If you want to know a city and its food, first visit its markets. That wise advice from Colman Andrews, an American authority on Catalan cooking, would lead a Barcelona visitor straight to La Boqueria. This massive covered market, the largest of six in the city, is where local chefs and home cooks go for the freshest seafood, meats and produce, the most fragrant saffron, the fattest white beans and finest rice. And if they should happen to get hungry while shopping, there are some great places to eat inside.

La Boqueria’s location, just off the Ramblas—Barcelona’s main shopping street—has been a market site for centuries. But the ironwork structure that now houses the market wasn’t erected until the mid-19th century. Pass through its stained-glass and iron gates and you will find several hundred individual vendors, selling everything from wild mushrooms to wild game.

Come to La Boquería to find Catalan specialties such as hazelnuts and honey; the famous thin-skinned potatoes from Prades and calçots (blanched spring onions) from Valls; live lobsters for Arroz Caldoso con Bogavante, a soupy rice dish you can sample at Bar Pinotxo in the market; just-caught monkfish for a simple rape a la plancha (griddle-seared monkfish) or a more ambitious Rape con Suquet Blanco de Patates y Germinado de Guisante (Monkfish with Potatoes and Pea Sprouts).

For an American accustomed to supermarket seafood counters, with their lackluster displays of skinless fish fillets, the seafood stalls at La Boqueria dazzle with their color, variety and life. Here is how Libby Garret, a former store manager for The Spanish Table, an American retailer, describes her experience there:

“Next came stalls of hundreds of shellfish…rockfish…bottom fish…deep sea fish…A diversity of seafoods richer than even my Seattle-Pike Place Market-raised eyes had ever witnessed. Salt cod (bacalao) hung from the rafters like bats. There were barnacles (percebes) and spiny shellfish, dozens of types of shrimp…..The female fish-vendors of the market were carefully primped, complete with perfectly applied eyeliner, just-so-sprayed bangs and waves, shoulder pads, dangle earrings and carefully coordinated sweaters of pink, orange or turquoise. Their freshly starched aprons were edged in cotton lace. Their peppermint-pink and daffodil-yellow rubber gloves were worn primly like Sunday’s best.” [from The Spanish Table Cookbook, 2005].

Come see for yourself. Take a moment for a brief shopping tour of La Boqueria with Barcelona journalist Xavier Mas de Xaxas and chef Albert Asin of Bar Pinotxo, one of the best places to eat in the market. (Flash video, 9:37)

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