)

Nutty Places

When I first arrived here in 1995, I missed Gap and Bergdorf’s but my idea of shopping in Barcelona was to walk down Santaló on my way home from work so that I could stop and look in at Cracrac. Now it turns out that when Paquita, who’s been working there for 32 years, retires, it will probably disappear.

The herb-scented air, the little bottles and bags with their hand-written labels and the artisan jam with the gingham cloth on top make me dream about a time before packaging was packaging. Big glass jars of honey, with spigots, straight form the beekeeper cry out to have you take a little sweetness home with you. What they do must be a labour of love – filling all the little bags and writing out the labels in the same script for more than 30 years is more than branding.

Cracrac has always had nuts and herbs, then candies with herb flavours then they added just plain candy to keep up with the times. But mostly they sell nuts and herbs, just like always, from their green shelves and bins, with their green and white labels and gingham. Stop by to see them before they go away.

Cracrac
Santaló 44
tel 93 200 5523

Loca por las Nueces

Cuando llegué a Barcelona en 1995, echaba de menos Gap y Bergdorf Goodman pero mi ideal de ir de compras en Barcelona era pasear por la calle Santaló camino a casa después de trabajar para poder parar un momento en Cracrac. Ahora resulta que cuando Paquita, que lleva 32 años allí se jubile, la tienda probablemente desaparecerá.

El aire que huele a hierbas, las botellitas y bolsitas con etiquetas escritas a mano y las mermeladas artesanales con la telita a cuadros en la tapa me recuerdan a un tiempo anterior a que el packaging fuera packaging. Las enormes jarras de miel con espita, directas del apicultor, piden que te lleves un poco de su dulzura a casa. Lo que hacen en Cracrac tiene que ser un trabajo de amor – llenar todas las bolsitas y escribir las etiquetas con la misma letra durante más de 30 años es más que branding.

Cracrac siempre ha vendido frutos secos y hierbas, luego caramelos con sabor a hierbas y después caramelos, para estar al día. Pero más que nada venden frutos secos y hierbas, como siempre, desde sus estantes verdes, con sus etiquetas y telita a cuadros en verde y blanco. Pasa a verlos antes de que desaparezcan.

Cracrac
Santaló, 44
tel 93 200 5523

To market, to market

When I first started going to the Mercado de la Concepción six years ago, I looked around at all the stands and picked one in each category with a long line – that seemed a sure guarantee of quality. That’s how I got to know the Fina Coloma family. And while I’ve been shopping there for six years, someone from their family has been at the market for over sixty.

It all started when the current generation’s grandmother moved to Barcelona to clean houses when she was 12. Those were different times. She was quick as a whip and when she had the chance to take over a market stall, she didn’t blink, even though she didn’t know a thing about butchering chickens. Of course she learned and things went well and when her daughters turned 12 she took over another one so that they could have their own. Those were different times too. The current generation started helping out when they were 18 and now, some years later (don’t worry girls, I won’t reveal any secrets,) they’ve seen it all. All of the changes in society pass through the market it seems. Thirty years ago, people bought quartered chickens (a few sophisticates ordered filleted chicken breasts.) Now people wait in line for their chicken meatballs, croquettes, canalones and other prepared dishes because even though they don’t cook at home they still want to make sure they’re putting good food they can trust on the table for their family.

If you’re still wondering where to go for your holiday bird, you have until the 15th to place your order (and you know they can trust them – they sell about 400 big birds a year for the holidays.) The year I made Christmas lunch for the family they gave me the recipe too. Be sure to stop by to see them regardless - their matching aprons (which vary from day to day so hope you show up for the roosters, or poinsettias,) and their quick wit will put a smile on your face after a morning of running errands.
Mercadp de la Concepción:
carrer Aragó, 311 bis
93 457 5329
Fina Coloma:
93 457 5335

Sweet Emotion

We all know by now that eating to overcome stress is a bad habit and that sugar isn’t good for us (right?) But it’s hard to resist a sweet treat on a grey day. That was m’s idea when they developed the Happy Pills concept. Why would a design agency develop the idea behind a candy store? Not quite sure, but they’ve done a great job. When they saw that the area where the shop was to open was a super touristy thoroughfare between Portal de L’Angel and the Cathedral where not many children passed, they knew the concept had to be aimed at adults. So, by combining fun design (had to do that, being in Barcelona) with great copy, and of course the candy, they came up with a retail concept that gets to you on lots of levels.

The candy is actually the same gummy bears, worms, hard candy, etc. that you find in most sweet shops here (although they did weed out things that were not aesthetically coherent with the concept,) but the packaging, in pharmacy-like bottles, fist aid kits and pill boxes with hot pink crosses and instructions to use for the treatment of such ailments as Mondays, the unbearable lightness of being, bad hair days, housing prices and Secret Santas with no imagination, among other quotidian bothers, turns a guilty pleasure into an ironic statement.

From comments in the blogsphere, it looks like people are champing at the bit to take this concept global – are you ready to be the first candystriper in your city?

Happy Pills:
carrer Arcs 6
tel 93 304 3097
happypills@ibc.com.es

Our Daily Candy

Yes, that is a nod to the end-all-and-be-all of targeted trend-spotting and general purveyor of fun. But since there’s no Daily Candy Barcelona, you might need to know where to get your fix.

Tommy Tang and his partner, in business and in life, Christopher King, moved to Barcelona seven years ago with a dream: to turn their handmade candy business into an international brand. Back in Australia, from whence they came, Tommy had learned the candy-making trade from a master and Christopher was an industrial designer. Combine the two and you get Papabubble – delicious and beautiful candies made before your very eyes at their shop on Carrer Ample.

How do we love them? Let us count the ways:
They perfume the street with sugary smells.
Their window displays are some of the best around. Anywhere in the world.
They make everything from racy adults-only lollipops to drops to satisfy your inner child or your very own children.
They’ve taken a mega-industrialized product back to its roots, but in a modern way.
They’ve given us a standard fallback for all presents: when in doubt about what to take to a dinner, a weekend away, to see someone’s new baby, Papabubble.
From a business standpoint they’re everything a business should be: innovative, tapping into mega-trends and bringing them to us at a local level, and they have a “corporate culture” that pervades everything they do: it’s got to be fun!

We’re not fooling ourselves: the word is out. They did a marketing gig for the Comme des Garçons fragrances 2 and 2Mun (sherbet powder inspired by the perfumes.) They’ve got stores in Tokyo (perfect place for them with its long-standing tradition of handmade sweets and crazy modern packaging designs and to boot Tommy speaks Japanese,) Amsterdam and now New York (to wit - Daily Candy scooped us on the opening of the NYC store. But then again, with a name like that, how could they not?). So their dream is coming true.

Dream on Papabubble!

Papabubble:
Carrer Ample 28
tel. 93 268 8625

Our Daily Bread

A staple of most diets pre-Atkins, yet now where can you find bread that’s worth the guilt?

At Forn Boix they’ve been making some whole grain breads since the 1920´s when they were the only people in town who did. According to Anna Boix, granddaughter of the founder, no one in Barcelona made German-style breads so her grandfather had to go to Germany to learn the trade. Ever since he got back they’ve been making whole grain croissants, muffins and breads. Now they use only certified organic materials imported from Germany and Finland by a supplier who works with just two bakeries in Barcelona. And it’s still a family business, like so many who think that maybe this is the last generation who’ll be willing to work baker’s hours. So don’t miss the chance to try daily selections from their huge repertoire of breads (like soy, German, whole wheat, 4 grain, 9 cereal, sunflower seed,) muffins (sesame, raisin almond, linden seed, sugar-free,) and special breads, whole grain cookies and empanadas.

Forn Boix:
Carrer d'en Xuclà 20

The historic site of the bakery at Consell de Cent 372/ Girona 73 has been a bakery since the 1800’s, as you can see from the modernista façade. The current owners are the sons and daughters of the man who bought the bakery 35 years ago. According to María Flores, wife of the current generation’s bread baker, 2 or 3 years ago they decided to try some new tricks and now there are lines for their pan ecológico and whole grain breads. Don’t miss the brioche-like walnut bread! It’s a meal in itself (my dear friend, the English painter Pola Wickham told me about it, and she always knows where to find the best food!)

Panadería:
Consell de Cent 372/Girona 73