Sketches from Spain: Buscando Setas
at Can Culleretes Barcelona

He had been thinking about what the great Catalan chef Santi Santaria once said of his beloved buscando setas (mushrooms), that they are the "muse of the forest...that free us from the temptation to forget that nature is the creator and, at the same time, the most colossal, seductive, and mysterious creation. Only nature surpasses nature," when he split away from the others along the Tapinera colonnade at the Barri Gotic. He had come all this way to walk in through the doors of the oldest restaurant in Barcelona, the Can Culleretes, located in old town at the Gothic Quarter since

1786.  The facade and spire of the great cathedral loomed up from the ground as if a city onto itself running into the sky with as many neighborhoods and open spaces along its jagged contours as any block in a city street.  He could smell the earthy perfume of the mushrooms, so popular among the

traditional Spanish chefs who often collect their own daily batches from the far reaches of the surrounding hills.  The mushroom gatherer, he had read, would cut the chanterelles or milk caps with a knife and bring them back in wicker baskets to be served as the finest of the seasonal Crema de Setas de Temporada (cream of mushroom).  This recipe would take chopped leeks, garlic and heavy

cream for the thick stew, to be served with a smattering of whole mushrooms served on top.  Can Culleretes was another world onto itself, like the cathedral, but where the seeking of spirit turned to quest for something of more reliable substance in soups and familiar traditional dishes of escudella, butifarra, cannelloni or even mushroom pies.  He snuck to the counter as only a few guests had yet

arrived and asked "cream de setas?"  The waiter, an old man, not much hearing, raised his chin upwards and ducked back to the kitchen for only a few moments then came back with a mere saucer of placid soup.  "Very fresh," he said as best he could in English. "Picked today, out there in the hinterlands." Through a window, only a brief crack between the ancient monuments revealed the azure of the Barcelonan sky.