Lluritu, Barcelona

Seafood made simple

Lluritu is an ultra-simple, minimalist to the extreme restaurant that recognises that there’s little you can add to seafood that will make it taste better than itself. Few dishes on its succinct menu are served with any flourish beyond a lick of oil and a sprinkle of salt, utmost confidence instead entrusted to the ingredients and the grill.

You’d hope they’d be confident in the grill at least, given that it takes up half of the small space, leaving room for only a few tables squeezed together in the back. White walls and a simple tiled floor complete the distinctly modern aesthetic, which feels as close to a fishmonger’s as it does a restaurant.

This stripped back approach even extends to the first thing anyone here is likely to eat: the obligatory pan con tomate, slices of soft-crusted baguette that must have encountered a tomato at some point, since a few seeds have been left behind, but there’s not much more evidence than that. So be it - that just makes the bread all the better for soaking up the seafood liquor to come.

The best of that comes from a life-affirming bowl of mussels, bright orange and plump as cherries in their onyx shells. They arrive still steaming, in a pool of oil and their own juices, a thick wedge of lemon balanced precariously on top of the pile, in a generous heap that only sets me back the princely sum of €5.40. If I’ve eaten a better bowl of mussels in my life I’d love to know when.

Razor clams and red Atlantic prawns are similarly spartan when they arrive from the grill. The prawns appear drizzled in oil and sprinkled with flakes of sea salt that helps accentuate every ounce of flavour; the clams are even simpler, they don’t get the salt. As with the mussels, I order both in half-portions and the most expensive of the lot is a mere €6.50.

I have, in fairness, intentionally tried to keep things pared back, though only because I sensed it might be their strength. I’m sure the croaker ceviche has a little more prep time to it, and the parmentier potatoes that accompany Iberian pork feather — the sole meat option on the menu — presumably involved some labour. The most complicated things I order are a pair of gildas, small skewers billed promisingly as “anchovy, olive, and something else.” In this case that turns out to be whole pickled chillies, which deliver a heat I rarely find in Spain, sharp and fiery enough to balance the savoury, salty force of the other elements.

I’m most surprised by the smoked eel salad. The fish is diced as finely as the bed of sweet, mild tomatoes it lays on, only olive oil, chives, and a heavy dusting of cracked black pepper alongside. The eel I’m used to is intensely smoky, best accompanied by equally punchy ingredients like the horseradish, mustard, and pickled onion combo of the Quo Vadis sandwich. Lluritu’s is nothing like that: the smoke is light, delicate, a subtle hint of a flavour that demands your attention. The tomatoes are just a little too fridge-cold to truly sing, but there’s not another note here that I’d change.

To eat this well, wash it down with a couple glasses of cava, and leave having spent comfortably less than €50 feels like a feat, even for Barcelona. I can see why in just eight years since opening, Lluritu has already expanded to two additional locations, each larger than the original, though I hope that growth never detracts from the simple formula that makes its original spot feel quite so special.