Twelve gourmet restaurants to enjoy at home for the next 15 days

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he business volume of the home delivery sector has skyrocketed this year as a result of the pandemic, with figures indicating growth of more than 55%. The capacity restrictions imposed on restaurants or the total closure decreed from today and for two weeks in Catalonia has also led to a diversification in the delivery offer, dethroning pizzas and hamburgers as the queens of home delivery food. This wide spectrum allows for tasty, healthy, and quality options to eat at home for those who do not have time to cook or simply do not like to. Without giving up enjoying good dishes at the table and with the comfort of eating at home.

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Good frying, a delicious bite

Whether fried food is healthy depends on the type of frying applied to the food and, above all, on the oil used. Sauces, spices, and other condiments transform simple fried food into an exquisite delicacy. Although we are more accustomed to fried chicken, beef gains a lot of points.

Piel de Gallina, Escalope Armando, or La República take this very much into account. Just as Piel de Gallina plays with eighths of l'Empordà chicken, presenting them with five flavors that have spicy or seasoned nuances in crispy frying, Escalope Armando or La República offer two sides of the same coin: escalope in Armando's case, and milanesa in La República's. They are still two similar recipes for breaded veal, but with a differentiated offer. Escalope Armando has a powerful workhorse, the 40-centimeter breaded veal escalope with delicate frying in olive oil, which can be crowned with egg and truffle. The grace of La República is that the milanesa is like a blank canvas to which ingredients can be added, creating tasty combinations.

From Piel de Gallina, both the fried chicken, which is served in containers of 6, 8, or 12 pieces with a good quality-price ratio, and its accompaniments, such as corn on the cob with spiced butter, pickled daikon radish in mirin, or coleslaw, are interesting. From Escalope Armando, you cannot miss ordering the dessert, the well-known Fismuler cheesecake, not in vain Armando is the project of Santi and Nino Redruello, the latter one of the three thinking minds behind Fismuler's success.

These three options with which to enjoy good frying can be tasted both in take away format, served from their respective restaurants, and with the delivery service, placing the order through their own websites.

Pizzas that make you fall in love

Not all pizzas are good, nor is it easy to make a good pizza at home. Therefore, when a succulent pizza is desired, it is important to choose well where to order it. Not only taking into account the variety, creativity or the quality of its ingredients but also the care with which they prepare their dough. That it is slow fermentation, of a minimum of 24 hours, is important because it is the key for it to be easily digestible and not a heavy pizza.

Both Traficantes de Harina and Gula Pizza Bar comply with this sacred rule of fermentation and, in both projects, their dough is fermented for 24 hours. At Traficantes de Harina, although the name lends itself to much play, pizzas are not taken lightly: they opened only as delivery with the aim of serving the best pizzas in Barcelona with a smile and, due to their success, they have just opened a place on Sagués street, 16 (Sant Gervasi) so that their parishioners can go for them. Among their varied menu, the essential ones are the Mick Jagger pizza ---with pulled pork rib, cheddar with black truffle cheese, jalapeños, five peppers and chives---, the Warhol ---with Girona sausage, Iberian chorizo with a spicy touch, Puglia burrata and chimichurri--- or La Traficante, an excellent Margherita.

Gula Pizza Bar, in contrast, is the reinvention of Gula Bar as a gourmet pizzeria. A new challenge faced by chef Martín Marchese and his partner also in Santa Gula, Nacho Nuñez. The establishment in Plaça de Narcís Oller, 3 now serves delicious pizzas, baked in a powerful electric oven brought from Italy. Among the 11 options they offer, all of Italian style and with a predominance of Italian IGP and DOP products, the fun Llorona ---mozzarella fior di latte, scamorza affumicata, taleggio, gorgonzola, parmesan and onion--- or the delicate Fumata Blanca ---roasted eggplant, anchovies, mozzarella fior di latte and Idiazábal--- stand out.

To place an order, it can be done by phone or through their websites, although there is also the option of picking it up at the same place, of course.

World cuisines, at home

The internationalization of Barcelona's gastronomic offerings also reaches our homes, with a preeminence of Asian cuisines. Vietnam, the Philippines, China, India, or even their techniques, flavors, and spices in creative dishes. Asia is very popular, but no less so is a classic of Mexican street food, like tacos and nachos.

Enjoying the Southeast Asian cuisine of Hawker 45, the Vietnamese of Món Viêt, or the creativity of Mundana es Mou will be a sure hit. Not only for quality or for offering dishes that we can hardly reproduce at home if we are not home cooks, but also because the diner's participation is necessary and fun. And everything is planned for these experiences to be for a minimum of 2 people.

In this sense, Hawker 45 offers interesting Meal kits, or food packs, which arrive at home with the necessary ingredients, sauces, and preparations to assemble the menu at home. Following simple instructions, in a short time, a carrot tandoori, a butterfish laksa, or a Filipino pork rib adobo can be served at the table. Mundana es Mou, the delivery version of the pioneering gastronomic restaurant in Sants, La Mundana, follows the same line, bringing its hits to our homes, such as its buns or the oxtail cubes with kimchi or the red prawn carpaccio. Great dishes that require the diner's intervention, especially in plating, a simple act thanks to the video that each dish's packaging links via its own QR. In them, Alain Guiard explains in less than a minute how to succeed at the table.

Less work, but no less fun, are the menus from Món Viêt, which bring their most well-known Vietnamese specialties in practical set menus. The Combo Roll, for example, is a selection of their fried, fresh, or steamed rolls, although their Pho (noodle soup with fresh vegetables) is surely one of their most appreciated dishes, with the arrival of cold weather.

Sushi, another object of desire, arrives at home thanks to Nomomoto, the delivery format of the Nomo Group restaurants. The sushi platters, ranging from 10 to 50 pieces, are an excellent option to taste their freshly prepared specialties, with a very wide delivery coverage throughout the city.

When the body asks for tacos or nachos, Sasha Bar - No Hay Mañana never fails. They are two dishes that offer a multiple diversity of flavors thanks to their ingredients. In both cases, the quality of the tortilla or the corn flour with which they are made is key to enjoying these Mexican classics. And at Sasha, they strictly adhere to this premise. Good proof of this are the nachos with truffled cheese sauce or the Torrente tacos ---oven-baked marinated pork rib meat at low cooking with BBQ and Jack Daniels sauce--- or the Drunken Duck ---roasted duck meat, vegetables, Thai vinaigrette and hoisin---. Delicious.

All these proposals can be enjoyed by placing an order through their own websites, by phone or through their respective Instagram accounts, adding the possibility of take away.

Rice is liked!

Rice is one of the star ingredients of our diet, so versatile that it stars in everything from tasty seafood rices to healthy and light bowls. At the risk of sounding like Bubba in Forrest Gump enumerating the ways to cook shrimp, rice is also a nutritious product that everyone likes and, luckily, we can order it at home in various presentations.

Rice (and other ingredients) you will find in the reliable salads of Enlagloria, designed so that in a single dish we can ingest in a tasty way vegetables, vegetable or animal proteins and cereals. The bowl format is very versatile and very practical to enjoy at any time because it arrives home in optimal conditions and allows you to eat healthily. It also takes into account the nutritional balance in each of its proposals and has seasonal ingredients, so the variety and fun with these quality bowls is guaranteed. Highly recommended is the Swedish Salad, with salmon, tartar potatoes, radishes, homemade pickles and a tarragon and mustard sauce. Enlagloria is a company founded by the young Barcelona entrepreneur Gloria Rodés, who started with a place on Avenir street, 66 (Sant Gervasi) and has now also just set up in the Eixample, on Provença, 209.

Recently, Al Grano serves ten rice proposals with very tasty combinations of fish, meat, vegetable or mar i muntanya. Pioneers in home delivery rice service, these arrive in a paella pan that the diner can return, with a 2€ refund, or keep. Choosing this last option, the packaging provides instructions to facilitate its cleaning and conservation. Not to be missed are the rice with pig's trotters and red shrimp, the one with artichokes and smoked eggplant, or the classic introduced by restaurateur Perellada: the arroz del senyoret.

If you want to place an order, it can be done through their websites, on their Instagram accounts, and by phone. The option to pick it up at the store itself complements this.

These are just twelve options for the richness and diversity of Barcelona's gastronomic fabric to enter through the door of our homes and sit at our tables to give us a good time, in addition to contributing with these gestures to keep the wheel of consumption turning.

To help promote Catalan restaurants with home delivery or take away service, the Acadèmia Catalana de Gastronomia i Nutrició has just launched the Gastrocat Online platform.