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Uncle Orson's Restaurant Guide
Agut d'Avignon
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ars can't actually get to this restaurant in the heart of the Barri Gotic — the old city of Barcelona — but the taxi can drop you off at the mouth of the narrow medieval street that leads to its front door. And make sure you write down the name and address from this review, because it isn't listed in the yellow pages in Barcelona and it can be an adventure just getting the phone number from directory assistance. And the cab driver will probably have to look up the address, since he won't have heard of either of the streets.
The concept is Provençal cooking, which in the summertime means lots of fish in sauces, and in winter means game animals and birds. We came in time for the winter menu, and while there are still fish (as Kristine's entree of Hake affirms) it was the game animals that tempted me. At the waiter's suggestion I tried the partridge rather than the wild boar, and I can't recall ever eating a more flavorful bird.
Agut d'Avignon is an unpretentious place, the kind of restaurant that has celebrity pictures on the walls and a homey, lived-in-house kind of feeling (except you should be so lucky as to find a house this roomy in the medieval part of Barcelona!). The waiters are not terribly formal, but they're friendly and helpful and they notice you as often as you need, and what more can you ask for than that?
The presentation of the food is also unspectacular — my paté of shrimp and leeks arrived looking like a thick slice of Spam with gravy poured over it, and Kristine's hake was just a two-inch cross-section, as if it were the trunk of a tree someone had chopped in order to count the rings.
But my paté didn't taste like Spam (though it had a weird mix of hot and cold spots that suggested it had been refrigerated and then badly nuked — for shame if that's true!), and Kristine's hake was delicately sauced and cooked perfectly clear through, moist and flaky — a hard thing to find these days, when chefs seem grimly determined to force us all to eat fish "rare" (i.e., inedibly raw, as if the Japanese had developed the sine qua non of piscatorial cuisine).
The simplicity of presentation comes from the concept of the restaurant — country provençal cooking. And having had haute provençal (if there is such a word) I have to say that Agut d'Avignon would not be among the best of the restaurants in Provence itself. In fact, I don't think it's unfair to suggest that at Agut d'Avignon you might be better off to skip the appetizers and salads and go straight to the meat and fish.
But don't skip dessert — the ice creams taste homemade and are very good, and the chocolate mousse is the thick, incredibly rich kind of confection that our French friends assure us is the most authentic kind (but it's too rich for me). And was one of those pictures on the wall the king himself? I wouldn't be surprised; this is clearly a favorite haunt of people who know the restaurants of Barcelona.
Agut d'Avignon
Trinidad, 3 (at the corner of Driño)
Barcelona, Spain
302-60-34 or 317-36-93
fax 302-53-18