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Last month, we told you all about our visit to Hisop, one the great “bistronomic” spots on Passatge Marimón in the upper Eixample area. Having heard so much about Hisop’s neighbor, Coure, we decided to give it a try, and what better chance to do so then the visit to Barcelona of EatCatalunya contributor Andrew Hwang. Andrew wanted to try modern Catalan so we met up at Coure for a 7-course lunch featuring some very ecletic dishes.

Luckily, unlike my meal at Hisop, I had Andrew with me to help keep up with all the dishes and give testimony to what we ate. We were also both armed with iPhones so we could share images with you here. The pictures are no works of art (click on them for large version), but, for the most part, the food indeed was.

So rather than just giving you my rundown of our meal, Andrew and I are doing this tandem style. And to keep things fair, we didn’t compare notes. Again, this isn’t a review, but rather a series of observations about the restaurant and the food that we hope will be helpful to you. We know that many visitors to Barcelona often find themselves in a toss-up over what restaurant to choose, so we hope that these descriptions and observations help make your choice a little easier. Here goes:

Décor

Jen: You walk through the door and the first impression that you get is that you are in a very small, very exclusive restaurant.That’s until you say you have a reservation and they inform you that this isn’t the restaurant…it’s downstairs. Coure is not small nor big, but it is dark. It’s in a basement level room so natural light is impossible, but even still the artificial illumination is almost non-existent. Dim lights barely light the restaurant and there is some help in seeing what is on your plate from the candles on the tables. This is probably really lovely for dinner, but for lunch it seemed a bit odd, and made for a kind of stuffy atmosphere. Nothing terrible, just a bit strange to me.

Andrew: Restaurant Coure is located on a tiny street just off of the tony Avinguda Diagonal. The entrance essentially prepares you for what the inside will be like: casually but understatedly elegant, seemingly intended to be non-intrusive to the dining experience you are about to encounter. Upon entry, you see an elongated small room where a large crafted wooden counter, beautifully striated, alongside to the right served as a bar and eating space for those who just want a drink or quick meal. Behind it were glimpses of a kitchen where the food must have been prepared. Read the full story »