Mother HH and I visited Barcelona twice in 2022, in both May and November, and we went to a lot of the same places on both visits. I don’t necessarily like to do that when I’m travelling, but some of the spots were so good (or so convenient) on our first visit, that we just couldn’t resist a second time. Rasoterra was probably our favourite spot on both trips.

We loved these tacos so much we ordered them on both our visits. They contained leek, shiitakes, pickled cabbage and mole sauce, and they were extremely flavoursome. I don’t often order tacos because I find them a bit too messy to eat, so I’m glad I made an exception.

This spring onion dish was one of the specials on our first visit – the menu changes a bit because they focus on local, seasonal ingredients. This was referred to as Catalan onion flowers (similar to spring onions for me), served with sundried tomato pesto and topped with a cream made from tofu and Kalamata olives. The flavours were all really savoury, and it was unlike any dish I’d had before – quite a treat.

The grilled cauliflower with walnut sauce was good – the cauliflower was cooked just as you’d hope, really tender and delicious. I’m not sure I’ll be looking out for walnut sauce again, but it was fun to try it.

This plate was so nice we had it both times as well: roasted roots with pulse hummus and basil oil. The first time we went it was a special, but the second time it had landed on the permanent menu. We had some roasted sweet potato, beetroot, onion, and leek, served on top of red lentil hummus, and scattered with some crispy red lentils. The vegetables were cooked perfectly. It’s rare that I get excited about a plate of vegetables, but this was so simple and so effective. You can always tell when you’re served vegetables by someone who loves them.

We’d thought that a tomato and pasta dish on our first trip would be the real highlight, but we were so dazzled by the roasted vegetables that this one became a bit of an afterthought.

This plate was homemade tempeh with pumpkin cream and orange mayo. I am a huge tempeh fan, so I really enjoyed that element along with the mayo and oil. However, the pumpkin cream was a touch too sweet for me. It was still a fun, fresh dish.

Mother HH ordered her dessert from the special menu the first time – it was a roasted apple with a cacao cream that tasted like white chocolate, almond crumble, and some earl grey caramel. She loved it! Again, it was unlike anything either of us had seen on a menu before, so it was really fun to try something completely new and different.

I got the millionaire’s shortbread the first time, which was disappointingly lacking in caramel. It’s rare that I complain that a dish is too dry, but this one really was. It was tasty, but just too much – a dollop of cream would certainly have helped.

On our second visit, this flan was not quite what I expected from the miso caramel pudding with parsnip cream. I tend to think of a pudding as a big, possibly dense cake, whereas this is more like the European idea of a pudding, so I should really have thought about it more. I liked the flavour of the miso caramel, but the texture wasn’t quite what I’d been hoping for, unfortunately.

And this is also not really what we expected from the mandarin sponge cake with pistachio sorbet! This one was more of a hit though – a nicely balanced dessert with some fun flavours and textures.

Even though there have been a few misses, this is the kind of place that really excites me to visit. You never quite know what you’re going to get, but it’s almost guaranteed to be something you haven’t tried before. And when it’s a hit, it’s a real hit!