Restaurante Lagunak, Barcelona

I'm back in Barcelona and back to my usual culinary adventures. In this trip, I am more inclined to try traditional cuisine, rather than the usual modern, molecular cuisine that is so in demand nowadays. My first stop was a place called Lagunak, a traditional Basque Restaurant located very near my house.

They serve typical cuisine from the Basque region, including the traditional montaditos, where you just take the montadito from the bar, where they then charge you by the amount of toothpicks you have on your plate. But we decided to have a sit down dinner instead of the montaditos, since there were some dishes I was craving to have that are not available in the bar.

For starters though, we went to the bar to get some montaditos. There were so many available that I honestly did not know what to get. I ended up choosing 4 kinds of the most popular ones (Crab, Tuna, Bacalao and Empanada). Fantastic way to start our meal, together with a beer.

We also had a plate of Chistorra (traditional type of Chorizo from the Northern region of Spain)

and a Cazuelita de Cordero (Lamb Stew) which was to die for..

We then ordered our main dishes (mostly all traditional Basque dishes). Kokotxas de Merluza Rebozadas, Bacalao en Salsa Verde and Chuleton. All this washed down with some Rioja (2005 Muga Reserva). I would have wanted to order a bottle of Txakoli which I think would have paired perfectly with the Kokotxas and the Bacalao, but decided to just stick with the reds, since the others were not so keen on drinking Txakoli.

Food just can't get any better than this. Honest simple traditional cooking using the best ingredients possible. The Kokotxas de Merluza (Hake throat) were fried with flour, simply served with lemon. The buttery oily texture of the Kokotxas perfectly deep fried, which gave it a little crisp. The Bacalao (Salt cod) was another great dish, with the traditional Salsa Verde (green sauce - Garlic-oil-parsley).

The Chuleton (Steak) was a 700 grams of perfectly cooked steak. At first I thought it may have been over cooked, since they have a tendency to do this in many restaurants in Spain, but once slice proved me wrong. It was medium rare as I like it, although I would have preferred if they had put real fries on the plate, and not chips. Still a very enjoyable dish.

Over all a great dinner which I really enjoyed. I do plan to come back again and try the other traditional dishes they have, or to just have some montaditos and a few beers. For whatever it's worth, I recommend this place to anyone who enjoys this type of cuisine.