Trash Talk - Food & Booze

Poblenou isn’t the Barcelona they show you on the back of the bus tour. It’s a neighborhood of rusted corrugated shutters, tech startups housed in old textile mills, and the lingering scent of salt from the nearby Mediterranean mixing with diesel. It’s here, on Carrer de Pere IV, that you’ll find Trash Talk. The name is a warning and a promise. It’s a middle finger to the white-tablecloth pretension of the Eixample, a place that embraces the 'trashy' aesthetic of 90s hip-hop culture while serving food that is anything but garbage.

Walking into Trash Talk feels like stepping into a fever dream of a Brooklyn dive bar that somehow got teleported to the Sant Martí district. The walls are a riot of stickers and graffiti, the lighting is strictly neon-pink and moody, and the soundtrack is heavy on Biggie and Wu-Tang. It’s loud, it’s cramped, and it’s exactly what you need when you’re tired of eating overpriced tapas in the Gothic Quarter. This is street food for those who prefer their dinner with a side of attitude and a bassline that vibrates in your chest.

The menu is a curated list of sandwiches—bocadillos, if we’re being local—that take the concept of 'bread and meat' to a level of obsession usually reserved for heart surgeons. Take 'The Notorious.' It’s a pastrami sandwich that would make a New York deli owner weep with envy. The meat is cured, smoked, and sliced with a precision that suggests the kitchen actually gives a damn. It’s piled high, dripping with melted cheese and the kind of mustard that clears your sinuses and reminds you you’re alive. Then there’s 'The Wave,' a seafood-heavy masterpiece that brings the ocean into a brioche bun with fried shrimp and a sauce that’s probably illegal in three provinces.

But Trash Talk isn’t just a sandwich shop. It’s a cocktail bar in Sant Martí that refuses to act like one. You won’t find any mixologists in waistcoats here. Instead, you get bartenders who know how to balance a drink while nodding along to 'C.R.E.A.M.' The cocktails are inventive, strong, and served without the usual garnish-heavy theater. They are designed to cut through the fat of the sandwiches, a necessary chemical reaction to keep you upright.

The crowd is a mix of Poblenou locals, skaters, and the kind of travelers who know how to use a metro map. There’s no VIP section. There’s no dress code. If you show up in a suit, you’re going to feel like an idiot. If you show up looking for a quiet, romantic evening, you’ve come to the wrong place. This is a place for arguments, for laughter, and for getting sauce on your shirt.

Is it perfect? No. The service can be indifferent if they’re slammed, and they’re almost always slammed. You might have to wait for a stool, and you’ll definitely leave smelling like smoked meat and expensive gin. But that’s the point. Trash Talk is honest. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is: a loud, salt-and-grease-stained refuge for people who just want a good drink and a better sandwich. It’s a testament to the idea that if you do one thing—like making a sandwich—with enough passion and enough salt, the world will beat a path to your door, even if that door is tucked away in an industrial corner of Barcelona.