El Món, a selection of five appetizers, served at the “world’s best restaurant,”
El Celler de Can Roca.
Whether you love seafood or meat, or both, Catalonia is a destination for the world’s gourmands. Its culinary traditions are a mixture of influences – for example, paella from Valencia, or meat dishes from Provence – but always interpreted with a Catalan spin and served with the Mediterranean mania for the freshest foods.
The dishes combine the best ingredients found in sea and mountains, as well as sweet and savoury flavours, for a style of cuisine called mar i muntanya. Typical ingredients include almonds, tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, rice, olives, olive oil, calamari, many other kinds of seafood and pork done in a variety of ways, since Catalonia is one of the main producers of swine products in Spain. Xoriço paprika salami, produced from the black Iberian Cerdo pig, is often used in cooking.