Meet Veronique at her apartment and together walk 5-mins to the Santa Cataterina market. This is a 30-minute guided tour of Mercat de Santa Caterina - a buzzy central market featuring a unique, wavy roof and colorful mosaics, with a variety of vendors selling fresh fruit, vegetables, fish and seafood. The market houses a mix of traditional food stalls and sleek modern restaurants, both with a huge variety of delicious offerings. Join Veronique as she introduces you to local, regional ingredients as well as her favorite vendors. You might buy a few ingredients before returning to Veronique's home for your cooking and cocktail class.
Meal
Cooking Experience
Market Tour
Meet Nicole at her apartment and walk together for 10 minutes to Mercat de Sants for your guided market tour. This is a covered market where you can buy everything there from olives, seafood, meat, grains, fruit and vegetables. This is where Nicole buys her fresh, seasonal and local ingredients from, and she will be happy to take you on a guided tour to introduce you to ingredients used in Spanish cooking. Meet her favorite vendors and buy a few ingredients before returning to Nicole penthouse apartment for your cooking and meal experience.
Meal
Cooking Experience
Market Tour
I could not recommend this more highly! This is why I travel, to meet amazing people like Josh, explore new cities and beautiful places, and to experience the best food that a place has to offer. This was pure perfection! I love Traveling Spoon. Our afternoon with Josh was perfect. We met him at one of the large markets in Barcelona, near his kitchen, for a market tour and sampling some fantastic Jamon. Josh is a teacher at heart, and doesn’t miss a chance to point out the construction of the market, the reason the government invested in and rebuilt the markets (I won’t spoil the story), and of course all the steps of making the paella. We visited specialty shops for: charcuteria (jamon), fruits and veggies, fish, eggs (yes, nothing but eggs there), poultry, and olives. We enjoyed samples at most places, and purchased the ingredients for the paella and sangria. Note: I wrote ahead to Josh to ask him to teach me to make the fish stock, so if you want that, you should do the same. Josh uses a small apartment with a professional kitchen and dining room for his classes. This was no demo class - we were in the kitchen with him the whole time, given assignments as fast as we could get them done, and with supervision and pointers at each step. “Here’s how you puree a tomato”, “Here’s what to look for as the paella cooks”, “here’s how the Castilian version is different from other versions”. I have included several photos of the market trip, and ingredients, and the process for the paella. I left out his secret steps for your enjoyment with him… The sangria was fantastic, and the paella tasted as good as it looked - that flavor was so deep and yummy! There was very little left over after dinner. Oh, and we had a nice dessert similar to creme brule. We met Josh about 5pm, and were done with dinner around 8, which left us time for a flamenco show that night. It was one my favorite travel activities I have ever done. I will certainly be trying traveling spoon again in the near future, maybe a Japanese home-cooking one in Tokyo…
Meal
Cooking Experience
Market Tour
