Mantequerías Pirenaicas, Tortilla de Patatas, Eixample

Mantequerías Pirenaicas on the slopping part of Muntaner Street specializes in tortilla de patatas. It has become a monthly habit. There are a few tables outside, pitched at an angle but I like to sit inside. Most mornings there is a football match playing on the shiny wall-mounted flat-screen TV. It’s flanked on one side by a bar with a glass display of tortillas.

The tortillas are enormous, wide and high. I would hazard a guess that they are about 50 cm in diameter. Typically there are around 3-4 in various of having stages of serving. The classic – potato and onion or sobrasada, chorizo or truffle. They are served generously like an obscene slice of American birthday cake – but of course, made of potatoes and eggs. Oozing beguilingly at the tapered nose but retaining its structure at its thickest. Pan con tomate is essential when attacking this beast. When the tortillas are sold out, they finish and if you are unlucky enough to find an empty case you return earlier the next day.

More food joins the tortillas come lunchtime but frankly, I have never been curious enough to try or else I can not forgo my monthly wedge of tortilla for a plate of albondigas no matter how casero they look.

The racket that occurs when the bar dishwasher is loaded and unloaded deserves a special mention. Perhaps it has to do with the almost exclusively male brigade of servers and cooks. The first sex is not known to engage in domesticity quietly. Yes, the tortilla de patatas is excellent (one of the best) but so is the feeling that I am an interloper on a poker night – minus the cards.

There are other notable details. The logo of a clog-clad pair of siblings in navy blue is more suitable for a children’s clothing line or a brand of French butter than for a tortilla cafe. Contrast that with the football games that play on a loop with the sound off, it’s delightfully incongruous. Although the shop dates to 1957 the current incarnation was born in 2015 when Miguel Puchol took over with Alberto Soriano as the chef. Though they’ve done a good job at invoking a bygone time and they make an excellent tortilla.

Mantequerías Pirenaicas (Tortilla de Patatas)
Carrer Muntaner 460
08006 Eixample

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