El Cafetí

Ken Livingstone was in Restaurant El Cafetí on February 1999. This is what he wrote about his experience with us and many other things.

Ken Livingstone, supongo

Not many people know this but I am Vice President of the Zoological Society of London. I suppose it says a lot about the state of the modern Labour Party that it is easier for a socialist to get a position at the zoo than it is in the Government, but it has kept me off the streets. One of our big projects was to try to persuade the Millennium Commission to put up the money for a huge aquarium in Docklands that would have been the first aquarium in the would dedicated to conversation.

One of the real benefits of this is that it gives me an excuse to pop round the world looking at modern aquaria such as Europe’s most popular, which is in Barcelona. The fact that it was a typical cold miserable London on the weekend concerned and Barcelona was bathed in wonderful sun was neither here nor there. Several other Londoners seemed to have had the same idea. As we sat in the wonderful restaurants overlooking the harbour, you could work out the Brits, who were in their T-shirts, as opposed to the locals, who were in their fur coats.

Although the aquarium was very nice, the night point was the restaurant El Cafeti, which was listed in Time Out as just about the best restaurant for local cuisine. The trouble is the locals don’t start eating till gone 9pm, so when we turned up at 8.30pm the place was still completely empty. In the next ten minutes three other Brit couples turned up clutching their identical travel guides. Certainly this was the best meal I have ever had in Barcelona and, because of Gordon Brown’s overvalued pound, it was one of the cheapest meals I have had of such quality.

A wonderful Torello Brut Cava was followed by a Vina Albina Rioja; both came at under £ 10 each. My veggie friend had a really fresh salad with a Roquefort dressing, while my starter of hake and prawns stuffed into pimientos was brilliant and original. Our main courses consisted of my mar i montanya, a beautiful casserole of rabbit and langoustins in which the sauces are blended to perfection. Sadly, my veggie friend faced the dilemma that her vegetarian risotto could only be ordered for two, so I had to help her finish it. Fortunately, there was just space for the banana ice - cream in cappuccino cream. The total bill came to just under £ 45, which wasn’t bad given I had chosen the two most expensive wines on the wine list.

All in all a very successful weekend, marred only by an encounter with several ghastly young drunken Brits who insisted on screaming at the local cleaner in the airport, ‘Manuel, where’s the beer?’