<i> NUEVO </i> CATALONIAN CUISINE

I have not eaten at Los Caracoles. I mention that immediately because Los Caracoles is the one Barcelona restaurant everybody seems to have heard of, and thus the one everybody just naturally assumes I’ve been frequenting when they learn that I spent time in that Spanish capital recently.

Los Caracoles was for decades the most famous restaurant in town, the one restaurant any visitor had to get to. It was even, apparently, pretty good at one time, in a basic, hearty sort of way. But nobody who takes food at all seriously in Barcelona these days (and plenty do) will even go near the place anymore. And every time I suggest to some Barcelona-based friend or business contact that I’d like to try it anyway, simply to see it for myself, I get a look roughly like the one I’d get if I suggested to the average Spago regular that we try the Velvet Turtle tonight instead. Besides, the Barcelonans always point out, there are so many other places worthy of our attentions.

And indeed there are. Barcelona is fast turning into a very exciting restaurant town--and, incidentally, a town whose restaurant total has almost doubled in the last 10 years. Some of its new culinary energy has drifted down from France and Italy-- nouvelle and nuovo notions, reinterpreted through a local sensibility. But most of it derives from the cuisine of Catalonia itself (this being the region of which Barcelona is the capital), which is an ancient, proto-Mediterranean, non-”Spanish” style of cooking full of vivid flavors and unusual combinations of ingredients--and which is being both rediscovered and reinvented today in Barcelona and vicinity.

Sometimes, of course, the Catalan influence remains minimal. One of Barcelona’s two or three best restaurants (and the only one meriting two stars in the Guide Michelin, with rumors abroad that it may soon get a third, making it the first establishment in Spain to achieve that) is Neichel, an elegantly furnished place, part men’s club and part San Francisco modern in look, whose Alsatian-born owner-chef prepares highly sophisticated contemporary French food based on Catalan raw materials--marinated monkfish and green pepper salad, seafood pot-au-feu with sea urchin cream, pigeon stuffed with crabmeat and truffles, and the like.

Then there are the city’s two top “establishment” restaurants--either one of which might be called the Chasen’s or the Ernie’s of Barcelona--Reno and Via Veneto. Both offer large, and largely “international” or “continental,” menus, with Reno’s perhaps a bit more traditional (as is its decor), but both serve refined versions of typical Catalan specialties as well--rice with inkfish and Piquillo peppers stuffed with mixed seafood at Reno, for instance, or white beans with botifarra sausage and breaded boneless pigs’ feet stuffed with wild mushrooms at Via Veneto.

For real Catalan basics, on the other hand, it’s hard to beat Chicoa, which specializes in authentic regional appetizers like black-eyed peas or fava bean salads, escalivada (the Catalan ratatouille, but served in separate parts, not mushed together), and the deep-fried scallions called calcots (served with spicy romesco sauce), plus eight or nine wonderful preparations of bacalla or salt cod. (This is one of the few Barcelona restaurants, incidentally, where you must reserve a day or two in advance--it’s that good, and that popular.)

Els Perols de l’Emporda features the simple, hearty cooking of the Ampurdan region between Barcelona and the French border, including superlative arroz negre --black rice (tinted with inkfish ink) with assorted super-fresh seafood--and unusual sausages of various kinds. El Passadis del Pep is hard to find--it’s down an unmarked corridor off a busy plaza--but worth the trouble (here, too, you must reserve well in advance). It’s funky, small and noisy, but the clientele includes the crema of the local political, social and business world, and the homestyle food--above all the simply cooked and impeccable seafood--is some of Barcelona’s best.

Brand new, small, extremely attractive and improbably inexpensive is Cafe de l’Academia, where something between $15 and $20 will buy two diners (or rather lunchers, since the place closes in the evening) a repast of such straightforward Catalan fare as bacalla- stuffed peppers or chickpeas with spinach to start, chicken a la Catalana or calamari with rice as a main course, apple pudding with chocolate or crema catalana for dessert, plus a bottle of wine, a couple of coffees, a couple of after-dinner drinks and even a couple of cigars.

A more contemporary interpretation of Catalan cuisine may be found at Jaume de Provenca , which has a cool, almost Scandinavian look and has established a reputation for nueva cocina with dishes like tuna “carpaccio” with olive oil and red wine vinegar, baby red mullet salad with gazpacho sauce, and escalopes of turbot with saffron-soaked prawns.

A heartier and perhaps slightly more French-accented version of new Catalan cooking is the order of the day at La Odisea , whose most memorable creations include a knockout salad of marinated thin-sliced whitefish ( mero ) with baby vegetables, Piquillo peppers stuffed with ground duck meat, and wedges of breaded and fried camembert cheese with homemade tomato preserves.

Senyor Parellada is one to watch, a young, enthusiastic restaurant furnished in a sort of Melrose-meets-Tribeca style, with an uneven but occasionally brilliant kitchen. Try the pork-stuffed calamari salad, the lettuce leaves filled with fish terrine and broiled with cheese, and--for garlic-lovers only--the roast lamb “with a dozen heads of garlic” (actually served with a whole head of roasted garlic and with roasted potatoes drenched in garlicky all-i-oli sauce).

Saving the best for last, though, I believe my three favorite Barcelona restaurants--and the ones which seem to pull me the most strongly away from Los Caracoles and the like--are these:

Eldorado Petit. A real class act, and probably where I’d go if I had only one meal in Barcelona. The place is very attractive, almost festive, but in a very understated way, with off-white walls, wicker chairs and elegant table settings. Proprietor Luis Cruanas has another Eldorado Petit, the original, in San Feliu de Guixols on the Costa Brava, and he gets all his fish and shellfish--arguably the city’s finest--from that town’s best supplier.

One can eat simply here, on such delights as fried inch-long calamari, tiny reddish octopuses sauteed with garlic and parsley, or giant shrimp or prawns simply cooked in sea water and then immediately chilled on ice; or one can investigate the more complex pleasures of, say, prawn and asparagus feuillete , fresh Spanish salmon (a rarity in itself) with a salmon-flavored sauce mousseline , or a superb filet mignon with rosemary and mustard sauce. (There is also, by the way, a world-class carpaccio , with chopped celery, black truffles and slivers of parmigiano.) In either case, all will be perfectly fresh and perfectly prepared.

Florian Serra . The influences here seem to be Catalan, French and Italian, in almost equal parts. There are wonderful escabeches (fish or baby chicken marinated in vinegar and herbs) and wild mushroom dishes are a specialty, to the point that one entire week here each October is devoted solely to mushroom cookery. There is duck breast cooked with Italian balsamic vinegar. There is genuine paella , made not at all with fish or seafood but with chicken, rabbit, sausage, peas and strips of roasted green pepper. And, “in season,” as it were, there are always three or four dishes made with the meat of bulls killed in the Barcelona bullring. Try the criadillas , sliced and breaded and fried with garlic and parsley. Don’t ask what they are--just try them. They’re a wonderment.

Petit Paris . It is petit, but the “Paris” refers only to the street it’s on, not to any French influence in the kitchen. This is one of Barcelona’s great little semidiscovered gems, whose ceaselessly impressive kitchen turns out things like lentil salad with bacalla and baby shrimp, tiny crayfish sauteed with wild mushrooms, warm fava bean salad with baby eels, ragout of clams and artichokes in green sauce, and even bacalla with honey--little cubes of it, fried crisply in a light golden batter, almost Chinese in character, and served with a vinegary salad of shredded lettuce--a perfect counterpoint of taste and texture. There is also a sea bass tartare with calvados that I’ve seen grown men drive 50 miles out of their way for.