So You Thought It Was Easy, Eh?

It's not often that I get an opportunity to give you a glimpse inside the world of the professional kitchen. I've yet to experience a Head Chef inviting me to bring my Fuji to work so he can take snaps of me enjoying my daily routine, let alone encouraging me to bring in a friend with a shoulder-mounted Panasonic to follow me round shooting video clips. At some top restaurants, including the one in which I'm currently working, the publication of photographs and comments about dishes and their preparation is expressly forbidden as a condition of employment. So I was excited the other day when I found some serious footage of life in a Spanish Michelin-starred kitchen. Well, I say serious footage...

Yes, I'm afraid you're right. It's a reality TV programme about cooking in a Michelin-starred kitchen rather than the real thing. I did, after all, say "a glimpse inside the world of the professional kitchen" in my introduction. The reason I've made the effort to bring you the clips below is that they convey something of the sheer terror experienced by an amateur cook in a professional kitchen. It's a feeling I well remember from my own first tentative steps into the world of fine dining. What makes it worse is that the victim in this instance is no ordinary, shy, home cook. Nadia Sawalha is an actress and presenter, well used to being thrown into hot spots. Moreover, she won Celebrity Masterchef 2007, so she knows a thing or two about cooking. Or does she..?

Before you enjoy the video I should explain the context. Nadia's task has been set by Jean-Christophe Novelli, although she doesn't know this at the outset. She only discovers his identity when she eventually cooks his lunch at Restaurante Tragabuches in Ronda, Andalucía. So when, at the start, she says to camera: "I bet you wish you had my job", she's referring to being in fabulous, sunny southern Spain - not waiting hand and foot on Jean-Christophe's every pleasure. Mind you... Here's my insider's guide to the clips. Feel free to ignore my comments and move straight to the action.

Dead right...	Nadia's first task is to sit and taste the food that she is about to cook. I can't stress the importance of this enough. Before I apply for a new post, I always visit first to sample the food. Professional chefs don't cook by recipe but by instinct and palate. The running order is passion, art, technique. In these clips you see what happens when all three of these let you down just a little bit. Combine all three and you have a truly great dish.
Just for UK television...	"Spain's very own, no-nonsense, in-your-face answer to Gordon Ramsay." If it doesn't effing mention effing Ramsay, it ain't effing British TV cooking.
Sing us another one...	"[Head Chef]... has something different to anybody else. He's got a little bit of a temper... Benito doesn't take any prisoners." Actually, Benito Gómez was brought back to introduce a degree of calmness and stability back to Tragabuches in 2005 after wünderkind Dani García (now at the brilliant Restaurante Calima) reputedly started to impersonate Scott Hastings in Strictly Ballroom and introduce more and more unorthodox ideas into his art. Every Head Chef has "a little bit of a temper" and Benito is no exception, but I'm sure he's far from the worst. Toughness goes with the territory.
Yes, it really is true...	Pro kitchens are sometimes even smaller than this one. How does everyone work in such a small space? Not easy, but you get used to it. And compactness helps when several chefs are simultaneously plating up a dish while also looking after those on their own sections.
Pastry cheffing is bloody hard...	Poor Nadia. If her ice cream is too cold it won't scoop. If it's too warm it will destroy the texture of her crispy pineapple crackling. It's a bitch.
Timing is everything...	1. Perfect execution + late delivery = bin. 2. "It's 7am and already Benito is lying in wait for Nadia. She's five minutes late." Bad idea.
Everyone stops to watch...	Other chefs only stop work when you're Nadia Sawalha and they are enjoying watching you trying your damndest but ultimately failing to get the dishes the way they should be.
So that's what they were for...	You didn't believe me when I wrote about my tweezers and cut-throat razor, did you? Slice the tomato with the cut-throat and pluck the hake bones with the tweezers. Perfecto!
For a ha'porth of tar...	Just one crystal of Maldon salt - but what an important component to forget! The tomato soup dish requires such complexity and perfection of execution, yet is totally transformed by that one crystal. Just like my favourite Catalan dish of chocolate, olive oil and salt.
You're never alone...	"To be able to walk into a kitchen like this and to be able to have responsibility for making dishes by yourself...Bravo!". Actually, although as a chef de partie you have responsibility for all your section's dishes, it's rare for any individual to contribute every single element of a dish. Cooking at this level is a collaborative effort and you need to be a team player. Also, you're unlikely to find yourself working on starters, mains and desserts on the same service. But that's TV licence... and, on the BBC, that's something we pay for!
Enjoy it...	"If I've got a bit of advice to give to Nadia it's very simple - enjoy it". No, this is not Jean-Christophe's chat-up line but his advice that, as in most fields of endeavour, good work and stress are incompatible. "Air-lift me out of here, right now!" Relax, girl. And try not to set fire to the place.

As with all TV celebrity cooking programmes, the reality is that some poor sod had to leave his own section every two minutes to help out, while still delivering his own orders. If it wasn't for that unsung hero, Nadia's output would probably have been a disaster. Still, at least he presumably got the Equity walk-on, non-speaking, TV supporting artist's rate of £83.80 plus repeat fees. Whereas someone like me can look forward to a 14-hour working day on contract for about €35 a day, or absolutely nothing if employed on a training stage. But then who said this profession was well-paid? Oh, yes. I knew there was something I forgot to mention. In the real world we don't just serve dishes like these one at a time. I've had groups of up to 25 customers ordering a menú degustación... and that means plating up 25 identical dishes in parallel - and then repeating the exercise for the other courses on the menu for which I'm responsible. And some tasting menus have 12 or more dishes. I thought I'd throw that in, just in case you were getting over-confident. But I don't want to sound arrogant. I also f**k up from time to time and Nadia did really well, help or no help. Very few amateurs would do better. But then who said this profession was easy?

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It's A Small World

It's a small world - and getting smaller by the day. But despite cheap air fares and the relative ease of crossing national borders, I still haven't managed to visit very many of the world's countries. Just 19 at the last count, or 10% of the world's 192 UN Member States.

But what can't be achieved in the real world can be done in the wonderful virtual world of the web. Although I can't talk directly to most of the planet's diverse peoples, I can extend an arm of friendship through the medium of the internet. So far this month my blog has received visitors from 116 different UN Member States. To all of them, and to readers from an additional 31 UN Member States who visited me earlier in 2009 - thank you for stopping by here and do come back again soon.



To everyone in Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa, Cuba, Djibouti, East Timor, Equatoral Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Malawi, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Nauru, Niger, North Korea, Palau, Rwanda, Samoa, San Marino, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Suriname, Togo, Tome & Principe, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu and Vanuatu - I know that poverty, lack of infrastructure and, in some instances, political interference can make internet access difficult if not impossible, but do visit me if you can. You'll be very welcome.

Maps courtesy of World66.

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Feasting On The Silk Road

When the first weblogs appeared just over a decade ago, they were exactly that - logs or diaries on the web. Food blogs soon emerged in which the authors, keen to share their daily experiences with a global audience, described their home cooking activities and favourite recipes. Some still do that with a consummate professionalism that utterly belies their amateur or semi-professional status - Kalyn Denny's Kalyn's Kitchen and Elise Bauer's Simply Recipes are just two of many shining examples.

After a while, new types of food blog began to emerge. These were the products of writers with a different mission - to educate, inform and entertain in areas of specialist knowledge and expertise. Regular readers of this blog will know that, with no disrespect to the former group, it is this latter group of food bloggers that most turns me on. Especially those who attempt something radically new - those who tread where none have stepped before.

Laura Kelley is such a radical author and I fell in love with her blog the moment I first came across it. So I was delighted to discover that Volume One of Laura's cookbook trilogy, The Silk Road Gourmet, is about to be published by iUniverse and thrilled to be invited to review it. Laura describes herself as a renaissance woman - and as someone who can lay claim to being a writer, public health analyst, anthropologist, photographer, musician, wife, mother and much traveled gourmet, that seems like a well-deserved title. I've been unfair in calling her work a cookbook because it's far more than just a collection of recipes. The Silk Road Gourmet is a voyage of discovery in cultural anthropology that, like the blog that spawned it, examines the cuisines of those societies that flourish along those ancient trading routes between Asia and The Mediterranean that we've come to know collectively by the epithet The Silk Road.

Over some 3,000 years of history, those routes formed a conduit through which thousands of merchants traded silks, satins, perfumes, medicines, jewelry, glassware and human slaves from China in the east to Rome in the west. And they introduced items of food produce and spices - fresh, dried, ripe, in seed form, ground and as oils - to societies which had never encountered them before and which readily incorporated them into their national cuisines. Laura explains: "I began to notice distinct patterns in the use of ingredients by Asian peoples sometimes separated by thousands of miles. For example, pomegranates — the use of which began in Iran in antiquity — are now common ingredients from Georgia... to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.... Successive Persian Empires ruled all of these areas at one time or another... Another example can be found in the distinctly Southeast Asian elements present in Sri Lankan cooking. In this case, lemongrass and roasted rice reveal strong connections between the island nation and countries of that region. Consulting the histories of trade and diplomacy... we find out that there was a vibrant maritime trade... that Sri Lanka had with Burma, Thailand, and Malaysia." Most of us have some degree of familiarity with the food of the Indian sub-continent, Malaysia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam and some of the many distinct cuisines of China. But if you want to discover something of the amazing culinary world of such countries as Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kirghizstan, Nepal, Tibet, Burma, Bhutan, Indonesia, Mongolia, Korea, Laos, Cambodia, The Philippines and Taiwan and how these cuisines have come to be inter-related through the influence of the passage of trade along The Silk Road, then these books are for you. Of course, you don't have to share Laura's anthropological interest in order to enjoy these works. Full of recipes that can be prepared in as little as 15-30 minutes, you can just open a volume, turn on the cooker and settle down for a delicious feast. I'll be doing exactly that! Volume One - Western and Southern Asia - will be available from the end of June 2009 through Amazon online and from Barnes & Noble. Volume Two - The Fusion Cusines of Central Asia, the Himalayas and the Pacific and Volume Three - Eastern Asia and the Pacific - publication dates will be announced later. For more information, see Silk Road Gourmet books section.

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The End Of The Line

"Imagine an ocean without fish. Imagine your meals without seafood. Imagine the global consequences. This is the future if we do not stop, think and act." This is the stark message brought to us all by Charles Clover, former Environment Editor of The Daily Telegraph and author of The End Of The Line, made into a documentary film by Director Rupert Murray and released in British cinemas this week. Unsustainable use of marine resources is a subject that's very important to me - I'm proud to have carried the logo of The Marine Stewardship Council in my sidebar for a long time now.

Murray's film should do for our oceans what An Inconvenient Truth did for climate change - bring the issue of unsustainable fishing into the public consciousness and shame governments around the world into action. Over-fishing means entire species of fish are under threat and the most important stocks will be in a state of collapse by 2050. The film points the finger at those most to blame - including celebrity chefs - and shows what we can do about it. This is not just a film - it's a campaign for sustainable consumption of fish, for marine protected areas to allow the sea to recover and for a new ethic of responsible fishing.

The End Of The Line campaign is supported by conservation organisations and individuals world-wide.

Organisations include Bite-Back, The Blue Ocean Institute, COAST, The Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, The Marine Conservation Society, The Marine Foundation, The Marine Stewardship Council, Monterey Bay Aquarium, The Natural Resources Defense Council, Oceana, The Pew Institute for Ocean Conservation Science, The Project AWARE Foundation, Save The Whales Please, The Sea Turtle Restoration Project, The Shark Trust, The Waterloo Foundation, The Wildlife Trusts and WWF and individuals include HRH The Prince of Wales, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Ted Danson, Greta Scacchi, Emilia Fox, Terry Gilliam, Sienna Miller, Jemima Khan, Laura Bailey, Alicia Silverstone, Charlize Theron, Zac Goldsmith, Sting, Trudie Styler, Geri Halliwell, Stephen Fry, Richard E. Grant, Elle Macpherson and Lenny Henry.

We can all do our little bit in different ways. Scacchi, Fox and Gilliam posed naked in a stunt aimed at drawing media attention to the campaign to save the bluefin tuna. I'll pass on that one - but as a chef, I pledge to campaign for fellow chefs to remove endangered species from menus and as a future restaurateur only to serve fish ethically sourced from sustainable stocks. The film has already prompted retailers such as Marks & Spencer and Pret à Manger to announce new policies on sustainable fishing, the removal of endangered tuna species and the switch to pole and line methods of catching in which Sainsbury's and Waitrose had already taken a lead. Some celebrity restaurateurs such as Aldo Zilli have already stepped forward to make the most important first step - removal of the bluefin tuna and other critically endangered species from their menus, along with the restaurant chains of Soseki, Moshi Moshi, Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, Itsu and others. The devil of the piece, widely reported in the media including one of my favourite news sources The Kitchen Rat, is Nobu. The global chain of Japanese restaurants favoured by the rich and famous continues to serve bluefin tuna, despite the global campaign. Nobu Berkeley Street has added a note to the menu pointing out the threat to the bluefin and inviting diners to ask for an alternative. It's hard to find words to describe such an attitude.

I can't get to see the film myself as I'm working long hours including evening shifts here in Spain. But I can urge you to seek out a UK screening or a US screening if you are in those countries and to hunt out details if you are elsewhere. Meanwhile, here's an early version of the promotional clip for the movie:

If, even after that, you're still addicted to those tuna sandwiches and don't know what to do for a replacement, Matthew Fort in The Guardian has some useful suggestions. If you are still unable to break the habit, Sophie at Mostly Eating can offer you tips on ethical buying of tuna.

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Strawberry And Coriander

Pork and apple, tomato and basil, and duck and orange are just a few examples of classical food pairings that are recognised and reproduced across the world's cuisines. Then there are less well-known flavour combinations such as avocado and lobster, spinach and nutmeg and chocolate and salt. These emerged through centuries of experimental home cooking and became an integral part of regional cuisines. But there are other pairings that emerged only with the benefit of modern science. Molecular gastronomy, through identification of common volatile compounds, brought us cocoa and garlic, mango and pine, trout and peppermint, liver and jasmine, carrot and violet and banana and parsley.

Strawberry & coriander is a combination that first came to my attention a couple of years ago. Hosted by Evelyn Grauen of Bounteous Bites as a challenge to cooks and a part of the Molecular Gastronomy series They Go Really Well Together from Martin Lersch's blog.khymos.org, this pairing competition received a great response across the food blogs. I assumed at the time that it was a novel idea, but it soon became clear that the pairing had some history. There were suggestions at the time that it might have originated with Ferran Adrià, but I've seen no evidence of that. Nicola & Bill Donnelly from Melbourne, on the other hand, photographed this hearty Aussie Breakfast of Champions in January 2001.

Along with foamy strawberries with coriander from Martin of blog.khymos.org, responses to TGRWT3 included berry guacamole from Johanna at Green Gourmet Giraffe, strawberry and cilantro terrine from Helene of Neues aus der Kueche, strawberry salsa from Amrite at Le Petite Boulangette, strawberries with campari and coriander filling from Robert of lamiacucina, roasted coriander ice parfait with marinated strawberries and green tea sauce from Klaus of der Kompottsurfer, coriander custard with fresh strawberries from Alexis at See Us Eat, strawberry shortcakes with a coriander buttermilk biscuit and balsamic cream from Mari Gordon of Mevrouw Cupcake, avocados with strawberry salsa on crispy tortillas from Jen at Milk and Cookies, strawberry and coriander smoothie and strawberry and coriander dessert from Dennis of Kookjegek and strawberry-coriander cake with coconut glaze from my good friend Sarina Nicole at TriniGourmet. Thanks to Martin for letting me use these thumbnail photos.

There have been several other dishes created since - a scan through Flickr or a search through the food blogs reveals several inventive combinations. But the reason I'm writing this post is because of one particular dish that nearly didn't come to fruition... but eventually did. One night early last summer while I was working in the kitchens at Comerç 24, I observed Head Chef Arnau Muñío experimenting with some new creations. He was trying various combinations with strawberries, but with no apparent success. "Why not try coriander?" I ventured, "...poaching the strawberries in a sugar syrup infused with coriander stalks and garnishing with a fresh coriander leaf". My initiative was not met with an enthusiastic response. I got the distinct impression that chef would never pair strawberries with coriander if he lived to be as old as Methuselah. A few weeks ago, before leaving Barcelona, I spent a great celebratory couple of hours out on the town with Arnau and members of his kitchen team. Inbetween mojitos, Arnau leant across the table and clasped me firmly by the shoulder. "Let me tell you about this new dish I'm putting on the menu", he confided. "It's a great flavour combination and quite unique." You can guess what came next. There's still a very deep smile of contentment on my face now as I think about it. Postscript: Martin Lersch has kindly invited me to host a round of TGRWT this summer, which I'll announce here later. Meanwhile, perhaps you'd like to suggest the topic for my round via a comment on this post. Here are the food pairings explored thus far and here is a list of possible combinations.

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Deconstructing Bourdain

Back in 2006, before his highly-publicised bust-up with the Food Network, my favourite cook-scribbler Anthony Bourdain worked with the communications organisation on a TV production resulting in the multi-media publication Decoding Ferran Adrià. The other day I came across this ten-minute clip on YouTube, edited and uploaded by skinnylatte, aka. Adrianna, from Singapore. If you haven't already seen it, watch it (a) to learn something about Adrià, (b) to learn even more about Bourdain, (c) for the sheer delight of experiencing a soupçon of El Bulli.

Just bear in mind before you start that the name Anthony Bourdain is usually associated with such biting adjectives as "acerbic", "cynical" and "belligerent"... and that "lost for words" is not a phrase normally applied to one of the culinary world's most outspoken representatives. Note the difference between the poetic eloquence of Bourdain's post-production voice-over and his real-time struggle to find adequate words to describe his journey through The El Bulli Experience. Pull out a handkerchief and enjoy!

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Part Of The Team

Last week I made an excuse for not having written about my experiences at Restaurante Ferrero since I moved here to València in early May to start a three-month stage. Well now I can reveal all. In all fairness I did give a hint when I said "things have been moving so fast since I arrived...", but in truth that was something of an understatement. I actually found myself in the position of Acting Chef de Partie for the Starters section within two days of starting in the kitchen. It was a position of responsibility I'd come here to achieve, but when I drove up the hill from Bocairent that first morning I hadn't imagined in my wildest dreams it might happen just forty-eight hours later.

But that wasn't the end of matters. It soon became obvious that other moves and changes were in progress as Head Chef Paco shaped his new kitchen for the exciting challenges ahead. If being put in charge of a section in my first week came as a surprise, what was to happen two weeks later was truly a shock. Last Wednesday Paco called me into his office and asked how I'd feel about spending the remainder of my stage in training with a view to taking up a contract as Pastry Chef this summer. You don't turn down an offer like that... and I didn't.

I came to Spain a year and a half ago to work with chefs who could help me elevate myself from a graduate trainee to Head Chef material. It's a long and difficult climb up that mountain and I've never underestimated the effort and determination that would be required. I've also come to understand the importance of broadening one's experience to every aspect of the job - even if that involves taking big risks. I'm sure there will be some eyes popping open at the prospect of Aidan Brooks as a Pastry Chef, not least my pastry tutor Andrea Ruff at Westminster Kingsway College. But to become a successful Sous Chef you need to be able to manage and develop staff across all sections and it's never a great idea to criticise anyone for failing or omissions that you share with them.

My working here looked like a risky choice for both employer and employee. From my standpoint, having reached the point where I was being told by my Head Chef in Barcelona that I was ready for a Michelin 2* kitchen, but opting instead to work unpaid in a remote, little known, unstarred restaurant wasn't an easy call to make - especially as I had two contract offers and a paid stage offer in Michelin-starred kitchens in Catalunya and the Basque Country. For Head Chef, taking on someone so young and with so little professional experience when you have set such massively high goals for your restaurant looked equally unsafe. But the truth is that neither of us really took a risk. I did my research properly before I packed my possessions and left Barcelona. I took advice and, when chefs and food writers for whom I have the utmost respect told me "that's a brilliant move", my decision became pretty much a no-brainer. Equally, Paco and his team made enquiries about me and I'm pleased that they proved positive. He also employed some techniques aimed at identifying staff motivation that I won't discuss any further, other than to say that the experience was very uncomfortable but I survived the test.

Over the coming months I'll write more about my experiences here, including picking wild flowers and herbs for the kitchen in the Sierra de Mariola Nature Park (see photo above). I would have like to have written up the meal I ate in the restaurant back in April, but the menu was still in development so I was asked not to publish photos of the dishes at that stage.

For now, let me just make the initial observation that, in my opinion, the kitchen here is already at Michelin 2* level in terms of the exacting standards of discipline, the quality and creativity of dishes, the facilities we are working with and the collective expectations of perfect execution. And if the kitchen is amazing, the hotel itself is nothing short of stunning. The video clip (left) is an extract from an advertisement on Australian TV Channel 9's ninemsn website, just after the refurbishment in 2007.

Restaurante Ferrero is a clear step up from my previous working environments and reminds me very much of one or two very famous 2* kitchens that I've had the privilege of being shown around. We're hoping that, come November, The Fat Man concludes that we have done enough to merit the award of a first star. I say "we", because I don't look at myself as merely an employee here, but as part of the team that is striving so hard to make this place successful. If we fail, I'll shoulder my share of the responsibility for that failure. I don't for one moment expect to find myself in that position.

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The Cutting Edge

I've been in València for over two weeks now and I still haven't written a word about my new place of work, which must seem a bit odd to many of my regular readers. It's not for want of trying. I've sat down a couple of times to put fingers to keyboard, but things have been moving so fast since I arrived here at Restaurante Ferrero that I've not been comfortable about writing.

That will change soon, I promise you. In future posts I'll have some interesting tales to tell about my role in the kitchen, the people I'm working with, our chefs' apartment, picking wild herbs and flowers and weekend trips to the beaches of the Costa Blanca. So watch this space! Meanwhile... Two new additions to my collection of tools of the trade.

On the left: some very cutting-edge equipment - a cut-throat razor with a blade so sharp... well I don't think I need to remind you of Sweeney Todd, or of Mr. Blonde, dancing menacingly to the sounds of Stealers Wheel. I, on the other hand, have been using this deadly tool for altogether more innocent purposes, such as cutting edible flower petals into brunoise, preparing chives neatly into one inch sections and also splitting them down the length to make coiled chive ribbons for garnish.

On the right: fine tweezers which I definitely don't use to pluck my eyebrows in slack periods during service. These are for precisional placing of delicate and tiny components while plating up - very handy for fiddly items such as juliennes of pepper skin. All completely proper - but I can't help imagining what might happen if I was caught in possession of these by the police and told them that everything was OK because I'm a chef. Would they believe my stories of slicing flower petals and manipulating red pepper skins? Somehow, I doubt it. Maybe I should invent a more traditional southern Spanish explanation - that I specialise in the halal slaughter of small game birds followed by the plucking of awkward little feathers.

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Can Paixano - The Perfect Last Meal

I spend a lot of time indulging myself in fine dining and writing about my experiences in what are known here in Spain as 'restaurantes de alto nivel'. It's my chosen career, so I make no apology for my hedonistic extravagance in the pursuit of knowledge. Fine dining has brought me great pleasure, but there's another side to my relationship with food.

There's no feeling quite like being out with your friends at a really good local hostelry where they serve top quality local produce prepared with love and pride. During my time in the Catalan capital I learnt how the ordinary residents of the city eat, if 'ordinary' is a term you could ever apply to Barcelonistas. I began to share their passion for simple food, deeply rooted in the local culture, cooked perfectly and shared with friends, family, neighbours... or whoever happens to be sat next to you. And so it was that a week ago - my final Saturday night in Barcelona - I wandered out in search of the ideal way to celebrate my departure from the city.

Stroll a hundred metres south from my former apartment, cross the Passeig de Colon and you come to Barceloneta. With the Port Vell and its massive World Trade Centre complex to the west, the city's proud Olympic Park to the east, trendy El Born to the north and the Mediterranean Sea to the south, Barceloneta should by rights be some of Barcelona's most prime real estate. But Barceloneta was always a working-class barrio, ever since it was created from derelict and reclaimed land by Flemish engineers 250 years ago to house the poor families displaced by the massive city developments of the time. And, despite the tourism and a half-hearted attempt to clean up its beaches and replace its sea-front chiringuitos, so it remains today. As working-class as Barcelona gets.

Saunter to the edge of the little part of Barceloneta cut off by the massive Ronda del Litoral ring-road and you find the 173-year-old landmark Les Set Portes (Seven Doors). Turn your back on the bourgeois opulence of the city's first ever restaurant - with its grandiose architecture and classical Catalan haute cuisine - and amble round the block into the Carrer de la Reina Cristina. All at once you find yourself in a cluttered passageway filled with tiny electronics shops and jewelry stores. And if you don't wander straight past without spotting the place, you'll arrive at a very different eating establishment.

Bryan Miller, former restaurant critic of the New York Times and celebrated gourmet described the place nearly two decades ago when he discovered it one night during the Olympic Games. I can't possibly improve on his sketch, so I'll leave you in his skilled journalistic hands (I've added the links and photos). "Can Paixano offers a rollicking, rough-edged taste of working-class Spain just a 10-minute walk from the Columbus statue. You won't find any foreign tourists at Can Paixano. It has neither a phone nor a sign. Even the street number, which is normally posted above the door, is missing. Starting about noon, local artisans, students and squat, bag-toting women flood into this narrow bar and charcuterie, with its napkin-strewn cement floor that appears to be in a converted garage. The bar is three deep in no time. Pushing and shoving is part of the fun here.

Behind the counter and under grease-splotched signs listing all kinds of sausages and cured meats, cooks hustle up charcuterie platters and sandwiches. Taste a ración of the delicious air-cured ham, lusty chorizo, butifarra (Catalan pork sausages that come both white and dark), or cecina, the dark, minimally salty air-cured beef that is a specialty of Burgos. The butifarra is especially savory; so too is a strong, chewy Basque chorizo called chistorra. Raciónes go for €1.25 to €2.25 - no wonder the place is always packed. There is also a good selection of cheeses at a retail counter in the back (if you can shove your way over there).

Along the chest-high counter are bottles of cheap sparkling rosé that go for €2.75 a bottle or 50 cents a glass. In any other setting this sweet, bubbly drink would be dismissed as a step above ginger ale. Somehow, though, the obstreperous Iberian setting and rugged food elevate it to a higher status." Not at lot has changed in the seventeen years since Bryan's brush with Barcelona's proletarian cuisine. A few tourists can be found in Can Paixano these days - you can blame eGullet and Flickr for that - but there's still no sign or street number. They've acquired a telephone, but I wouldn't advise anyone to call the number in the hope of reserving a table for Saturday night.

Prices have shot up. What cost €2.25 in 1992 now costs the princely sum of €2.85. No wonder it's still packed most days. And just when you think it's reached capacity more people arrive and join in, like a queue at a football stadium or a crowd at a demonstration. Can Paixano is not a place that has to advertise itself, or particularly wants to. In fact I was amazed to discover that the place actually has a website, until I realised that its main function is to entice foreign distributors for the local cavas and own-label fizzy wines for which they are famous. Bryan was right about the retail counter - the only problem for cheese-monkeys is the near-impossible task of shoving your way over there. If you can manage to shout the Catalan for "make way, make way... cheese emergency", you could just be in with a chance of taking some home.

Can Paixano was the perfect venue for my last meal in Barcelona and I couldn't have picked a better night for it. An hour or so earlier at the Camp Nou Barcelona had thrashed Real Madrid 6-2 in the country's most high profile derby 'El Clasico' and I was packed in amongst a crowd of celebrating Catalans. Horns were still sounding, flags waving and the atmosphere on the streets and in the cafés was simply incredible. I gorged myself on my favourites - morcilla and chorizo sandwiches and a bikini, washed down with a couple of glasses of Can Paixano's best own-label cava rosado.

Refreshed both in body and spirit, I headed out into the warm night air and made my way back across the ring road and into El Carrer del Comerç - a route I'd taken many times during my year at Comerç 24. My timing was perfect. Service was finished, surfaces cleaned down and the chefs were emptying out into the street. Off we wandered to the plaza for 1:30am mojitos, laughing and joking all the way, with me looking decidedly the worse for wear. What a great way to go out! Thanks to Héctor de Pereda, Michal Sänger, Óscar Suárez, Hector Garcia and Rutger Straatsburg for the photographs.

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Barcelona - Oh, How I'll Miss You

To this truly amazing city and all the wonderful people I've met here... I'll never, ever forget you.

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