Can Culleretes

Barcelona, Spain

Founded in 1786, Can Culleretes holds the title of oldest restaurant in Catalonia and the second oldest in Spain according to the Guinness World Records. It sits in the Barri Gòtic of Barcelona on Carrer Quintana, two minutes from the Boqueria market. The dining rooms are covered in Catalan football photographs, bullfighting posters, and signed celebrity portraits going back decades. The menu does not chase trends. Botifarra amb mongetes appears at every lunch service, cooked the same way it has been for generations: the sausage on a hot planxa, the ganxet beans warmed in the rendered fat, the plate arriving with pa amb tomàquet and a basket of bread. Suquet de peix, escudella, and bacallà a la llauna fill the rest of the card. House wine comes by the half-litre in a ceramic jug. Reservations are necessary on weekends; queues form outside at lunchtime without them.

Click to activate map

Sausages served here

Butifarra

Catalonia, Spain

Butifarra is Catalonia's fresh white sausage, built on lean pork and back fat, seasoned with white wine, pine nuts, salt, and white pepper. The white wine tenderises the grind and carries the pine nut's oil through the mix; the result is a sausage with a pale, dense interior and a faint sweetness that disappears the moment the heat hits it. It is the centrepiece of botifarra amb mongetes, the Catalan dish of grilled sausage with stewed white beans, which appears on virtually every traditional restaurant menu between Barcelona and the Pyrenees. The sausage exists alongside its blood-filled counterpart, the butifarra negra, but the blanca is the one that anchors Catalan cooking as a weekday staple. PGI protection covers the broader category under Botifarra Catalana, fixing standards for pork content, casing, and seasoning.

porkSpainCatalonia