New and improved menu translations!!!! (If you're following closely, you may have too much time on your hands.)

A few amendments to the last post, as my last post before leaving...

Jenn's attempt at translating the already conceptual menu was admirable. We had a little more help from Jeff (we will miss, miss, miss you Jeff) on it. Today we bid adieu to him at the famed Quatre Gats, absinthe-fueled hangout of Picasso and the modernistas. Good way to seal up this trip:

* Boqueron: That boqueron may have been the best I had here.
* Ditto the gamba. Huge, and the tomalley in the head was sweet.
* Percebes in beet soup and onion foam. That's right, foam is everywhere. Have seen it translated alternately as "aire" (air) and in this case "jugo" (juice). Weirdly, haven't seen it as "espuma" which is foam in Castellano. And what are percebes? Goose-necked barnacles: they look like claws, but they are crustaceans. From fish expert Alan Jackson: "It is a crustacean, although not looking remotely like a prawn or crab. It consists of what might be called a tube, as thick as a finger, covered by a dark and scaley skin. At the end is a sort of 'hoof,' white bony pads from between which the creature's feet emerge. . . .To eat, pinch the outer skin near the hoofs and prise it off with your fingernailsrevealinggn a stalk-like protuberance which you bit off whole." Um, thanks, I'll still have another.
* Ventresca de atun con jugo de pimiento y jengibre: nice back-end cut of tuna, and there's that foam again. This time of red pepper and ginger.
* Bogavante con ravioli de aceituna negra: lobster with black olive ravioli.
* Lubina a la brasa con iceberg y jugo de moluscos: sea bass cooked in coals with iceberg lettuce and mollusc foam.
* Fideos melosos con col y sepia: moist short noodles with cabbage, and sepia is a whitefish (not knowing this, for a recipe I once requested it from a spice vendor).
* Cordero relleno: I messed this one up. I don't think there was gnocchi involved...but on the other hand, this was super high-concept food maybe there was, but it would have been all squished in between the rolled up lamb.

And there it is. Perhaps more than you ever wanted to know about Catalan haute grub. Except that I just bought Ferran Adria's food lab's book of food science. As in, how you make foam. I have my airplane reading.

Last note: the charming doctor who treated Jenn is Jose A. Tous. If you are in Barcelona and need a sensible diagnosis, as well as patata bravas recommendations, call him. Thanks, Doctor.

--ALAN