San Diego Spotlight : El Circo Takes a Surrealistic Trip Into Barcelona Cuisine

Perhaps you’ve wondered what it would have been like to take a brief journey through Salvador Dali’s mind.

The interior of the Gaslamp Quarter’s new El Circo Barcelona gives an idea but doesn’t really provide all that thorough a tour, of course, since anyone’s psyche is pretty complicated territory--and, in the case of the late master of Surrealism, it presumably would have been even more terra incognita than most.

But in terms of restaurant decor, El Circo Barcelona does deposit us on new ground. It’s not just wildly unusual, but so really surreal that, once you get settled in and test a dish or two, you feel like you’ve landed in a “Twilight Zone” with good cuisine. The psychedelic cafes of the ‘60s were kid’s stuff compared to this.

The mood combined with the cooking of Barcelona and the Catalan region of Spain simmers into a sensuous stew. Spread floor to ceiling with murals, the walls explode with color and strange images; the plates read exactly the same way and can be remarkably beautiful, as in the case of the crescent moon-shaped croquettes dressed with pomegranate seeds and herbed cream. The murals mostly take the form of gigantic portraits of faces, some more or less recognizable, some fanciful and twisted. A larger-than-life representation of Dali is so wickedly clever that he himself might have been pleased by it.

The cooking and especially the presentations of the several dozen dishes also are wickedly clever. Half the menu is devoted to dishes called “tapas,” a Spanish term generally understood to mean snacks and small servings of highly seasoned food, but these are Catalan tapas, and the rules are utterly different. Chef-proprietor Silvio Ximenez offers unexpected combinations of ingredients and thus flavors, juxtaposed in ways that might seem bizarre but by and large taste delicious.

These tapas seem relatively highly priced (they range from $6.90 for a most unusual stuffed tomato to $15.50 for a beef filet with cheese, raisins and piquant romesco sauce), but because the portions are considerably larger than is usual for the genre, three or four are more than sufficient to feed a party of two.

Virtually everything is terrifically complicated, but one of the best dishes--and the one to sample in advance of all the others--is simple and lovely. This is the datil amb bacon , or bacon-wrapped fresh dates, broiled until beautifully crisp, and placed on the edges of a plate elaborately decorated with patterns of cherry sauce and raw apple puree. This is as handsome on the tongue as on the plate.

The descriptions of the dishes can be exhausting, and they provide only broad clues to the finished products. For example, the description of the Catalan potatoes ( patates ala catalana ) mentions grilled marinated potatoes with white beans, spinach, garlic and basil, which gives short shrift to this lush stew of crisp and soft elements and mild and fierce flavors. Wonderful by itself, it of course accompanies other dishes quite well.

There is a Moroccan flavor to the polastre rostit , or boned roasted chicken richly covered with a sauce of prunes, raisins, almonds, tomatoes and garlic, and an air of nouvelle cuisine fantasy to the pebrot farcit , a bell pepper filled to the brim with spinach, shredded duck, goat cheese and raspberry sauce. This sounds awful--as do so many of the dishes--but like most preparations, it’s actually quite attractive.

A few dishes are strictly savory, such as the fine plate of lamb sausage with stewed white beans ( botifarra amb monguetes ), but many include fruit and, sometimes, sweet spices. A prime example would be the apple stuffed with rabbit, garlic and cinnamon-flavored honey sauce ( conil farcit ); another would be the yellow pepper brimming with squid, diced pork and celery in apricot sauce.

But there are many savory dishes, many based on seafood, including a seductive saute of ahi tuna (not annoyingly rare, as at so many restaurants) with a very French sauce of Champagne, cream and forest mushrooms. There are also mussels baked under coverlets of cheese, pine nuts and basil, octopus in a piquant sauce and fried oysters in fragits sauce.

The menu’s second page offers elaborate soups (an eggplant mousse, a seafood stew, a meat-and-vegetable stew), fancy composed rice dishes called pages that evidently are the Catalan answer to Spain’s famous paellas, and a number of pastas. This last category might seem a bow to San Diego tastes, but pasta actually is quite a specialty in Barcelona, especially cannelloni, here called canalones and stuffed both with roast lamb and herbs and with a mix of shrimp, dried cod and spinach in a cabrales (blue cheese) sauce.

The salads are immense and delicious, and range from the pleasing simplicity of the amanida catalana (diced vegetables and cheese in a pungent vinaigrette) to the complication of the amanida de peix e mariscos , which combines grilled dried cod, mussels and clams in a strong dressing sweetened with blackberry wine. El Circo Barcelona offers a couple of bread specialties, notably the pa amb formatge , or hollowed slices of toasted bread stuffed with a marvelous mixture of goat cheese, roasted peppers and grilled eggplant.

The restaurant does serve flan for dessert, but in the Catalan style, so rich that it has a cream cheese-like texture and flavored richly with raisins, apples or whatever Ximenez feels like adding that day. Generously served and beautifully decorated, the flan often is sauced, one day with what seemed to be cottage cheese and minced pineapple. This was wildly different and very good.

El Circo is at present awaiting a liquor license. Guests who wish wine may bring their own.

EL CIRCO BARCELONA 905 Fourth Ave., Gaslamp Quarter 233-7227 Lunch and dinner daily Entrees $6.90 to $16.50. Dinner for two, including tax and tip, about $30 to $50.

Credit cards accepted