Bar Roma is a bar restaurant on a nondescript stretch of highway near Sants station. If you happen to squint at it, it seems like an old-timer native hang-out. Someplace that solely individuals who dwell on the block go to, to have a beer and one thing fried or a espresso over a folded newspaper. Cease squinting and the brand makes it apparent that isn’t the case. A cursive “Bar’ and an all-caps “Roma” that you simply may discover on an previous Italian Lira banknote. The turquoise and the pink fizzing in opposition to one another, just like the duo-chrome check on the opticians. A wall of white sq. tiles gently begins to curve in some unspecified time in the future on its journey to the again of the restaurant. Throughout from it, a white painted wall with a large band of inexperienced on the high, that continues onto the ceiling. After which there may be the small framed image of Woody Harelson and although I’m not certain why, it enhances Bar Roma. Perhaps as a result of Woody Harelson’s default look is: “That is absurd”. (The ‘this’ can discuss with something from this second to this life.)
A choice of footage at Bar Roma Barcelona.
All these parts are collected and reunited right here from a time that I grew up in however I discover Gen Z have an inexplicable anemoia* for. ( *A nostalgia for a previous they’ve by no means lived by.)
I came upon about Bar Roma from Manuela, a Madrid-based chef when she held a pop-up right here for St Jordi and posted an image of a cake formed like a coronary heart with frilly icing and some Carebears affixed within the corners. Manuela’s is an irreverent aesthetic that I see taking place typically within the over-stylized, over-staged, complete-bullshit realm of social media. (Manuela was additionally the contributor for the Greatest Pastry Retailers in Barcelona put up).
The kimchi fried rooster sandwich at Bar Roma.
The tables at Bar Roma are small, mottled glass on iron ft. The playlist from the times that I wore my fringe in a wave held in place ozone-destroying quantities of hairspray. The menu is a compilation of fantastic issues to go together with your drink. The deep fats fryer is cleverly enlisted to prove calamari croquetas or one with Ceps. (I had that, like a child’s fist with a zig-zag of shiny mayonnaise.)
A element of the curved tile wall at Bar Roma.
Calorific sandwiches at tiny costs play the function of mains. I’ve a kimchi fried rooster sandwich on a brioche so smooth that as I close to the tip of my sandwich, the bread disintegrates into the sharp-edged crispy rooster. They’ve used rooster thigh however at no level do I discover myself pulling at tendons or pushing out a glob of fats. No, they’ve pre-marinated the thigh in order that it comes out completely seasoned and dense, like a pressed ham. There’s a punchy kimchi mayo that when juxtaposed with a cool bottle of beer, leaves me fully at peace. A greater mixture than a fried kimchi sandwich with a beer, Woody’s gap-toothed grin above my head and a few tune I didn’t bear in mind I used to like. I half anticipate finding a dog-eared Hola! journal with an image of a big-haired John McEnroe, a white bandana worn unironically excessive on his brow.
Then there may be the flan. It’s meant to be definitely worth the detour. It comes on an aluminum spherical plate. A vertical wedge of unsweetened whipped cream accompanies it. The flan is tentatively candy, many of the sweetness coming from the blond caramel on high which has extra in frequent with dulce de leche than a precariously darkish caramel that I realized to make from my Jap European grandmother.
Once I step out onto the sidewalk within the weak winter sunshine I really feel a bit disoriented, ensconced as I’ve been at some point of my lunch in a earlier than this time – time. Not precisely as I bear in mind it, because it hasn’t been curated by my age friends, however eerily shut. Like a dream that adheres to you within the moments after waking.
I like this little bar. I like that it’s nowhere close to central sufficient to turn out to be unattractively busy, that the wall curves inexplicably, the ceiling is inexperienced and that the menu is dispatched from a deep fryer and a small counter.
Bar Roma
Carrer de Valencia 104
Eixample 08015
instagram.com/barroma.bcn
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