Neri Hotel & Restaurant

Good value Mediterranean flavours

I got nothing but love for Relais & Chateaux's properties. From the ever-excellent Waterside Inn in Bray to the charming Chateaux Mirambeau (link) in Southern France, which is by far, was the best hotel experience I ever encountered. Relais & Chateaux's properties just have so much character and atmosphere, forget about those 5 stars hotel groups, if you want style and charm, try a R&C hotel or restaurant.

For my stay at Barcelona I stayed at the only R&C hotel in the city, Neri Hotel. A tiny Boutique hotel which used to be a medieval palace in the heart of Barcelona's Gothic quarter, surrounded by cathedrals and Gothic buildings, full of heritage and atmosphere. I went to its restaurant for a quick lunch: 3 courses with a drink for only 22 Euro, seem like I got nothing to lose!

Hotel Neri (Photo from hotelneri.com)

For starter, it was a selection of salad, mushroom soup and prawn cake, while the fresh salad and soup was at a decent level, I quite like the prawn cake, the prawn itself was fresh and sweet and the prawn cake was light but pretty flavoursome. Oh and the drink, I ordered a Mojito which was included in the lunch price, this Mojito has to be the biggest Mojito I ever encountered! (Which isn't a bad thing!) It was well-made, nice aroma from the fresh lime and mint. 

Salad, mushroom soup and prawn cake

Mojito

My main of sea bream tail was cooked on the bone and it tasted just like what Mediterranean food should be, cooking with the bone ensure you are getting the rich flavours from it and the meat itself was cooked at the right level, the light orange cream was nicely blended, sweet, sour and very settled, worked really well with the sea bream.

Sea bream tail

Veal

The Banana cake and toffee ice cream was a solid dessert, not overly sweet and full of fresh banana flavours in a light buttery cake. The toffee ice cream accompanied the banana cake nicely with its sweet and light body taste.

Banana cake and toffee ice cream

Overall it was a very good value menu, while it is not at an exquisite level, in term of value vs quality you can't get better than that. You will need to pay more at a "tourists trap" restaurant in London for not even half of the quality. So if you are staying at Hotel Neri, well worth spending a lunch there.

Food 5.5
Service 6
Ambience 8
Value 9

£19 per head

Hotel Neri Relais & Chateaux
Calle Sant Sever, 5, 08002 Barcelona, Spain (El Barri G˜tic)

http://www.hotelneri.com/en/