Somebody else's business // Frankie Gallo Cha Cha Cha

What?

Pizza at Frankie Gallo Cha Cha Cha

Where?

Raval neighbourhood, minutes away from overlooked Gaudí-marvel Palau Güell and the Liceu operahouse.

First impressions:

The place is lovely! Narrow near the entrance, with tables on either side, then opening up in a much wider space. Want a cosy table for two? It’s there. Want to sit at long school cafeteria-style tables? They’re over there.

My plus-1: Colm.

Starters:

Fried calamari with lime. We’ve just started picking at it, when the main dishes arrive.

Meanwhile, the people...

Mostly young people. Frankie Gallo Cha Cha Cha is supposed to be the place for a late night dinner.

Wine and beverages:

I try a Dry Martini, my dinner companion orders the house wine. The house wine comes in quite abundant quantity, the size of the Dry Martini could politely be described as underwhelming. It’s slightly smoother and sweeter than I expect from a Dry Martini, which should have a bite, in my all-important opinion.

Main dishes:

We’ve both ordered pizzas. I’ve tried the Puttanesca, tomato-based, with black olives, anchovies, capers and fresh basil leaves. The dough is... interesting: very thick crust, all the rest wafer-thin yet impossible to get through with the pizza cutter. Knife and fork prove more successful, but it still takes effort. And despite how tough it was to cut, once you hold a slice in your hand, it instantly bows to the laws of gravity and all ingredients droop off. By now, the dough problem is the main thing on the menu. Yes, the tomato sauce is rich, the ingredients are dished out in correct amounts and I would enjoy the overall taste if it wasn’t such a hassle to eat this pizza. My dinner companion concurs.

Conversation topics:

The joys of being made redundant. Our sex lives. The dough.

Desserts:

Despite leaving aside large parts of the pizzas’ oversized crusts, both of us feel too bloated to go for dessert. We decide on alcohol instead. Colm orders a Mint Julep, which comes in a nice, ice-crusted cup. I try the red house wine: flowery and strong.

Lasting impressions:

There are glowing reviews aplenty about this place, mentioning the pork belly (which they cure themselves), the ecological flour and sourdough they use for the dough, and so forth. Yet I am not convinced. The pizzas were tasty but too much work. The fried squid is the same we could have eaten in a hundred other Barcelona restaurants (and cheaper at that: asking 10 euro for this dish is quite gutsy). It turns out we both prefer Parking Pizza.

Roll credits:

Lightning keeps zapping through the sky as we walk home, but no reason to hurry: Barcelona thunderstorms take hours to start.