Barcelona’s Best Bars

Stokepedia

By now you have surely seen Stoke Travel and 50 Fiesta’s guide to the biggest and best day out ever possible bar none, and by now you realise that it’s little more than a stumbling guide to Barcelona’s best bars. If you’re not one of the 145 people who have watched this triumph of documentary filmmaking we’ve included it again for you here (article continues below) .

Isn’t it great! Didn’t you just adore when the guys went around and basically drank all day and were then too drunk to film the night component. Weren’t you inspired when the chubby host suggested that you go and discover best bars in Barcelona for yourself, because that’s precisely the kind of advice you wanted to garner from the guide.

Well here’s an accompaniment to the guide, a written addendum that will go a little deeper into Stoke Travel and 50 Fiesta’s favourite Barcelona watering holes, because we feel that in our self indulgence we can possibly impart onto you something lasting and worthwhile. And we’ll try and stay sober while we write this, so the quality of the information won’t take a nosedive like it did when we made the video documentary.

Can Paixano (La Xampanyeria)

This place has been a hot spot for as long as we can’t remember. It’s nestled in the little island between El Born and the backside of Barceloneta, it’s unsigned, and it’s usually too packed to be in without wearing a boisterous Catalan elbow to the chin for every second sip you have of cava. But none of that matters a hoot when the champagne, and we’ll call it that because we’re willfully ignorant swine, tastes as delicious as it does, and for next to naught, and when you can almost guiltlessly gorge on fatty meats and cheeses and write it all off as “lining the stomach” aka doing something that’s good for your health, given the circumstances. Is it the perfect way to start your biggest and best day out in Barcelona ever? You bet your sloppy midriff it is!

Tasca El Corral

The Asturian Bar, as we have simplified it to, is actually one of two, or maybe three, similar bars along a road in the lower Gothic area. The Asturian bars are identified by the rustic kitsch adorning the walls, the staff’s lack of concern for your utter fuckedness, and the leche de pantera that is the main contributing factor for said fucky shittedness. For many people who work at Stoke Travel, panther’s milk is the only term they can say without butchering the Spanish language, and that’s because it’s a product that is close to the Stokie’s heart. It’s a sweet milk drink that tastes amazing with cinnamon and comes in vanilla and strawberry, and weighs in at a walloping 20% alcohol, or there abouts, because nobody really knows as it is all home made according to secret recipes, and while we’ve been told this information a million times in the past, the only reason we remember it now is because we only had time for one glass of panther’s milk this time ‘round, as opposed to the usual two bottles before blackout, and heaven knows how many after.

The Stoke Bar

Did you get the funny joke when we made out that we were paid by Stoke Travel to include the Stoke Bar in the guide? Haha, classic. Well it was just that, a joke, and we totally love the Stoke Bar and think that all the staff are very attractive, especially Omar and Wendy and Omar. The Stoke Bar is a little haven in the Gothic where we like to hide sometimes when the world is raging around us and all we want is a stiff drink and some nice conversation. Come on down to the Stoke Bar, and see all your dreams come true (and the food is delicious too, we give it all 15/10 every time).

Bar Oviso

This is on the Plaza de George Orwell, sometimes known as Plaza Tripi, because it’s usually saturated in fucken tweakers. Bar Oviso has a great, but popular, terrace and one of the best value lunch menus in town. You can have a great time sitting in the winter’s sun enjoying the apricity while all the drug-fucked legends and career street urchins of Barcelona ply their trade and busk, beg and (hopefully not) steal for their next hit of marijuanas or food or whatever it is these crazy cats do these days. We had a vermouth there and it wasn’t very good and it was expensive, so we recommend that you don’t have a vermouth there and instead have a vermouth somewhere else and have beers at Bar Oviso.

El Soplo

By far our favourite bar in Barcelona, and it’s really small, so if it gets popular and we can’t get a seat there anymore we’ll be super pissed at ourselves. Anyway, the wine list is divine, mostly biodynamic and organic (what’s the difference) and the ambience is totally lost generation cool, like you’ll be half expecting to see Pablo Picasso armwrestling Hemingway in there (and losing, FU Pablo!), and the proprietors are goddamn sweethearts who’ll make sure that you’ve got the right wine for you, and then they do the most charming thing and give you tapas, so you’re snacking on delicious Spanish/Catalan/Italian finger foods and drinking sweet wine and sitting in a cool place, and you’re like, Do I even fucken deserve this? And the short answer is no, so enjoy it before we’re all discovered to be big shams and thrown the fuck out of there.

CocoVail Beer Hall

This place is cool if you’re after a little something from home, and your home happens to be in the United States, which ours isn’t, but so what. Here we played beer pong, and Stoke Travel do a weekly beer pong event there, and you can buy fiery wings, but most importantly they’ve got a stellar beer list, and for how long can we pretend to be cultured wine drinkers before the inner ruffian emerges and reveals us to be beer swilling mad dogs intent on raising hell?

Bar Marsella

They say that this is the oldest bar in Barcelona, which we find a little weird as what did the Romans drink? But look, there’s no denying that it is mighty old as evidenced by the dust that collects on the old bottles lining the architraves. This is where Salvador Dali and Hemingway really did drink and they drank absinthe, which is the speciality of the place. Absinthe is cool if you want to go on a spiritual quest where you think you are absolved of all responsibility for your actions, because you’re acting on autopilot, but the thing is that most of the people you come into contact with won’t know about this stipulation and in the morning you’ll perform a forensic analysis on your phone and online bank account and see just what a fucking irresponsible legend you’ve been.  

Did you find this helpful? Are you inspired to get Messi in Barcelona with us? Make sure you book all your trips with Stoke Travel, because nobody is as devoted to having good, clean adult fun as we are.

Tagged with: 50 fiestas, Barcelona, Hemingway, Stoke Travel, bars