Restaurant Xinès

In the shadow of the Torre Glòries—that giant, glowing glass phallus that defines Barcelona’s skyline—sits a different kind of monument. While the surrounding @22 district tries its hardest to look like a Silicon Valley fever dream, Restaurant Xinès (officially known as Chang Feng) remains stubbornly, gloriously rooted in a different era. It’s a massive, red-and-gold bastion of old-school Chinese dining that doesn’t give a damn about your avocado toast or your deconstructed tapas. This is a place built for the heavy lifting of eating.

Walking into Chang Feng is like stepping out of the Mediterranean and into a mid-century banquet hall in Guangzhou. It’s vast. We’re talking high ceilings, carved wood partitions, and the kind of carpet that has seen a thousand family arguments and ten thousand celebratory toasts. It’s not 'intimate.' It’s not 'curated.' It’s a machine designed to feed a lot of people very quickly, and there is a certain brutal honesty in that. You aren't here for the lighting; you’re here for the duck.

The Peking duck is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the menu. When it arrives, it’s a ritual. The skin is rendered down to a lacquer-thin crisp, shimmering with the kind of fat that makes your cardiologist weep but your soul sing. You take those thin, steamed pancakes, smear them with a hit of salty-sweet hoisin, add the crunch of scallion and cucumber, and wrap it up into a package of pure, unadulterated joy. It’s a protein rush that hits you right in the cortex. This isn't the dainty, overpriced sliver of bird you get at 'fusion' joints downtown. This is a ración—a proper, plate-filling heap of poultry that demands respect.

But look around the room. You’ll see the tech workers from the nearby offices hunched over steaming bowls of noodles, their faces illuminated by the glow of the red lanterns and their own smartphones. You’ll see multi-generational families passing around massive platters of 'arroz tres delicias' and sizzling iron plates of beef that hiss and spit like a cornered cat. The portions here are legendary—or 'abundant,' as the polite reviews say. In a city where 'small plates' often mean 'small value,' Chang Feng is an outlier. It’s a place where you can actually get full without checking your bank balance afterward.

Is it perfect? Hell no. The service can be brisk to the point of being transactional. If you’re looking for a waiter to explain the 'concept' of the menu for twenty minutes, you’re in the wrong place. They have tables to turn and ducks to carve. It can get loud—a cacophony of clattering porcelain and shouting—but that’s the soundtrack of a restaurant that’s actually alive. It’s the sound of people eating without fear.

If you want the 'best Chinese restaurant Barcelona' experience that feels like a sanitized tourist brochure, go somewhere else. But if you want to sit in a room that smells of roasted fat and soy sauce, in a neighborhood that’s rapidly losing its soul to gentrification, and tear into a meal that feels real, then get to Sant Martí. Order the duck. Drink a cold beer. And for God’s sake, don’t ask for a salad.