La Mar Salada

I've been living in Barcelona for almost 20 years, and I can say with confidence that this is one of the best places to go for a paella. The black rice is also excellent. If you want a reasonable-priced rice dish with a portside atmosphere, this is the place. "Elche" on Vila Vila street has better food, in my opinion, but it doesn't have the seaside location.

The reason I'm at this site is because I was surfing for the address of La Mar Salada to send to a friend. And I saw just one review here and it was negative, which seemed unfair and inaccurate. The waiter might not have been the most pleasant person in the world -- you get that sometimes in Barcelona --but his information was probably accurate. House wine is often "without denomination of origen" which means that they don't know where it's from -- it's made from bulk domestic grapes. So "it's the house wine" was the best answer. As for the food poisoning, I can only say that I've eaten there a dozen times and never had a problem, never was served anything that even looked a little suspect.

Based on Fodor's, we went to this restaurant and were very disappointed. In particular the white wine that came with the menu del dia had probably gone bad. Not knowing the local wine, we asked the waiter - when we got his attention- where the wine came from and he just answered house wine, no where in particular. He did not ask us if there was a problem, and we were not sure enough to answer yes. We had the paella, which was presented nicely, but the next day my husband was ill - probably from the fish salad he had as the first course.