La Clara Restaurant | Restaurant Review

La Clara Restaurant -Trial During Barcelona Opportunity Week

Based on 6 ratings

Restaurante-La-Clara-Entrada La Clara restaurant is one of those places you always see from the outside and, given their ultra-sleek appearance, rarely ever dare enter. Once you do, though, two things strike you: it is sleek -food included, but, contrary to what you’ve imagined, prices are lower than expected.

Let’s start from the beginning. The reason we went there: we decided to take advantage from Barcelona Opportunity Week, an initiative aimed at bringing good discounts at several places in the city. Amongst them, many restaurants adhered to it, combining a set meny specially designed for the occasion at a set price with the donation of a percentage of the price to a charity of their choice. It took place from the 28th January to 6th February 2011.

To be honest, our first choice was booking a table in the Michelin-starred Restaurant Lluçanès, but failed miserably due to their lack of phone answering service (!). After thinking that a Saturday night booking was not going to be easy, we inspected a few menus and next choice was set to Restaurant La Clara. To our surprise, it was smooth sailing. Their Opportunity Week set menu included:

Lentils salad
Oven-baked vegetables with goats cheese
Grilled steak with orange sauce
Cuttlefish meatballs with wild mushrooms sauce
Home-made cheesecake ice-cream with wild berries coulis
Tiramisú

Restaurante-La-Clara-Helado-Queso-Frutas The price per person, €16, excluded VAT and wine, so from their impressive wine cellar (the wine menu looked more like a giant bible) we chose a bottle of red El Vínculo, from La Mancha region, in the evening’s true spirit of trying new things.

The verdict? Fantastic, food was amazing, full of flavour, with some pleasant surprises, particularly with the cuttlefish meatballs (so fishy!). An exceptional mention goes to their desserts, especially the cheesecake ice-cream with wild berries coulis -fruitilicious!

The setting is outstanding (see the pictures below: worth dining on the second lower level, the rustic stone walls provide a more intimate experience than the ground floor level). The only “but” would be our waiter’s inexperience (he was on his first week of employment there and hadn’t yet learned the ropes) and the fact that bread was charged at €1.50 a person. This is a very private pet-hate, I admit, but how do you justify €6 on the bill for bread? I find it cheeky and really taking advantage -but that’s a post for another day. Or an entirely new category?

In any case, we got good value for the €35 a head we paid: excellent dining for the regular price of a Saturday dinner in the city. Would I go back there again? Probably, particularly to try their fish (their regular menu has very interesting options) and especially for those heavenly home-made desserts.

Published on 5 March 2011