La Barra de Miceli

From the market instantly to the bar

Marga Coll has achieved one of her goals: to bring the public back to a market that had seen some of its stalls close.

Author: Joan Ramis Boscana

The food markets could be compared to the thermometers of a city. Strolling through their aisles allows us to take the pulse of the atmosphere, to infer the character of its inhabitants. That is the sensation we experience when we enter the Mercat d'Inca on any given Thursday. There is a lively atmosphere in the air, a human bustle in which women carry their shopping bags, where men drag their carts with their eyes fixed on the display cases of the stalls. La Barra de Miceli, one of the projects that Marga Coll leads in full view of everyone, is largely to blame for this activity; the public can sit on her stools to watch how the chef, with expert hands, cooks the menu of the day with products she acquires from the market itself. A live show.

We find a space at the bar, the ideal place for our sense of smell to capture the aromas that ooze from the workplace of the cook and her assistants. We lean on the counter and immediately realize, at a glance, how the customers have known each other for a long time. They greet each other, call each other by their first names. La Barra de Miceli acts as a meeting point in the center of Inca, a quality that gathers a fixed clientele that never wants to miss what is cooked in their kitchens. That which Marga Coll and her team offer depends on the genre that the shopkeepers expose. Therefore, variety is always a constant to hold on to. It is the market itself who supplies the kitchen of La Barra de Miceli, which has fresh products of the day, linked to an unappealable seasonality that seems to be one of its main attractions. 

What we are craving for from all that is written down on the hanging blackboards - the offer is so wide that it is difficult to decide - are two dishes that we have already seen walking before our eyes, and that we have tasted with our retinas before they get to be placed on the bar: fried prawns and cod croquettes. We have decided to go for the sea inside a market anchored on the mainland, in the center of the island, where the products that come from the coast reach the geographical limits of Inca without losing an iota of freshness. A bite of the first croquette plunges us into the cold seas of the north, where cod is at home. The tenderness of this fish is combined with the crunchy texture of the breading. A perfect mixture, far from the greasy and oily point that these recipes suffer from and that are so much attributed to our grandmothers, and that unfortunately many restaurants fail to emulate. But Marga Coll, who usually gives a twist to the roots of our gastronomy, the one that describes us so well, does.

People are crowding around the bar as lunchtime passes. Marga Coll has achieved one of her goals: to bring the public back to a market that had seen some of its stalls close. From her culinary creations, her team has managed to increase the hustle and bustle that had slowly died down. That's what we think of as we put a lightly breaded piece of shrimp in our mouths, whose Mediterranean flavor we can intermingle with a memorable alioli. The journey our fingers take - we don't need a fork and we don't even want one - generates a certain addiction, a repetition of movements that we can hardly repress as a result of our delight. 

Rarely has a meal in the form of a snack been so good for us. Never have tapas spoken to us with so much personality, making themselves heard above the conversations of the diners. Because the dishes of La Barra de Miceli express themselves with clarity to shout that the Mercat d'Inca has been reborn. This is zero kilometer for real.

People are crowding around the bar as lunchtime passes. Marga Coll has achieved one of her goals: to bring the public back to a market that had seen some of its stalls close. From her culinary creations, her team has managed to increase the hustle and bustle that had slowly died down. That's what we think of as we put a lightly breaded piece of shrimp in our mouths, whose Mediterranean flavor we can intermingle with a memorable alioli. The journey our fingers take - we don't need a fork and we don't even want one - generates a certain addiction, a repetition of movements that we can hardly repress as a result of our delight. 

Rarely has a meal in the form of a snack been so good for us. Never have tapas spoken to us with so much personality, making themselves heard above the conversations of the diners. Because the dishes of La Barra de Miceli express themselves with clarity to shout that the Mercat d'Inca has been reborn. This is zero kilometer for real.