Italy is my country, my teacher and guide. Machiavelli showed me that there is no freedom without power, and Pavese that happiness is found in the anguish of waiting for life's very few perfect moments to repeat themselves tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and another day. Bacaro is an Italian restaurant that makes me happy, childishly jovial, and such is the grace of dining in this comfortable place created by Alfredo Rodolfi, Maurizio de Vei, Pablo Rodríguez and chef Marco Lecis that its ideal nights are among the few things that excite the remnants of Christian guilt I keep in a drawer. Pleasure likes to hide, and so does Bacaro in a corner of the city, Jerusalem street, where La Boqueria loses its noble name, between Hospital and Carme. Disembark in the Raval, which doesn't bite, browse the menu (only to admire the beautiful fish drawn by artist Dino Corradini) and let Alfry and Mauri choose the assortment.
Digestive and moral civilization consists of dining only on first courses. We initially have a toast of baccalà mantecato that softens our tongue and palate like the flesh of a newborn. Thus we are ready to receive the holy host of truffle that dominates the passatelli with artichoke cream and mushrooms: it is a dish of pornographic beauty, of a taste that we would believe impossible to surpass, were it not for the appearance of Marco's new invention: the taglionino carbonara of the sea. He boils them with rock fish broth and prawn bisque, adds lumpfish caviar, two mussels (unnecessary, for my taste) and a tiny bit of butter, all crowned with a very thin slice of salmon marinated under smoked salt and sugar. Adjectives are imperfect, any phrase falls short before one of the best pasta dishes in Europe. If you order it, you will want to repeat, and so the next day, and also the day after tomorrow.
If Bacaro seems like a luxury to you, consider that the sea carbonara costs sixteen euros, a terribly lower amount than what Quim Torra, Ada Colau, or the insufferable piromusicals of La Mercè have cost us. I understand you experience the anguish one feels after having tasted an unattainable pleasure that can only be attenuated by the tranquility of the mushroom risotto with rosemary emulsion with which we ended the feast. At home, the dessert section has always seemed like a frivolity to us, for people who gorge themselves on Sundays, but it must be admitted that the parmesan cheesecake spread with fig cream goes against any purpose of restraint.
Adjectives are imperfect, any phrase falls short before one of the best pasta dishes in EuropeThe tavern-casual decor of the place, a slightly imperfect service in the presentation of the dish (and the natural Italian tendency of the staff to vociferate operatically) might lead you to fear an uncomfortable evening; no way, because Alfry and Mauri make you feel so welcome that you can only surrender to the empire of their sweetest law.
Despite the fact that Italians are the largest community of foreigners in Barcelona and that most of the founding fathers (Sagarra and Pla, reverence) were confessed and proud Italophiles, the proportion of restaurants that do justice to our brotherhood is ridiculous. We have enjoyed Xemei, Paisano Bistró, and Sartoria Panatieri, of course, and we also painfully mourned the closure of La Meneghina on Tiradors street; but none of them come close, as of today, to the sublimity of Bacaro, this focus of light where an evening is so perfect that it makes you feel a certain guilt for being alive.
When we leave the place, the presence of a couple of Mossos patrols makes me think that God wants to arrest us for having overindulged in gluttony. False alarm; it's simply a routine closure of a small drug business that the next day, after filling another file, will continue to operate with the same exact diligence.
We return home and drowsiness forces us to walk embraced as if we were already in bed. Once in bed, Alba kisses my back like a fish and I am so happy that a sudden urge to die takes hold of my spirit, still with the taglionino in my stomach, and so, seeing that I probably won't win the Nobel Prize in literature, at least let the tanatopractor who performs the autopsy be able to contemplate even some small fragment of the caviar or the persistent memory of the buttery fragrance of the dish that has filled me with excessive happiness.
Despite Italians being the largest community of foreigners in Barcelona, the proportion of restaurants that do justice to our brotherhood is ridiculousAnguish makes me cry, but I close my eyes and pray that the warmth of the body I love will cure my flaws.The next day, when we wake up, Alba immediately notices me touching my head and asks me what's wrong, even though she already knows all the answers. I tell her that often I still lack the will to live but that yesterday was a beautiful night and, as she hugs me, we are a single body of happiness and anguish.
Soon we will return to Bacaro to heal and cry again.
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