Barcelona Restaurant & Wine Bar
Fairfield, CT

Review by: Michael Walls
Date: 4/15/04

Barcelonas in Fairfield, Connecticut, features Spanish cuisine served Tapas style. Tapas, roughly interpreted as appetizers, actually means side dish or snack, and is a great way to sample multiple Spanish dishes.

My wife and I originally discovered Barcelonas in South Norwalk (SoNo) Connecticut . SoNo is a very cultural town and is one of the swankier hot spots in lower Fairfield County . Between the many trendy restaurants, martini bars, and coffee shops – and the fashionable boutiques and IMAX movie theatre, SoNo offers a full evening for the young and hip.

Now, we still consider ourselves "young and hip," but being parents has put a damper on the amount of time we can indulge in Friday or Saturday night activities. So when Barcelonas opened up another restaurant in the town of Fairfield, a mere 10 minutes from our home, we considered it a perfect situation – delicious cuisine and a trendy environment, without the pressures of an entire evening of swankitude.

The new Barcelonas is located right off the Merritt Parkway (exit 44) on Blackrock Turnpike, and occupies the basement of the Hi-Ho Motel. This remote location, on paper, looks like the perfect place to get away from the typical Saturday night crowd that usually floods the streets and bars in SoNo. But don't be fooled by the dark, quiet road and quaint country motel feel. For as we pulled up to the Hi-Ho Motel around 8pm on a Saturday evening, we were greeted by a nearly full parking lot and parking lot attendant asking if we had a reservation. Fortunately, we did.

The Hi-Ho Motel must be reaping the benefits of a trendy restaurant on the premises, as it appears to be spicing up its image with new signage and a bright new paint job. The Hi-Ho always appeared to me as a weary traveler's rest stop along the scenic Merritt connecting New York City and New England.

Barcelonas has the feel of an old-fashion speakeasy, as we descend into the basement from a set of outside stairs. Low ceilings, dim lighting, a retro décor with lots of paisley, brown, beige and orange colorings, and old photos covering the walls – will remind you of your parents' basement during the 1970. But this isn't your parents' basement, and this isn't your parents' crowd. This crowd is young and hip. Just like us. Not too young, like the crowd in SoNo, but a more mature young. It's a couples crowd, or groups of couples, rather than groups of men and women jockeying for position in a singles environment.

The music is good, some Latin hip-hop, but not too loud. And the bar is busy, filled with people sitting and standing at high tables with retro swivel chairs, drinking sangria and cosmopolitans.

We're led through the bar by the hostess to a table on the opposite side of a low wall dividing the bar from the dining room, giving us the feeling of being in the thick of things, without being in the thick of things. A perfect observation point.

Barcelona's menu features a large selection of cold and hot tapas dishes. A handful of entrees are available, but the tapas is the reason you're here. Dishes range from seafood, to poultry, to pasta, with a half-dozen varieties of salads, but one of the most tantalizing selections is the "Charcurteria." From the French word "charcuterie" meaning "cooker of meat" and considered a culinary art, Barcelonas serves up these tasty assortments of cured meats and sausages with an equally delicious assortment of Spanish cheeses.

We started off our evening with an order of Charcurteria, as our drinks arrived; a Grolsch beer for me (I'm a sucker for that cool cork top), and an appletini for her.

As we toasted the evening (the occasion being my birthday) and enjoyed the low-keyed ambiance with a tinge of coolness, we continued to peruse our menus. I was more interested in watching trays of food pass our table, and ultimately latched onto the smell of a rather large dish of mussels as it passed by.

Our Charcurteria arrived quicker than we had anticipated, and decided to put in our order for two salads. I ordered a basic mixed salad with chives and lemon, while my wife order the Hearts of Palm salad with goat cheese, roasted peppers and baby greens.

The beauty of tapas, is the ability to monitor your intake and not over order. How many times had I filled up on appetizers and found I had no room left for the main course? Here, we kept our menus and continued to order items as we finished dishes, the service being impeccable and non-intrusive.

As we finished our delicious salads, and the last bits of cheese and meats off the charcurteria platter, our plates were cleared and we ordered the Mussels al Diablo and a plate of Calamari in smoked tomato aioli (garlic) sauce.

I had every intention of topping off my meal with an order of Wild Boar Spareribs (with garlic, spinach and port glaze) or the Rollatini of Eggplant (with pesto and provolone), but as soon as my mussels arrived I realized I wouldn't be ordering anything else.

My wife isn't a mussel fan, so I had to consume the mountain of steaming hot crustations, doused in spicy tomato sauce, all by myself. I sucked down shell after shell of these deliciously sweet shellfish, dipping empty shells into the Diablo sauce. It wasn't a pretty sight, but it was perhaps the best mussels I have ever had.

And if it weren't for the mussels, the calamari could have easily been my favorite as well. Lightly fried and perfectly tender, with a tasty, smokey flavor.

We completed our dining with a couple of cappuccinos and took our time vacating our table. With two rounds of drinks our total bill came to an understandable $100, which was more than reasonable considering the food was delicious, the service excellent, and the ambience perfect. I look forward to our next visit where I'll get the chance to try several other tapas dishes.