Crema Catalana appears as a signature dish in 1 Spain cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Crema catalana · Barcelona
Crema catalana is Catalonia's signature dessert: a citrus-and-cinnamon-flavoured pastry cream baked thin and topped with a hand-torched layer of brittle caramelised sugar.
The dessert predates the French creme brulee; written recipes go back to medieval Catalan kitchens of the 14th century, when monks at Sant Cugat del Vallès cooked a version flavoured with lemon zest, cinnamon and a hard-caramel sugar lid. The earliest version was eaten with bread on Saint Joseph's day in March; by the 19th century it had spread to every Catalan kitchen as the canonical sweet course. Barcelona's restaurants today serve it from December to August; the trick is the careful baking of the cream and then the burn-pass with a salamander iron rather than a torch. Casa Leopoldo runs the classic version; Disfrutar deconstructs and reassembles it as a modernist tasting course.
Where to eat in Barcelona:
- Casa Leopoldo
- 7 Portes
- Semproniana
- Bar del Pla