Restaurant reviews

From its corner perch on Parlament with Comte Borrell it opens into a cool, clean space of geometric lines, blonde wood floors and charcoal grey walls. A large communal dining table dominates the middle of the room, decked with sculptural flower arrangements by the same girl who does the flowers at the Hotel Arts and floor-to-ceiling windows which open directly onto the street to create natty, one-person banquettes, where you can sit, tray at your side and watch the world go by.

Upstairs, there is more seating and table arrangements: some low slung and slouchy, others more sit-down formal and a staircase that leads to a smart, lushly planted roof terrace. Already it’s a massive hit with the yummy mummys of the barrio, who come with the kids at the weekend, or for a latte after the mid-week school run. People like me turn up with their laptops (free WiFi) mid-morning and treat it like a second office.

The fact that Barcelona doesn’t yet have anywhere quite like it (I’m sure the copycats won’t be far behind) adds to the allure, especially since it’s at its busiest in the morning, filling what has, until now, been a bit of a breakfasting void. It’s a place to linger over your coffee with a useful stack of work-avoidance glossies (Architectural Digest, Wallpaper*, Vogue) and the Spanish newspapers (El País, La Vanguardia, El Periódico) absorbed over cast-iron pots of baked eggs topped with spinach and mushrooms, pancetta and a dollop of crème fraiche, or a dish of homemade baked beans sprinkled with dukkah the Egyptian dry mix of seeds, nuts, herbs and spices.

When breakfast is better than dinner, you know you’re onto a winner. But this place is all about multi-tasking and the options for light, festive indulgence are seemingly endless: a cup of tea with a toasted lemon and poppy seed Madeleine in the afternoon after Christmas shopping, a civilised salad for a quiet lunch, or an early evening drink with the girls after work. There are cocktails you see—rose martinis, honeysuckle daiquiris, lemon gimlets—which must surely have been created with the ladies in mind and a short, nicely put together wine list showcasing interesting rather than crowd-pleasing bottles, much of it available by the glass.