Barceluna

It’s been too long since our visit to be able to write a proper review of Barceluna – but we went during the holiday season when my life was pretty crazy. Still, I figure I should write a couple about it.
First of all, it’s not really a restaurant. It’s a lounge where they serve food. We went early a weekday night, before the music started (at 8PM, I think) and there was nobody there. They didn’t even have waitstuff, instead we were served by the cocktail waitress from the adjoining bar. She was nice and the service was good, but didn’t know anything about the menu. It was pretty weird dining in the restaurant alone – if you want to go, I’d recommend you do it when they’re playing the music.
The menu consists mostly of tapas, though they have larger dishes as well. We like tapas and we went for them. Unfortunately, I can’t recall all of what we ordered. I know we enjoyed the garlic french fries, we ordered a small size but I think they must have served us the larger one – the plate was huge. We didn’t, however, liked the pork back-ribs, which had a strong and bitter glace, which made it very difficult to taste the actual ribs. The tri-tip strips with blue cheese suffered from a similar affliction, the blue cheese was too strong and made it impossible to taste the meat. Alas, I don’t remember what else we had, but our whole impression was that the dishes were off. We really wanted to like the place, as we were out in a rare date, but ultimately we couldn’t and I don’t think we’d go again.
Barceluna at Kelly’s
1313 Park Street
Alameda, CA 94501
510-522-7425
510-769-1011
http://barceluna.org/