Chew the fat in Catalonia
An Australian foodie invites Tommy Livingston into her Barcelona apartment (and beyond) to sample and savour Spain’s culinary delights.
Tucked away in some winding street in Barcelona, Sarah Stothart’s apartment spills out into a sunny courtyard.
It’s barely afternoon and we’re drinking bubbly and eating chocolate cake drizzled with smoked olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt.
For the last 30 years Sarah has called this bustling city home. She was born in Australia, and years of speaking Spanish and living in Spain haven’t worn down her Aussie accent.
‘‘I am completely without country. I amAustralian, but that is as far as it goes,’’ she says.
Hours into a 10-day food and wine tour with Intrepid Travel, it quickly dawns on us whoever organises the trip must know there is no better way to introduce you to Spain than through Sarah.
She is witty, charming and astoundingly intelligent. Within minutes of meeting her at the Santa Caterina market, she is filling us in on the looming revolution, the history of bread and the best place to collect salt.
Through tired eyes we watch her hustle her way around her suppliers – smelling this, tasting that and buying only the best.
She herds us to an olive oil supplier who pours sun-coloured liquids into our palms.
She insists, with some technical explanation about chemicals and heat, the best way to taste olive oil is by slurping it from our hands.
With the lunch ingredients bought, we make our way back to her apartment via a maze of buildings flying the Catalan flag.
Each turn reveals another Gaudi masterpiece or something just as unique – we pass one elderly woman singing an aria out of tune.
‘‘She’s been here for years,’’ Sarah remarks.
At her apartment, in between mouthfuls of our first course, Sarah tells us about her former life as a full-time chef. Always having been a self-proclaimed obsessive when it came to all things edible, she decided to open her own private dining club in an old factory.
‘‘The restaurant I opened up had a huge problem. It was an old umbrella factory – what was stunning was the wooden mezzanine and massive enormous metal beams which held it up.
‘‘But the town council said I was going to have to spray it with protective stuff and rip out all the wood. I said there was no way, I am not doing that. I ended up finding a cool lawyer who turned it into a private dining club.
‘‘It was the first private dining club in Barcelona.’’
It was an almost instant success with tables booked out months in advance. A stellar review in the New York Times saw people flying into the city just to eat food her hands had crafted.
She has since shut up the club and is now known as the Barcelona Food Sherpa. Her private tours involve buying produce for lunch at a local market, tasting some food and oil, then returning to her apartment where she cooks a five-course meal.
The tours can be booked through her website, or through Intrepid Travel’s Northern Spanish Food Tour.
The tour traverses the North of Spain over 10 days, ending in Madrid.
Most meal stops are preplanned. The food in Spain seems to change as much as the weather. There are tapas in one town, pintxos in another and salted cod somewhere else.
The tour gives punters the best of what the country has to offer. Menus are easy to manage with the help of a Spanish-speaking tour guide, and travelling is comfortable.
Being part of the tour is something Sarah takes seriously, she is constantly reworking the experience to make it better.
‘‘My normal client is on holiday. The fact they would come to do the tour is an honour.
‘‘They are putting the luxury of that day in my hands. I feel very responsible it has to be a cool day.
Those who get to meet Sarah will find out food is more than just sustenance, it is almost spiritual.
‘‘Food has been an obsession for as long as I can remember. I don’t remember it kind of clicking. I can remember a meal I had the first time I went to Paris, I was 8 years old and I clearly remember the meal,’’ she says.
‘‘I remember eating a meal in the Blue Mountains [New South Wales] and sitting under a table, picking the bones of a quail at the age of 4.’’
During the meal we end up talking about Gaudi, which then leads on to food, then the conversation winds itself back to tensions over Catalonia.
‘‘We are teetering on the edge of a cliff,’’ she says as we eye up the pork on our plates. ISTOCK
Somehow the conversation gets back to salt, and how Sarah collects her own from a beach in Greece. Which then leads onto a conversation about proteins, nutrition and wars.
It suddenly feels like we are eating a very tasty history lesson.
‘‘The one thing I believe is all countries have a food culture. No matter how young they are. America, New Zealand and Australia – we all have food culture. Even if it is the history of other countries pouring into our country.’’
Our meal with Sarah ends with her chocolate cake.
The best cake I’ve ever had. Intrepid prides itself on going where the tourists don’t usually go – having lunch with Sarah proves the point.
You won’t taste better food, have better conversation, or drink better wine than when it’s served, cooked and dreamt up by a local. ● The writer was a guest of Cathay Pacific.