One of the many brilliant things about the classic continental European urban environment, with its close-quartered streets of five-storey apartment blocks, is that it creates a huge number of ground-floor commercial spaces, many of them too small to accommodate a full restaurant but perfect for that most charming of places: the one-employee bar. Single-employee bars are necessarily devoid of frippery – the food on offer is generally that which requires little more than slicing and the drinks are simple.
They’re all over the place in Berlin, and there’s one in Paris’s 11th arrondissement, called La Buvette, of which I am particularly fond, but the apogee of the form is surely Bar La Camila in Barcelona. Run by Clara and Maria, one of whom is pretty much always in residence, it’s on a funny little street of the sort that you’d never idle down speculatively in a slightly out-of-the-way part of Gracia, Barcelona’s late-night neighbourhood. Because of this the crowd is young and hip, defiantly un-touristy.Â
The design has mid-century notes without being clichéd and the food is perfect in its simplicity: pan con tomate, hulking great olives, slices of tortilla. Refreshingly, there aren’t many options when it comes to drinks but everything is lovingly chosen, from the coffee beans to the natural wines. The thing to do is to prop yourself up at the bar with a glass of vermut over ice and pretend, just for a little bit, that you are as cool as the rest of the people there.Â
Carrer de Banyoles 11, Grà cia, 08012 Barcelona; @barlacamila
