Bar La Plata — The Last Honest Bar

Bar La Plata is a tiny tapas bar at 28 Carrer de la Mercè in Barcelona that has served the exact same four-dish menu since opening in 1945. Founded by Josep Marjanet and Joaquima Planas, the six-table venue prepares only tomato salad, botifarra sausage, fresh anchovies, and fried fish. Taste Atlas ranked its fried anchovies second best in the world, attracting notable patrons including chef Ferran Adrià and singer Bono.

Barcelona · from the walk “Stones & Secrets: Hidden Courtyards of the Barri Gòtic” · audio ~4 min · Generated

Carrer de la Mercè 28, Barcelona

What four dishes are served at Bar La Plata in Barcelona?

Stop right here. Take a breath. And look at this tiny corner bar at number twenty eight, Carrer de la Mersè.......... This is Bar La Plata... and in a city drowning in reinvention, this place hasn't changed its menu since nineteen forty five. Not once. Four tapas. That's it. Tomato salad with onions and arbequina olives. Botifarra, the classic Catalan sausage. Fresh anchovies. And their legendary Pescadito frito... tiny fried fish so good that Taste Atlas ranked them the Second best fried anchovies in the world.......... But who would be stubborn enough to open a bar with only four dishes and never add a fifth?......... That would be Josep Marjanet and Joaquima Planas... known to everyone simply as Pepito and Quimeta. They opened this place in nineteen forty five, right after the Civil War, and they actually Lived in the attic above the bar. They would wake at four in the morning to prepare breakfast for the dockworkers coming off the nearby port.......... Their daughter Anna Marjanet grew up squeezing through crowds just to kiss her parents hello after school. She spent thirty three years cooking in that tiny kitchen before passing the secret of the perfect fried fish to the next cook in two thousand nine. And the secret? An extra dose of love. Her words, not mine.......... Now look at those three huge barrels behind the counter. Tinto, blanco, rosado... wine poured into small glasses or, if you're brave, into a Porrón, the traditional Catalan glass pitcher with a pointed spout. You tilt your head back and pour a thin stream of wine directly into your mouth... without your lips Ever touching the glass. George Orwell himself wrote about encountering the porrón during the Spanish Civil War, calling it, shall we say, a rather dreadful experience.......... And the waiter you might see behind that marble counter? That could be Pepe Gómez. He started working here in nineteen seventy two... over fifty years ago. The founder Pepito taught him a motto he still lives by: the more I give, the more I have.......... Oh, and one more thing. Ferrán Adriá, the legendary chef of El Bulli, widely considered the greatest restaurant in the world... he calls this standing room only, four dish bar... "a magical place." Jamie Oliver came here to film his Mediterranean cooking show. Bono from U two has squeezed in for a glass. All of them, hunting for a spot at one of just Six tables.......... In a city that reinvents itself every decade, Bar La Plata remains the most stubborn, most honest, most delicious act of resistance on the block.

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