Bella Rambla

There was a moment, second visit, when I nearly ordered the sangria again, purely as an experiment. First time round it had arrived unpriced and left the bill thirty-five euros heavier, and I wanted to know whether that was bad luck. It was not. I returned to give this mid-Rambla terrace a fair second hearing, and the pattern held: a drinks list with no prices printed, beers charged at twenty euros and up, ten per cent added automatically as service, and a terrace surcharge nobody mentions until the receipt, which on our visit was taken back out of our hands before we had finished reading it. We were pressed into sitting down in the first place; the food, both times, tasted assembled and reheated rather than cooked. One poor evening might be misfortune. Two, identical, is policy. We shan't be needing a third.