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FOOD AND DRINK

Six Barcelona bars serving delicious free tapas

The Local's Esme Fox, a long-term Barcelona resident, shares some of her favourite city bars that serve free tapas when you buy a drink.

Published: 27 May 2022 15:36 CEST
tapas bar Barcelona
Free tapas bars in Barcelona. Photo: LEEROY Agency / Pixabay

Spain is of course celebrated for its tapas, small plates of food, designed for sharing and consisting of favourites such as patatas bravas (fried potatoes topped with spicy sauce), pimientos de padrón (fried green peppers) and croquetas (croquettes of different varieties such as ham or mushrooms). 

One theory is that tapas were invented in order to cover your wine or beer glass, so that flies and other bugs wouldn’t fly in. The barman would give customers a piece of bread topped with jamón (ham) or queso (cheese) in order to act as a lid or in Spanish ‘tapa’, hence the name tapas.

Although most cities in Spain no longer serve free tapas when you buy a drink, there are still some cities where you are guaranteed a free snack. This is still true in the southern cities of Granada, Almería and Jaén, in León and Segovia, as well as a few others dotted around the country.

Despite this, you can still find the odd bar serving the old-fashioned free tapa in some of Spain’s largest and most expensive cities, including Madrid and Barcelona.

So, next time you’re in the Catalan capital, save some money by visiting one of these bars, where you’ll still get served a free tapa along with your drink.  

READ ALSO: Top ten Madrid bars serving free tapas, one for each barrio

Keep in mind, you won’t be served a free drink if you just order a coffee and sometimes not with a soft drink either, it’s usually when you buy a glass of beer or wine.

Ca’l Chusco

This small traditional bar in the old fisherman’s neighbourhood of Barceloneta offers one free tapa every time you order a drink. It’s usually something small and simple, but if you’re still hungry then you can always order one of their delicious paellas or plates or seafood too. 

Raspall
This cute and contemporary little tapas joint, situated on the edge of Gracia, is so popular that it often gets very crowded, so get here early if you want a spot at the bar. It costs around €2-4 for a drink and a small tapas dish, which you can choose from a large selection. There’s everything from croquetas and hummus to small sausages.

Pappa e Citti

It’s not just authentic Spanish bars offering free tapas in Barcleona, at traditional Sardinian restaurant Pappa e Citti in the barrio of Gracia, they offer it too. Be aware that free tapas with your drink is only served between 6-9pm. Small tapas offerings may have an Italian twist or maybe something simple like a piece of bread topped with cream cheese and caramelised onions.

La Xula Taperia

In the heart of the Gracia neighbourhood, this modern and stylish bar offers the closest thing to a Granadino-style free plate of tapas. Rather than just a small piece of bread topped with an ingredient, their free offerings include meatballs, anchovies or even ensaladilla rusa (Russian potato salad).

Casa Arana

Located in the heart of the Sant Andreu neighbourhood, not far from the metro stop of the same name, Casa Arana is a small local barrio bar. As well as the regular drinks on offer, they make their own beer in either tostada (toasted) or rubia (pale) varieties, which is served in a tall glass and looks like an ice cream sundae. The free tapa served with your drink is typically a piece of baguette topped with a simple ingredient such as jamón, chistorra (cured sausage) or cheese.

Cassette Bar

This tapas and cocktail bar located in the heart of Raval has a decidedly 80s themed vibe and name to match. They have been serving free tapas for the past 14 years – something typical like piece of bread and tomato topped with a slice of tortilla (Spanish omelette).

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FOOD AND DRINK

How hi-tech hops are keeping beer bitter in Spain as climate bites

Outside a warehouse in northwestern Spain, it's a freezing, foggy morning but inside it's balmy, the warmth and LED lights fooling 360 hop plants to flower as if it were late August.

Published: 21 March 2024 09:27 CET
How hi-tech hops are keeping beer bitter in Spain as climate bites

Mounted on a soaring grid system of cables and wire, these vigorous climbing plants are in full flower, covered in delicate papery-green hops which are prized for giving beer its unique aroma and crisp, refreshing bitterness.

Normally farmed outside, the hop plants are part of a unique indoor farming project by Spanish startup Ekonoke, which has developed an alternative way to cultivate this climate-vulnerable crop in order to protect the drinkability of beer.

Experts say rising temperatures and increased droughts have made Europe’s hop harvests increasingly unpredictable, lowering yields and reducing the quality of the alpha acids in its resins and oils that are so crucial to the taste and character of different beers.

“Climate change is affecting the field, and last year we were down 40 percent on hop production in Europe,” said Giacomo Guala, policy adviser on hops for Copa-Cogeca, which groups the European Union’s main farmers unions.

“You don’t get rain when you’re supposed to, or too much rain when you’re not supposed to, so that predictability is no longer there,” he told AFP.

Hi-tech hops

Brewers are already feeling that unpredictability.

Having a stable supply of hops was “crucial” as there was no alternative to give that bitterness, explained Jose Luis Olmedo, head of research and development at Cosecha de Galicia, the innovation arm of Spanish brewer Hijos de Rivera, which makes Estrella Galicia beer.

Reliant until now on field-grown hops, the Galicia-based brewer quickly saw the potential of the indoor hops grown by Ekonoke.

When the startup raised €4.2 million in investment rounds in 2022, it said “a significant” chunk of it came from the brewer.

An employee hand-picks indoor-grown hops during harvest at Ekonoke company’s facility. (Photo by Brais Lorenzo / AFP)

It also caught the attention of the world’s largest brewer AB InBev, joining its startup accelerator programme.

“What brewers are most interested in is the guaranteed supply of quantity and quality,” said Ekonoke chief executive Ines Sagrario at their 1,200-square-metre (13,000-square-foot) pilot farm in Chantada, where they harvested their first crop in mid-February.

They began trials at their Madrid lab in 2019, starting with four plants and scaling to 24, slashing the growing time and using “15 times less water” than outdoors, while aiming “to reach 20”.

“In this warehouse, we control all the environmental and nutrient parameters and the lighting factors, using LED lights to provide the plant what it needs when it needs it,” said Sagrario.

The lights replicate the different colours and intensity of sunlight at each stage of the growth cycle when they bathe the rapidly growing plants in an ambient purple glow.

Halving the growth cycle

The heady scent of hops permeates the air as a huge bine laden with hop cones is cut from its trellis, tumbling to the floor before being carried out to a red harvesting machine.

Grown without soil, the bines are fed by a closed system that allows constant reuse of the nutrient-infused water and doesn’t use pesticides, relying instead on tightly controlled access protocols.

“In the field, although the cycle is six months, they can only harvest once a year, because you need the correct growing conditions,” said agronomist and chief operations officer Ana Saez.

Ana Saez, 45, agronomist and chief operating officer, harvests indoor-grown hops at Ekonoke. (Photo by Brais Lorenzo / AFP)

“Here, as we can control and replicate ‘spring’, we’ve reduced the crop cycle to three months.”

Multiple trials had shown their hops contained “more alpha acids per kilogram” than those in the field, Saez said, pointing to the abundance of yellow powdery lupulin clinging to the cones.

By summer, three grow rooms will be operational with more than 1,000 plants maturing on a staggered basis.

“Once we finish learning everything we need to learn in this pilot, we will be building a full-scale industrial facility with 12,000 square metres of growing area,” said Sagrario, whose 12-strong team has so far managed to replicate five different hop cultivars.

For Hijos de Rivera, it’s a project of “strategic” importance, with the brewer planning to have the facility fully operational “by the end of 2025”, said Olmedo.

Mirek Trnka, a bioclimatologist from the Czech Academy of Sciences, said hydroponics was one solution, but scaling up to meet market demands would be tricky.

“Even though the hop is a minority crop, you’d have to upsize operations quite significantly to match the current production globally by hydroponic growth,” he told AFP.

At Ekonoke, they see their role as using science and technology to protect the hops’ biodiversity and eventually developing new hybrids “to give more quantity and quality using less resources”.

“People ask us if hop farmers outdoors feel threatened by us, but we’re not threatening them. Climate change is threatening them,” said Sagrario.

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