Streets adorned with a profusion of lights and Christmas motifs, hustle and bustle in shops and streets, and a latent joy that always comes with a magical time of year: Christmas. It's time to celebrate, and this new normal, almost intact, is noticeable throughout Barcelona and in the spirits of its residents. There's a desire to celebrate, to resume, and in this special time of year, hotels return to our lives with exclusive plans to share as a couple or with family.
The Palace is a hotel that is almost an emblem of the city, forming part of the lives of generations of Barcelona residents. For this unique hotel, Christmas is a serious matter and is approached in a playful and gastronomic way. It is almost exclusively showcased on its rooftop, where you can enjoy an alpine menu at the Chalet and open-air cinema.
A fun option for families is to enjoy the already traditional open-air cinema with screenings of classics that feature Christmas: hits like Love Actually, Home Alone, Elf or Miracle on 34th Street are enjoyed during the month of December from four comfortable cabins equipped with blankets, cushions, hot water bottles… and popcorn, snacks, and hot chocolate or mulled wine included in the price (€75). Due to high demand, it is advisable to make a reservation in advance, choosing the desired experience on their website.
The Chalet is another classic that year after year is part of Christmas at the Palace. This pop-up restaurant installed on the hotel's heights resembles an alpine mountain refuge in its decor and gastronomic proposal: a menu for €49 that offers a starter, a complete main course, and dessert that transports the diner to those winter flavors with dishes such as gratinéed onion soup with smoked thyme yolk or a cheese raclette.
The big novelty lies in celebrating the feasts of these dates in Amar, the brand new restaurant led by chef Rafa Zafra, which opened its doors at the beginning of this year. The marked character cuisine of Zafra and his team is presented in this Christmas debut in the most exclusive way. For the night of December 24, Amar offers a formula of varied dishes to share, a main course to choose from, and desserts from the famous dessert cart. The price of this experience is €250 per person or €350 if you want to experience it completely with wine pairing included. The star dishes adorn these tables: Oyster with cold almond milk and caviar, the savory Royal Crab Pionono with romesco, the Wellington lobster with its American sauce, or the classic sole meunière.
The delicious and renovated Intercontinental Hotel
Since reopening less than a year ago, the renovated Intercontinental Hotel has made a place for itself in the hearts of Barcelona residents by hosting the cuisine of young chef Víctor Torres in the Quirat restaurant. An excellent opportunity to enjoy a high-level gastronomic proposal signed by the youngest chef to achieve two Michelin stars at Les Magnòlies in Arbúcies.
Christmas Eve at Quirat takes on a special meaning with a menu designed for chef Torres's cuisine to elevate his vision of bringing the terroir to the plate like never before, offering the essence of the season and the most purist and respectful technique with product excellence. This menu, valued at €220 per person, offers three appetizers and one starter and one main course to choose from among great dishes such as grilled sea bream, potato terrine, Kalamata olive caviar and crumble or a beef tenderloin with mini parmesan gnocchi and Baileys sauce. The dessert, chocolate mousse, muscatel and dried fruits, tender chocolate sponge cake and crunchy cocoa beans and fleur de sel is an exclusive creation to bid farewell to the Christmas flavors in Quirat.
Mandarin Hotel
Christmas at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel has always been celebrated by including guests and locals in a markedly family format where traditions not only look with great taste and aesthetics, but in an experiential and didactic format with workshops and monographic cooking or decoration courses, designed for adults and children to enjoy together. All these experiences are free. A great plan to have fun with the little ones after visiting their traditional Christmas market, full of proposals from local artisans and enlivened with chocolate with churros, spiced wines, gingerbread cookies and a profuse Christmas decoration to transport with illusion to Santa Claus's land.
The gastronomic aspect of the hotel has a vindicative approach in Moments, the restaurant led by chefs Carme Ruscalleda and Raül Balam: the Disset menu is inspired by the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations, with nods to traditional holiday dishes. Thus, for Christmas Eve dinner, a ten-course menu with pre-dessert and dessert is offered for €260 (with wine pairing an extra €120 per person is added) while for Christmas lunch and Saint Stephen's lunch the price is the same but two more courses are added. Dishes such as Gender Equality (egg, eggplant and banana) or Decent Work and Economic Growth (winter strawberry, cream and pepper) will shine on the table.
At Blanc, chef Miguel García-Romeral lights the stoves to prepare classics of Christmas gastronomic tradition passed through the Asian sieve, a culinary culture that inspires him for being a leader in the search for the essence of the product with a unique sensibility. For Christmas Eve, he has planned a menu that for €85 (with optional wine pairing of €40) offers three snacks, two starters and a main course with pre-dessert and dessert that ends with petit fours, wafers and nougat. The presence of Christmas escudella and carn d'olla terrine and roasted turbot with Catalan-style spinach and smoked cauliflower cream is assured. For Christmas and Saint Stephen's lunch, the format is more informal, with a buffet of delicacies and a profusion of local products in 8 monographic stations, including hot dishes typical of the celebration such as foie and black truffle cannelloni. Its price is also €85 per person.
Monument Hotel GL, twelve menus signed by Martin Berasategui
The Monument Hotel is the grand home of the multi-award-winning chef Martin Berasategui, a gastronomy legend of the last 30 years who has felt this Grand Luxury hotel as his home for years, offering Barcelonians the opportunity to enjoy four Michelin stars in a single location. Here, Berasategui and his team present honest, delicate, technical, and surprising cuisine in three restaurants: Paolo Casagrande (Lasarte 3*), Xabier Goikoetxea (Oria 1*), and Gabriele Milani (Monument Hotel - Glasss) have prepared, under the gastronomic direction of Martin Berasategui, up to twelve different menus to celebrate the Christmas holidays.
At Lasarte, the Christmas Eve dinner (€325) consists of three appetizers, followed by five main courses, pre-dessert, dessert, and petits-fours. This menu will feature creations such as king crab, pine nuts and fine herb extract, sea urchin risotto, young leeks, black garlic and citrus, or Challans guinea fowl royal. The sweet part, signed by pastry chef Xavi Donnay, will consist of lemon peel ice cream, mint, lime and green apple or the waffle with Pecan nut, maple syrup and Bourbon. The wine cellar, as always, will be selected by sommelier Joan Carles Ibáñez.
Oria proposes a vision focused on the most Basque essence of Berasategui and Goikoetxea, with three menus: on Christmas Eve (€155), for Christmas lunch (€170) and a third for Saint Stephen's Day (€135). Among its creations are the roasted foie gras taco with seasonal mushroom stew, poultry broth and citronella, the langoustine accompanied by its ravioli, touches of coffee and curry or the boneless suckling lamb carré with salsify cream and grilled bone marrow perigueux sauce.
At Glass, the tasty proposals executed by chef Gabriele Milani are complemented by the luminosity and views of the glass-enclosed space that houses it, as it is located on the hotel's rooftop. For the night of December 24, a six-course menu (€85) is offered, as well as on the following day, for Christmas lunch (€100). This space will also host the celebration of Saint Stephen's Day (€75).
The Christmas table at Hotel Arts, with Paco Pérez
Paco Pérez, from his two-starred Enoteca (and "two-sunned", with two Repsol Suns) proposes a single menu to enjoy on the evenings of December 22, 23, 24, 29 and 30 and for lunch on December 25 and 26. On the first floor of the Hotel Arts, of course, and with impressive views if enjoyed in daylight. This menu amounts to €220 with an extra €160 if you wish to complement it with wine pairing. Christmas at Paco Pérez's tables includes 5 appetizers and four main courses, with pre-dessert and dessert. A total of 11 courses with his excellent petit fours to close the celebration. The translation of the terrestrial and maritime landscape of the Girona and Barcelona coast is materialized on this occasion with dishes that celebrate tradition and revisit it, such as the soup in two textures with spider crab, the truffled guinea fowl cannelloni or the suckling kid shoulder with recuit and quince. An opportunity to taste and celebrate with the cuisine of one of the chefs with the most character and trajectory in our city's scene.
Hotel Edition, enlivened tradition
For a couple of seasons now, the Hotel Edition has been intensely experiencing Christmas as soon as December begins, and it does so with the celebration party for the unveiling of the large Christmas tree that presides over the hall, whose decoration is entrusted each year to a different creator. This year it has been executed by the Barcelona creative Ivan Forcadell, thus marking the starting gun for gastronomic and leisure celebrations.
At Bar Veraz, the kitchen that for two years has been led by chef Pedro Tassarolo and seeks to represent the intimate connection of the chef with his supplier, sourcing from the nearby Mercat de Santa Caterina, has devised a unique menu for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Saint Stephen's Day. In it, Tassarolo sifts Catalan culinary traditions with his particular creative vision, with dishes that cannot be missing from a festive table such as the unavoidable escudella in its revisited version and the roasted chicken cannelloni with black truffle, seasonal mushrooms and thyme béchamel. The menu, offered for €60, also includes a welcome glass of champagne, amuse bouche, turrones and neulas and, as the festive spirit of the Edition defines it, live music to liven up the evening.
Antiga Casa Buenavista, the return of a classic
The Hotel Antiga Casa Buenavista has reopened in its original location, on Ronda Sant Antoni. Barcelona thus recovers an eating house that the Molleví family opened in 1918 and adds an elegant 4-star boutique hotel with 43 rooms that continues to be managed by the same family. This opening has meant that the entire hotel and especially the returned Casa de Comidas Buenavista is adorned with the cuisine that gave them fame a hundred years ago: traditional homemade food.
Under the direction of chef Marc Roca, tradition is revisited with contemporaneity in the Christmas meal, with a menu in which the classic galets soup with its stewed meat is followed by Catalan chicken with raisins and pine nuts and finished with the Christmas log, nougats and wafers. The menu begins with a variety of appetizers including Iberian ham, cheeses and regañás and is accompanied by a wine and cava pairing with Denominación de Origen Terra Alta. Its price is €59.50. For Saint Stephen's Day, the spotlight is on roasted cannelloni and grilled sea bass with Donostiarra, maintaining the appetizers, final sweets and pairing with D.O. Terra Alta for a price of €57.50.
Le Meridien, the gastronomic pulse of the mythical Rambla
CentOnze, the gastronomic restaurant located on the ground floor of the Le Meridien Hotel, offers absolute kilometer 0 cuisine. The restaurant's name alludes to the 111 steps that separate the hotel from the Mercat de la Boqueria, the sole supplier of the ingredients with which the restaurant's kitchen team prepares all the dishes on its menu.
That same local product, in furious season, are the protagonists of the three menus designed to liven up family gatherings for Barcelona residents on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Saint Stephen's Day. The Christmas Eve dinner consists of 6 dishes and a dessert, highlighting dishes such as the prawn carpaccio with citrus and pomegranate emulsion or the turbot loin with stew of stuffed morels. The price is 79€/pax, with white, red, and sparkling wine pairing included. For Christmas lunch, the proposal is more contained (appetizer, starter, main, and dessert, with drink included) in quantity but profuse in tradition: Traditional Escudella with galets and pilota, 24-hour slow-cooked stuffed capon with surf and turf sauce, and hazelnut-filled Christmas log with salted caramel ice cream. Its price is also 79€/pax and includes pairing of a white wine, a red wine, and a sparkling wine.