Dinner out.

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I haven’t been writing much about dinners lately, having knocked off this travelog during the time between our excursions and the dinner hour. We’ve had a couple of really great tapas dinners, including two trips back to Taller de Tapas for their cod and tuna dishes along with another night out at Lonja de Tapas for squid, grilled vegetables and ham croquettes.
Tonight we decided to break the tapas cycle and actually have a real dinner so we went to Pla de la Garsa (restaurant of the Magpie) for a genuine sit-down meal. I’d made a reservation on line, which of course did not make it into the reservation book (so much for technology) which did not matter because we got a great table. MLW had a dish of red mullet in sort of a paella form that used tiny noodles instead of rice. I had Duck Magret with a sauce of pine nuts, apricots and raisins, reduced in stale wine and honey. We both shared an excellent bottle of Tempranillo. Both dinners were superb, and the atmosphere was just wonderful – marble tables, 1950’s jazz, cool waiters – an all-around nice evening out. We shared a traditional Catalan desert called Mamelles de Pedralbes which is a medieval dish based on chilled almond milk with cinnamon, sort of a cold flan that more or less translates as “milk of the nuns,” the Pedrables being the nuns from a monastery here in Barcelona.

What a great night out! We walked back amid the early evening tourist throngs and called it a night. 


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