Restaurants in Barcelona: Wushu

Pictures by Me

There are few places in Barcelona that carry the important three Bs. Those Bs being Spanish ofcourse: bueno, bonito and barato. In other words, good, pretty and cheap. Wushu, an Asian-fusion restaurant, is conveniently located on Avenida Marqués de l´Argentera right on the edge of Borne and Barceloneta neighborhoods.

Sure there are places in Barcelona one can eat decent food but at what price? Luckily, today there are more and more trendy looking restaurants, with okay food and not too expensive. I wouldn't go as far as calling many of them cheap, however.

Wushu, on the other hand, is cheap. For 12€, the lunch menu provides a three-course meal including a drink and a coffee or tea. I always start with the Asian salad, a nice mixture of flavors and textures that cleanse the palette. Then, the second course might vary by week or month. But there is usually a chicken, meal, vegetarian and seafood dish. Even if there is no room for dessert, I manage to find space. It's hard to resist any one of their homemade creations. Some of the past have been small individual portions of: strawberry cheescake, apple-crumble, carrot cake with icecream and chocolate mousse. Although not on the lunch menu, every now and then I opt for the brownie with peanut-flavored ice cream.

Food might be the number one thing to consider when choosing a restaurant, but I prefer the dining experience overall.

Because servers in Spain are paid on a wage based on salary and not tips like in the US, they’re minimally motivated to give satisfactory service. But the ladies at Wushu are the opposite. They always try to squeeze me into a table, check back on their guests and once even brought me milk and a napkin to help me when I got chili-pepper in my eye.

I’ve been a regular at Wushu since my first time visiting back in October 2009. Ever since then a week doesn’t pass by that I don’t come here for lunch with the adoptive brothers or with others. Every person I have brought along gets hooked to the place and sooner or later revisits on their own.

Website

Reviews

The Flying Dutchmen: My Adoptive Family in Barcelona

Living abroad, even in a cosmopolitan city like Barcelona, comes with a few setbacks. There are just some things that are completely irreplaceable. I’ve yet to find a bar or bartender who can make a mojito like the one at home. Whenever I make a trip to the US, I come back stocked with all my favorite bath products. But what can you do when what you miss most is the feeling of having your family near you?

I was lucky enough to have found adoptive parents while living in Italy. Karin, an old childhood friend of my dad was married to a French diplomat and had been living in Rome for a few years. They took me in as their adoptive daughter for most of my stay in the Eternal City. Whether it was a home-cooked meal or a Sunday drive out to the countryside, having them close gave me the comfort of having family nearby. I was sad to say goodbye after leaving, but another adoptive family was waiting for me in Barcelona.

Where can one even begin to explain the crazy Dutchmen?

Being a petite girl at only 5’3, I stand a good 12 or 13 inches below my adoptive brothers. It’s their half-Dutch-half-Spanish background that makes them stand out like sore thumbs in Barcelona among the shorter, thinner and dark-haired Catalans. But it’s heart and hospitality, not their size, that makes Max and Jose Casbas bigger than all the Spaniards in my life.

The brothers have always made my stay in Barcelona feel like home since my first time visiting the city in 2002. Whether I visited alone for a weekend, with friends or the entire Pimentel family either Max or Jose welcome us into their homes.

But how in the world did a 23-year-old enter the family of the thirty-something brothers?

Over a decade has passed since since the Casbas brothers entered the Pimentels’ circle. While my dad worked in a multi-national corporation he was in charge of Max’s division overseas in Holland. They hit it off right away. When Mr. Leonardo Pimentel would visit Amsterdam for work, it was Max showing him and my mom around. Max also traveled often to Venezuela for business trips and my dad would show him around over there. Slowly, the Pimentels met the entire Casbas clan: Jose and Ana.

Since 2005 all three brothers moved from Amsterdam to Barcelona and since last year their parents retired just a 15-minute drive outside the city.

Today, Max and Jose have their own business and work together in the Borne neighborhood.

Weekly Lunches with the Brothers

It’s hard to remember the first of my weekly lunches with the brothers. The tradition began somewhere in the first weeks of living in Barcelona. My parents had just left and either
Max and Jose would BBM me asking if I would be able to make it to lunch with them. Most days I was not in their part of town until the afternoon for class. Other days I woke up way past noon and knew it’d be impossible to make it on time.

It has to be mentioned that they eat lunch everyday promptly at 13:00 or 13:30, depending at what restaurant we eat at. If I am not ringing their office’s doorbell by 12:59 I can expect my BlackBerry to start vibrating with messages asking where I am. My tardiness got to the point where I found myself jogging to their office from the nearest metro stop and getting to lunch all sweaty. Running on Latin time is no excuse for these hungry men.

Time passed and weekly lunches turned into home-cooked meals.

Every now and then I get an invitation on a Saturday for a Mexican or Thai feast at Max’s apartment. The meal might consist of Max, Jose, Ana, their significant others, the parents...and me! Making me part of their close-nit family keeps the feeling of my far-away family nearby.

Some days, when passing through the neighborhood on my way to class, I’ll stop by their office just to catch up. We usually end up at Adriatico, the bar right underneath their office, for a quick cortado and people watching until we all must continue with our daily duties.

Some of our favorite places to eat:
-Wushu
-Salero
-Adriatico

the beginning of an era

Since college graduation

In March 2009 I moved to Rome with the intention of staying six months in order to improve my Italian. It didn't take me long to realize I would not be returning to the States any time soon. The six months in Rome flew by. Before I knew it, I was on a plane back to Florida on the day before my 23rd birthday. Spending time at home was great, especially because I knew I'd be returning to Europe a few weeks later.

I moved to Barcelona in October of that year to do a Masters in Graphic Design. Although I never studied Graphic Design in college, it remained a hidden interest of mine since I took visual design courses two years prior. The Masters lasted until July and as far as I was concerned I'd go back to Weston, FL to get back to my real life. Once again in Europe I could not even think about what my life would be like if I was forced to return home. I needed a way to stay in Spain, but not being European, finding a job would be difficult.

Finding a way to live and work in Spain

Just before going home for the winter holidays I remembered that the Ministry of Education of Spain sponsored a program to bring Americans to help students learn English. It took me about 1.7 seconds of Googling to find out that applications for the 2010-2011 school year had just opened up the week before. I read all the information to see if it was something I'd be qualified and interested to do.

Program requirements:

• hold a U.S. or Canadian passport
• be a native English speaker
• be in your junior or senior year of college or graduated with a diploma
• have an intermediate level of Spanish

Background info:

• mid-September to mid-June
• 700 Euros/month
• 12 to 16-hour work weeks
• school holidays off

What the job entails

Basically the job is to work with the teachers in bilingual public schools and help the students out with English. The students are anywhere from kindergardners to high school students. The grantee(me) also plans activities with the teachers in order to make learning English more effective and interesting. English in education is fairly new. Today, most students are learning English since their first years in school. Most of my Spanish friends in their mid-twenties didn't take up the language until their last years in high school. They might be able to read a text and coprehend it, but to carry on a conversation is rare. In most of these cases it's because the teachers are usually Spaniards who only teach reading and writing , but lack pronounciation and conversation skills. (Application for 2011-2012 school year)

I fulfilled all the requirements so it couldn't hurt to just apply. It didn't hurt at all but it was a little tedious. The process involved signing up on-line, creating your CV, writing a short essay and sending a bunch of legal documents. Luckily, I had kept copies of most of the needed documents from the Spanish Visa application. Three weeks passed from the moment of signing up to when I got my confirmation that they had successfully received all the paperwork. I was application number 265. My odds were almost guarenteed. There were around 1,200 spots available and were given on a first-come-first-serve basis. On May 12th 2010, I got the e-mail I was longing for, my acceptance to be an Auxiliar de Conversacion in Castilla-La Mancha.