In the same way that some wild plants do not straighten their stems until hours after the first light of dawn begins to bathe them, lazily stretching with the same resistance of lovers to separate after their first intercourse, the Eixample does not begin to wake up until, past noon and even shortly before lunch, Ginés Pérez opens the doors of his Belvedere in Mercader passage.
Last Monday, the Govern dels pitjors granted us the grace of being able to return to the restaurants and bars that brighten our existence, as if giving charity to a beggar, with that moral superiority of those who, lacking the ability to manage public affairs with some decency, can only shield themselves in the arbitrariness of prohibition. But let's urgently forget this mob, because any sordid incompetence becomes secondary and minor when our great barman returns to the Grid of which he is absolute guardian and lord.
It doesn't matter what the weather is like on planet Earth, because inside my favorite bar it's always autumn and the calm color of November and the slight coolness of mid-season prevail. The altar is a dark olive green mahogany bar: at the entrance, a tray of fresh fruit greets us, to the right of which, in a corner, the oldest clients greet the dusk, renouncing postmodernity and taking refuge in the legends they repeat like a psalmody. The wooden path continues to the kitchen, and at the halfway point of the bar, Ginés has placed an enormous ice bucket with champagne, the first article of the Magna Carta of his temple, for he knows that any problem can be solved with a toast.
At the bar, you could spend decades hypnotized watching all the elixirs of the world coexist on the wall shelves: whiskey and bourbon on the main altars, in small domes illuminated by light that sanctifies their existence, and vermouths stacked lower down like youngsters yearning for adolescence. At the end of the bar, a couple of tables are hidden, unnoticed even by the most curious spirits, where autumn acquires a Berlin light, a perfect cave for those who intend to practice the art of telling half-truths to a woman.
Great in the canonical mixture, Ginés will guess any concoction that adapts to your mood (the Belvedere does not have a menu, as menus are only ordered by cretins), although I recommend the novice visitor to approach the master's canonical by asking for one of the seven capital cocktails. Any vital slap will be minor when one gets used to ingesting the syrup concocted from one part of Noilly Prat Dry and nine london dry gin at twenty degrees below zero, an intoxicating mixture that produces the miracle of the embers that the amber vermouth exercises making love with gin. Ginés's Dry Martini, seasoned with a Sevillian manzanilla olive, is one of the best in Barcelona, infinitely superior to the brothel that dares to steal the name of the sacred cocktail and is a few blocks away. If your throat is fearful or you are easily shaky, better quench your thirst with the salty, sour and smooth contrast of the Margarita, with the pleasant spiciness of the Perrin's room of the Sherry Merry or perhaps, even better, embrace the childlike joy of mint, angostura and bourbon whiskey of a tropical Mint Julep.
Good people associate the cocktail with the depressive calm of dusk, which we greet with the orange peel of the Negroni or the floral notes of the Old Fashioned, the medicine of lonely men who cross their legs pretending to philosophize, feigning intellectual posture. What I am telling you is the canonical, but if you want to invent an elixir or improvise, confess what is the favorite base of a cocktail, be it vodka, champagne or baby perfume, and Ginés will turn it into the cologne you will wear on your soul for the rest of the day.
The mixture is not everything, because returning to the Belvedere implies above all admiring oneself as on the first day before the kind and beautiful choreography of our Ginés Pérez as he performs his work, agile as Nuréyev's haunches but clad in the calm of the hermit who mocks the haste of the excursionists. Returning to the Belvedere implies recovering a way of serving that in Barcelona is already on the verge of extinction and that we only see embodied in the kind and courteous gesture of its master when serving a drink, accompanying it with the magnanimous arm of the bullfighter when he pardons the bull and presenting it with a tone of voice that even the best Schubertian lieder singers have not yet been able to imitate and that could sing with equal parsimony the death of a princess and the number of the Christmas Gordo. If you are thinking of dedicating yourselves to mixing essences, manipulating glassy sculptures or stirring metal, admire how its monarch works, who does not have stripes by chance, because he carries in his blood the chromosome of his master Victori, later perfected in important venues such as Nick Havanna and Zsa Zsa. Ildefons Cerdá created the Eixample, and while doing so he already had in mind to give our barman the grace of preserving the engineering of his liquids.
Ildefons Cerdá created the Eixample, and while doing so he already had in mind to give our barman the grace of preserving the engineering of his liquidsIn addition to the canonical cocktail sinner, at Belvedere you can also enjoy Nati's excellent cuisine, elegant like French but with a very appropriate touch of Spanish bad temper. On Monday I took the opportunity to taste again the celery and candied radish salad with salmon (a delicious invention of the house), to finish it off later with its magnificent steak tartarof veal, seasoned with a spicy solidity (now that anything islight and process-oriented in this potato-roll country), also accompanied bythe most addictive French fries in all of Barcelona.
Eating or dining at Belvedere is one of the few civilized things we can still do in the Eixample, now that the neighborhood has become a shrapnel wall of businesses for transfer and Manolo bars run by Chinese in an exasperating aesthetic copy-paste, a neighborhood that ages with its own tedium as if it had nothing more to tell us, tired of its own magnificence. If you think all is lost and Barcelona doesn't seduce you, travel to Passatge de Mercader, if only to watch Ginés serve you a drink with the kindness of Italian priests when they make the sign of the cross forgiving you for the usual masculine misdeeds.
Now that we are governed by dwarfs and eunuchs who play at being gods, castrating our agenda and preventing us the joy of free movement, and that arbitrariness can return at any moment to screw up our lives and enjoyment, now is the time to support our bartenders and restaurateurs. They are a fundamental part of our culture; they practice it and have perpetuated it for decades at an excellent level without falling into the comfort of complaint and the alms of subsidies.
This Saturday Punyalada not only wants to sing the grace of returning to the city's most adored bar, to one of the most beautiful cocktail bars on the planet, but above all the joy of recovering the sense of freedom that accompanies discretion. Last week we visited the MNAC and now it's time, with the same will of devotion with which we admire the wild gaze of a Pantocrator, to thank the generosity of bartenders like Ginés Pérez by traveling to his Belvedere to leave there the simple signature of a coffee, give ourselves an elixir or leave the money to crown a dinner as it should be.
This week I have returned to Belvedere, finally, and I have been able to see again the costly awakening of the Eixample. No one is going to kick me out of here, from my beloved bar. Not now, they shall not pass. Fortunately no, no ho tornareu a fer.
Add The New Barcelona Post as your preferred Google source for free
Stay informed with the latest news.