Can Chechu

If you’re looking for a place where the waiters wear waistcoats and explain the 'provenance' of your micro-greens, keep walking. Can Chechu doesn’t have time for your bullshit. Located on a relatively quiet stretch of Carrer del Consell de Cent in the Hostafrancs neighborhood, this is a bar de toda la vida—a place of all life. It’s the kind of joint that smells of espresso, fried olive oil, and the faint, lingering ghost of tobacco from the decades before the ban. It’s loud, it’s cramped, and it is absolutely essential.

Walk in at 9:00 AM and you won’t find people scrolling through TikTok over a matcha latte. You’ll find the 'esmorzar de forquilla' crowd—the fork breakfast. These are the neighborhood legends, the guys who’ve been working since 5:00 AM, sitting down to plates of tripe, beans with sausage, or a slab of tortilla that could anchor a small boat. This is the Catalan way of saying 'the day is long, and I need fuel.' It’s a beautiful, unapologetic middle finger to the globalized brunch culture that’s currently eating Barcelona’s soul.

The star of the show, the dish that every regular and every savvy interloper orders, is the berenjenas con miel—eggplant with honey. It sounds simple, and it is, but it’s a masterclass in texture. The eggplant is sliced thin, battered with a lightness that defies the heavy-duty fryer, and drizzled with just enough honey to make you question why you ever ate vegetables any other way. It’s salty, sweet, crunchy, and soft all at once. It’s a protein rush to the cortex that pairs perfectly with a cold caña or a glass of house vermouth.

Then there’s the ensaladilla rusa. In a city where every tourist trap serves a refrigerated scoop of potato-flavored sadness, Can Chechu does it right. It’s creamy, rich, and topped with the kind of olive that actually tastes like an olive. It’s the kind of food that requires a sturdy piece of bread and zero ego. You eat it at the bar, elbow-to-elbow with a guy who’s lived in the same apartment since the 70s and is currently giving the television a piece of his mind regarding the latest Barça match.

The service is fast, efficient, and carries that specific brand of Barcelona brusqueness that some tourists mistake for rudeness. It’s not. It’s respect. They respect your time and your hunger. They aren't there to be your best friend; they’re there to get a hot plate of food in front of you before the next wave of locals hits the door at noon.

Is it perfect? No. The lighting is fluorescent and unforgiving. The floor might be littered with a few napkins—a traditional sign of a good bar in Spain, though less common now. It’s a place that exists for the neighborhood, not for your Instagram feed. But that’s exactly why it’s worth the trek to Sants-Montjuïc. In a city that is increasingly being turned into a theme park version of itself, Can Chechu remains stubbornly, wonderfully real. It’s a reminder that the best meals aren't found under a heat lamp in a plaza; they’re found in the backstreets, served on chipped plates, shared with people who actually live here. If you want the truth of Barcelona, it’s right here, hidden in a slice of fried eggplant.