La Boqueria: Barcelona's temple of gastronomic delights

Amid this cosmopolitan city in Catalonia, best known for the Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi’s yet unfinished architectural masterpiece that was begun in 1882, stands a public market built, too, with much grandeur.  

The Mercat de Sant Josep de La Boqueria, set in the center of the city’s most iconic pedestrian street known as La Rambla, was built in the 1830s not so surprisingly on hallowed grounds, previously the site of an old convent and the church of Sant Josep. For nearly two centuries, the market has stood here but its roots date back earlier when vendors and traders came from neighboring places with their goods to sell them along the stretch of La Rambla. 

 

Today, the families of the same stall-owners and vendors continue to do business here in this grand old market that has become a landmark in the city and makes writers and gourmets sing praises about it. 

 

El Bulli’s Ferran Adria, regarded as a demigod of Catalan cuisine and molecular gastronomy, holds the market dear to his heart, calling it a “gastronomic temple, a place that congregates all the phases in the food chain.”  

Mesmerizing display

 

Indeed, a sense of awe comes over those who visit La Boqueria for the first time. Tucked within one of the streets perpendicular to La Rambla, the entrance to La Boqueria beckons. Once inside, visitors are mesmerized by the amazing display of fruits, vegetables, flowers, meats, poultry, salted fish and seafood, and everything you need for a sumptuous Spanish feast. 

 

While walking and gawking at the goods here, it pays to grab fresh fruits to munch on or a cup of freshly-squeezed juice from the fruit stalls you find at every turn. As you stroll, you can’t help but elbow your way through stalls upon stalls of gourmet treats to send your senses and stomachs on overdrive.  

In the meat section, there are various beef and pork cuts. However what drew me in, laid among the dressed chickens, was some kind of pinkish poultry. Or so I thought. But the sign on top banished that assumption at once for after a few seconds, I figured it out. They were "conejos" or rabbits, great for stews or even in paella.

 

Still when it comes to meats, La Boqueria is most popular for the charcuterie. Legs of ham hang down from the ceilings—jamon Serrano, Iberico, and the most prized of them all, the jamon Iberico de bellota, from black Iberico pigs fed with acorn. Here, one can buy a whole leg of ham to impress guests back home. You can also have slices of jamon and chorizo vacuum-packed or wrapped “to-go” just for taste and it will cost you only 3 euros. But when buying ham, be wary of the prices as they vary depending on the kind of jamon you’re getting. 

 

Aside from the jamon, La Boqueria is a go-to place for salted fish or bacalao in several varieties and harvests of prawns, crabs, lobsters, fish and squid from the Mediterranean Sea. 

 

Then one confirms that the Catalonians take their spices seriously. For it is here that you chance upon hard-to-find ingredients for an authentic paella dish or a cocido—saffron and paprika of varying levels of hotness, along with a colorful spectrum of peppercorns sold by the gram, and chilis of all shapes and sizes.

 

For snacks and sweets, there are nuts of all kinds, trays and trays of chocolate truffles and bonbons, and of course, the famous Spanish turrones, similar to the Filipino peanut brittle, but are actually nougat confections made of honey and egg whites and bursting with almonds or hazelnuts. Alongside these treats, one finds more choices of yemas, and turrones with chocolate, fruits and pralines. All great for pasalubong to loved ones back home. 

Tapas bars

 

La Boqueria is not just a place to buy ingredients. Inside, locals and tourists queue to hop on a bar stool in the tapas bars where one can order a dish and you’re sure that the ingredients cooked fresh. Your meal can’t get as authentic as when you have it here.

 

However, if you can’t bear the long wait for a place at the bar, you can always go to one of the small restaurants just outside the market and partake of an excellent Catalan meal. If luck is upon you, there are lunch sets with paella and salad good enough for two people and cost only 11 euros. Presumably, the ingredients also come from the market and are wholesome and fresh, especially the seafood. 

 

These and more are the reasons why La Boqueria and markets like it are frequented by tourists. For it is in these markets that one experiences the true culture and time-tested traditions of a people. When one eats as a Catalonian does in Barcelona, and when one shops or eats at La Boqueria, even for a moment, there is an understanding of how one has lived here, partaking of the blessings that the sun, soil and the seas have bountifully given this lovely part of our world.  —KG, GMA News