Morro Fi is a vermuteria. They make their own vermouths to be enjoyed in their bars or at home. At some point, they must have reasoned that their vermouth needed more than a bag of potato chips. Rather than bringing in other brands, Morro Fi developed their own range of conservas and snacks. In flat, brass coloured tins with a white paper wrapper with MORRO FI printed on large. There are enough of Morro Fi tins on the shelf that their bars possess a distinctively Morro Fi vibe. Juxtaposed as these tins usually are, against severe concrete and fluorescent lighting.
You could happily exist on olives, Gildas, and anchovies without realizing you were missing out on anything. But you are. Some of the Morro Fi’s have a menu. A tightly edited affair that doesn’t try to be everything to everyone. Patatas bravas? Nope. Not here. But you can have a bomba (3.8€) or a croqueta (1.9€) as long as your thumb.
The menu is in Catalan and is riddled with jewels like Broqueta matrimoni like a Gilda but with anchovy, olives, and mushroom instead of the spicy piparra pepper. You can have cheese but only the one, a cured sheep’s cheese.
“Secreto iberico, Spain’s piggy answer to skirt steak.”
They have 5 different salads (9.5€) (amanides) bagged salad tossed in a vinaigrette to set off well-sourced ingredients like ventresca or preserved artichokes. You can have a hamburger but it’s either going to be on coca bread or pa de vidre as it’s sometimes called or bunless with a salad. I recommend the one with half-melted foie beginning too ooze off the burger. There are sandwiches (entrepans) griddled squid with lime mayonnaise and donostiarra sauce. Secreto iberico, Spain’s piggy answer to skirt steak.
The quality of their fare is obvious in their prices. Would you like pa amb tomàquet with exactly four anchovies? It’s 8.9€ and the anchovies are long, fat and from Cantabria. Cantabria, you probably know by now, is where the best anchovies come from.
“It’s obvious that Morro Fi is a passion project. This is a vermouth bar that only a bunch of anoraks could have dreamt up.”
There is something fetishistic about it all or perhaps my mind is led down that alley by the packs of vermouth they sell, everything pressed up against the milky transparent plastic. It’s obvious that Morro Fi is a passion project. This is a vermouth bar that only a bunch of anoraks could have dreamt up.
And it is. Three guys started a blog in 2007. Gritty and real bars “con un toque especial” and always the backstory. From there, they opened their first bar and in 2012 they began with their own range of products.
There are a few shops now. I’m partial to the one in the L”illa shopping mall because I can be seated anywhere and look into the bar kitchen to see the food being prepared, or simply tipped out of tins and at the same time watch the customers as they enjoy an ensalada russa and a beer.
Morro Fi is a good example of a tradition not missing a bit as it strides from the past into the present with poise and relevance.
Morro Fi
L’illa Diagonal
Av. Diagonal 557,
08029 Eixample
morrofi.cat
Morro Fi
Consell de Cent 171,
08015 Eixample
Morro Fi
Pg Bonanova 105
08017 Les Tres Torres
If you love vermouth you should check out these posts on Foodie in Barcelona:
Bodega 1900
El Sifo d’en Garriga
Pepa Pla
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