![]() The pork sausage or botifarra is a traditional favorite in Catalan cuisine and the two main types are the white sausage made of minced pork and spices or the black sausage with the additional ingredient as boiled pork blood. Omelet sandwich at Can Tosca Cava at Can Tosca Cava is considerably cheaper than champagne and this has nothing to do with quality but is due to highly favorable conditions in Catalonia for production in greater quantities. My request for no beef or pork was well accommodated and as the rest of my group enjoyed their grilled botifarra (pork sausage) sandwiches, I relished my omelet sandwich with a refreshing glass of Cava (a sparkling wine similar to champagne) made from a blend of grapes native to the Penedès region in Catalonia. Founded by two sisters from the neighborhood and now managed with the help of their children, Can Tosca is casual and inviting, with old black and white family photographs displayed on the walls. We had been advised to skip breakfast as there would be a lot of eating on the tour and our rumbling stomachs could not have been happier for our first meal at Can Tosca. Here I met our guide Renée, a long time resident with an infectious enthusiasm for Catalan cuisine, who would lead our group of twelve into the backstreets of Gràcia. The meeting point for the tour was the upscale Passeig de Gràcia, a street lined with fashionable stores boasting big names such as Valentino. ![]() After spending a few days eating around the rest of the city and the best chocolate places in Barcelona, I happily took the first opportunity I got to experience authentic Catalan cuisine from the kitchens of family-run establishments on a walking food tour with Devour Barcelona on the Gràcia Neighborhood Tour. The company offers tours that focus not only on the meals, but also the people behind them, intertwining their stories with the culture and history of Gràcia while exploring this hipster neighborhood on foot. The village of Gràcia was independent until the late 19 th century and it’s no surprise that its residents, a community of artists and intellectuals that’s fiercely proud of its heritage, still say they’re from Gràcia, not Barcelona. Gràcia is different, its character exuding the rare charm of a place so comfortable in its skin that it isn’t vying for your attention. There’s neither the chaos of busy La Rambla nor the crowds of camera-toting tourists that wander in the Gothic Quarter. The streets are narrower, the smell of freshly baked bread wafts onto the street as you pass by a home bakery, and art is everywhere painted on walls and store shutters, inked on the bodies of locals and proudly displayed through the open doors and windows of artist studios. Walking in the neighborhood of Gràcia feels different from being elsewhere in Barcelona.
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