Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category
If you ever find yourself near Los Gatos, California, a small town in the Silicon Valley just south of San Jose, you should take the time to stop by. The town is charming, full of Victorian houses, a vibrant shop-filled main street and many excellent restaurants. It is also the home of Fleur de Cocoa, a wonderful French chocolate shop and patisserie that is well worth a side trip if you’re in the mood for a little indulgence.
Fleur de Cocoa was opened 12 years ago by Chef Pascal Janvier and his wife, Nicola. It has an extensive menu of handmade french pastries – from simple croissants to elaborate multi-layer mousse cakes – and a wide selection of handmade chocolates. Chef Janvier began his career in France with an apprenticeship at age 12, and followed that up with a Master’s Degree in chocolate, ice cream and pastry and a long career both working with, and teaching the art of the chocolatier. In short: this guy knows what he is doing when it comes to both chocolate and pastry and it shows in every product they sell at the shop.
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When I visited Spain last year, I tasted several different types of cookies that were baked by nuns. It’s not uncommon for different convents to specialize in different baked goods. In fact, it’s a tradition that has been going on for centuries, so in many cities and large towns you can find shops that specialize in this type of treat. Caelum is one of those places, and I visited it on my more recent trip to Barcelona. It’s a charming cafe in the heart of old-town Barcelona that specializes in baked goods and confections made by nuns from all across the country. The selection wasn’t limited just to cookies, but featured fudge, tarts, candies, cakes and – most importantly – lots of chocolate.
Caelum’s specialty is rich hot chocolate. Theirs is made with purely nun-produced chocolate and, as you might guess, tasted heavenly. You can buy boxed products to take home, each bearing the name of the sisters who produced it, but you can also dine in the cafe itself and choose treats from a beautiful dessert buffet that they have set up. The prices were reasonable, everything was delicious (especially the hot chocolate!) and the place had a great atmosphere.
The pastries and hot chocolate that they sell at Caelum certainly make it worth a visit, but the shop has one other feature that is worth going out of your way to see. It is built on top of a medieval Jewish bath, and a beautiful seating area has been set up in the historic basement, which was part of the baths. This space is what gives Caelum its character and ambiance. The stone walls and vaulted ceilings are beautiful and make the space very romantic.
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Pinotxo Bar is something of an institution at La Boqueria Market in Barceonla. Located right near the entrance of the market, the tiny 14-seat restaurant is bustling with activity from the moment it opens in the morning, both with cooks behind the counter and with hungry patrons waiting for seats out front. Pinotxo is recommended in just about every guidebook on Barcelona and in most of the newspaper/magazine articles you read that mention the market. The bar has been there just about forever, according to bowtie-clad Juan Bayen, the owner of Pinotxo who can always be found behind the counter, and it serves tourists and locals alike with high quality food.
Like El Quim and the other restaurants in the market, the food served here is some of the freshest you can get and most, if not all, of the ingredients come from neighboring stalls. There are some staples on the menu, but much of it changes on a daily basis according to what they have to work with.
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El Bulli is undoubtedly one of the most famous restaurants in the world, renowned not just for the quality of its food, but for the way that chef Ferran Adria reinvented ingredients and presented food in an astoundingly innovative fashion using techniques that have come to be known as molecular gastronomy. El Bulli was not an easy restaurant to get a reservation at (and was definitely a splurge if you could get one!) and closed in February 2011. This left chef Adria to pursue new culinary adventures in Barcelona. He currently has two restaurants there. Tickets is a casual fine dining experience and 41 Degrees, next door to Tickets, was supposed to be a low key tapas bar serving traditional tapas and a few small El Bulli bites. I was excited about the possibility of tasting some of Chef Adria’s creations when in Barcelona and I headed out to 41 Degrees to give it a try.
I had a little bit of a surprise because about 5 days before I arrived in Barcelona, Chef Adria changed the concept of the restaurant. It went from a no-reservations tapas bar to a 16-seat fine dining restaurant serving a 41 course tasting menu. Reservations required, of course. Nowhere near as expensive as El Bulli was, either. The concept was so new (and so unadvertised) when I was there that I might have actually been able to get it, but since I had no idea that the restaurant changed from a tapas menu to a tasting menu, I never got the chance.
After the tasting menu diners clear out, 41 Degrees turns back into a regular bar and that is where I walked in: confused at the concept change, disappointed that I didn’t try to get seats at the restaurant (and that they didn’t serve food at the bar) and ready to try one of the chef’s cocktails. A cocktail bar doesn’t sound that revolutionary here, but few bars in Barcelona seem to serve anything more complicated than a gin & tonic unless it’s a hotel bar that really focuses on international (and American) clients.
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Cacao Sampaka is a shop for chocolate lovers, with a huge selection of handmade artisan chocolates and a cafe in the back of the store that puts all that chocolate to good use in various sweets and desserts. The shop actually has several locations all over the world, but the one I visited was in the Eixample, in Barcelona. Just off one of the biggest streets in the city, it’s easy to find and offers a great place to get a chocolate fix while you’re out shopping.
When I went in, I was immediately impressed with the variety of chocolate they offered. Not only did they have a huge variety of artisan truffles and other chocolates, but they had chopped chocolate for baking, a variety of cocoa powders and plenty of chocolate chips. There were single-origin chocolates, adult chocolates filled with liquors and specialty chocolates in every flavor you could think of – including a stollen-flavored truffle for the holidays. It was a little overwhelming to think that I had to narrow down what I wanted to try, but there is a lovely cafe in the back of the shop where you can taste some chocolates, drink some coffee or hot chocolate and regroup before deciding what you want to take home with you.
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