Secrets of Barcelona: Windsor

This week my book The 500 hidden secrets of Barcelona gets released. In the next couple of blog posts, I’ll expand on some of the book’s entries. Today: secret number 25, from the list of ‘5 exceptionally stylish restaurants’. 

Guaranteed good food 

I’m not a restaurant critic. I just eat, like most people. So when I visit a restaurant, I care about more than the gastronomy. A restaurant is an experience: forgettable or memorable, something you want to do again straight away or something you could live without, something for every day and something for special occasions. 

So I understand why Joan Junyent, owner of Windsor, specified the Windsor kitchen is not about experimentation or spectacle. Nobody goes to the opera on a daily basis. Yes, it’s grand and impressive, but you wouldn’t be able to appreciate it ever day of the year. Windsor’s chef Carlos Alconchel promises, in the words of Junyent, ‘cocina de placer seguro’: guaranteed good food.

Windsor takes up the entire ground floor of an Eixample building, divided into separate spaces, some small and private, some bigger and more opulent. During lunch it attracts businessmen – this is where the possibility of a private space becomes a trump card –, in the evening people who like the waiters' hands-on approach and the excellent, classic but classy food. Before this place became Windsor, it was called Belair and served as a restaurant for fifteen years. The outdated chic of Belair got stripped away and the current incarnation has been around for twenty years, receiving another make-over in 2013. That’s a lot of tradition and Windsor handles it well. 

This became obvious during my visit, between Christmas and New Year’s. The restaurant, which sports the phrase ‘Cuina Catalana’, Catalan Cuisine, on the window, served a typically Catalan Christmas menu. Therefore, the main course was beef cannelloni in a truffle béchamel sauce. A classic, done just right, so you remember why it became a classic in the first place. 

Windsor’s fish dishes were the most enjoyable: the marinated salmon, the gratinéed fish soup, served in a hedgehog and the quite stunning combination of raw tuna with a slice of foie gras (see picture above). For dessert, my photographer friend J. and me received chocolate raviolis (with crumbs of salt). By that time, we were so impressed by the professionalism of Windsor’s kitchen and staff, we felt like amateur eaters in comparison. 

It is typical for human beings that at any given moment we live in the present, the past and the future. While we are experiencing something, we compare it to stuff in the past and fantasize about future possibilities. I could totally see myself take my parents to Windsor, to sit on its beautiful terrace and tell them that, if you’re visiting the city, this is the place to go for outstanding Catalan cuisine. I could picture myself lifting a glass of champagne, to celebrate a wedding anniversary (even though technically I’m not married yet). Honestly, I could picture myself celebrating a Wednesday at Windsor [Carrer de Corsèga 286, +34 93 237 75 88, www.restaurantwindsor.com], because any reason will do to return as soon as possible.

Pictures by Jairo Guerrero.