La madrileña inglesa: Bon dia Barcelona

The next instalment of The Year of the City Break was a lazy six days in beautiful Barcelona, one of my favourite cities.

We stayed at the stunning Hotel Omm, just off Paseo de Gracia and a stone's throw from Gaudí's La Pedrera. Part of Grupo Tragaluz, who have a hand in a fair few of my favourite Madrid and Barcelona restaurants, it's a mix of hipster and luxe. Arriving late on Friday night, our first stop was the bar for a welcome glass of cava and cocktails.

Ten years ago the hotel started a partnership with the three Roca brothers, the world-famous chefs behind El Celler de Can Roca, an hour away in Girona, which this year was finally named the best restuarnt in the world after several years in second place to Noma. After sitting patiently on their nine-month waiting list (the wait has now increased to a year), my mother and I went to El Celler de Can Roca last summer, and it was out of this world.

So without hestitation Boyfriend and I booked into the hotel's Michelin-starred restaurant, Roca Moo, which is a partnership with the Roca brothers and runs a very similar, although shorter, tasting menu (a separate post on Roca Moo is coming soon).

Aside from the show-stopping main restaurant, Omm has a second Roca brothers collaboration with their bar menu, Roca Bar, which combines Roca creativity with slightly more laid-back, "normal" fare.

Rocadillos

After one particularly lazy day in the sun we popped downstairs for a late supper at Roca Bar, for a few twists on tapas favourites.

"Rocadillos" (bocadillos/sandwiches Roca style) are a mix of Joan and Jordi Roca's savory and sweet (the former is the head chef, the latter is the pastry chef). Stamped with the brothers' signature "R", Joan Roca adapted his brother's ice-cream-filled brioches from El Celler de Can Roca into something more main-course friendly, with several fillings to choose from. We went for pollo con mole poblano (chicken with mole, a Mexican chilli and chocolate sauce), which packed a rich punch for something so tiny.

Slightly more familiar were delicious tiny chicken wings with hoisin sauce, a sweet tomato and basil gaazpacho and oysters from Fishhh!, the famous oyster bar just down the road. It's a taste of luxury on the cheap.

Hotel Omm's other crowning glory, apart from the food, is its rooftop terrace bar and pool, which quickly became our favourite late afternoon haunt after a day meandering around the city.

From your sunlounger there are views of the swirling rooftop of Gaudí's La Pedrera, so close you could almost touch it, and there's a glimpse of La Sagrada Familia further in the distance.

The Roca brothers collaboration is topped off by the pool's ice cream list from Jordi Roca's Rocambolesc, the experimental ice cream parlour in Girona, another of my favourite excursions from our trip last year. With six days in Barcelona, it was no hardship working our way through the flavours (my favourite was tied between mojito and carrot, mandarin and apricot).

But we weren't just in Barcelona to lounge in our hotel, lovely though it was.

We were there over the weekend of Sónar, one of Europe's biggest music festivals, and snapped up Saturday tickets for Sónar by Night to see Jurassic 5 and my favourites, 2manydjs. Boyfriend is strictly minimal-techno-only, so he was far too cool to enjoy their video dj set, complete with each track's animated artwork mixed along with the music, but I loved it.

One of my favourite restaurants in the world is right here in Barcelona. Cal Pep is a tiny seafood bar in el Barri Gótic (the Gothic Quarter). Queues start forming for lunch around half an hour before it opens, a mix of locals in the know and curious tourists.

You sit up at the bar and the tapas starts flowing - mainly fish and seafood, cooked right in front of you, until you say stop.

I've been coming here for years and it's always the same - mountains of frito mixto, clams in garlic and tiny squid stewed in their own ink with chickpeas.

From Cal Pep it's just a hop and a skip to the harbour front for a post-lunch stroll in the sunshine and an ice cream.

One of my work colleagues from Madrid recommended Restaurant 7 Portes, an historic nineteenth century dining room, which was full to bursting with tourists and locals alike.

A gold plaque on the bench behind our table proudly informed us that this had been Joan Miró's favourite seat; plaques naming Lauren Bacall, Picasso and the Spanish Royal Family weren't far away.

After a mix of the restaurant's signature starters we rather over-ambitiously opted for their famous seafood platter, a mountain of grilled and fried fish, langoustines, squid and lobster tail.

An elderly Catalan couple on the table next door, dressed in their finest, knew the waiters (equally advanced in years) all by name, and didn't have to look at the menu to order what I liked to imagine had been their same Sunday lunch for decades.

Another new discovery for us was Monvínic, a contender for one of the world's best wine bars, or at least the one with the most extensive selection. With over 600 wines in their sleek, glass-fronted bodega (no clichéd barrels in sight), you can choose by the glass from a list of 60 wines which change daily, loaded onto a ipad.

Wine aside, the food was as equally stunning; we nibbled our way through salt cod fritters, seafood risotto, a delicate beef carpaccio and a seductively runny duck egg with caviar and sobrassada, matching them with tasting glasses as many of the different wines as our bellies could hold.