From Barcelona, With Love
Stripping It Down to the Bikini Sandwich
How the people of Barcelona found love at first bite
When Catalans — the natives of Barcelona and the quieter but equally charming neighboring villages — visit other parts of Spain, they’re met with surprised looks whenever they try to order their favorite breakfast, the bikini sandwich.
Tourists and newcomers to the glamorous city, whose streets were once walked by the great Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, are equally surprised to find that, locally, the humble ham-and-cheese sandwich is nicknamed after two-piece women’s swimwear.
I sure was when I first moved here some two years ago!
As both a gourmand and a food writer, I spent a good deal of my first few months in this city roaming its markets and bars, looking for spots where only the locals hung out and ordering whatever they ate, immersing myself in the local food scene and trying to understand it through cognition and taste.
At first, I thought the ham-and-cheese toast, which I could see everyone eating, was called “tostada.” It wasn’t. Eventually, I cracked the code and realized — through trial, error, and a fair bit of Googling — that it went by the name “bikini sandwich.”
