Primeras Tapas

We arrived at our hotel in Barcelona around midnight and after getting settled, wanted to look for a bite to eat.  We had read in our travel guides that people in Spain eat late - usually after 10 pm - and that was confirmed on our taxi ride to the hotel where we saw packed restaurant after packed restaurant after 11:30 pm.  We weren't sure how many places would take in new diners after midnight, but our hotel recommended trying one of the nearby tapas bars on Passeig de Gracia (we were staying in the Eixample area).  One of the first that we saw was Divinus, so we stopped in for some snacks. 

The signs outside Divinus advertised tapas and montaditos.  We had never tried montaditos before and there were plates of them in the windows at the bar (where we were sitting) that looked good.  We decided to try a few and got espárragos con allioli (asparagus with aioli), jamón ibérico (Iberian ham), and bacalao gratén con allioli (cod gratin with aioli).

The montaditos were bite-sized snacks with vegetables or meat/fish on top of small pieces of bread.  They were all tasty but the bacalao was our favorite.

We also got two tapas - tortilla de patatas y cebollas (omelette of potatoes and onions) and patatas bravas (potatoes with an aioli-type sauce).

We've had both of these before at tapas restaurants in the US but neither was exactly like the ones we had before.  The tortilla we had before also consisted of egg, potato, and onion, but the Divinus one had much more egg.  The patatas bravas we had before were fried similarly but came with a red spicy sauce, while this one was more of a creamy aioli.  After a long day of traveling and eating, both of these were a little heavy.  The tortilla also came with two pieces of bread topped with something red.  It was their version of pan con tomate/pa amb tomaquet (bread with tomato), but since it was our first meal, we didn't yet know that it was a Catalonian specialty.  This bread was not toasted and a little bit soggy from the spread, so we didn't love it.

Our meal at Divinus was good for our first meal - an introduction to the food of Barcelona and a starting place for understanding Catalonian food.  If we went back, we figured we would get more montaditos and maybe some vegetable tapas instead.  We never ended up going back (but with hundreds of places in Barcelona, we only made one repeat visit the entire trip and that was for our last meal) but it was a good place to stop for a late first bite!