Espinaler: The Catalan Bar That Has Served Vermouth, Conservas and One Famous Sauce Since 1896
Vilassar de Mar is a small town on the Maresme coast, twenty minutes up the railway line from Barcelona, and in 1896 a family there opened a tavern that served wine and, in time, vermouth, alongside whatever was landed at the beach: mussels, cockles, small clams, anchovies. The tavern is still there, still run by the same family, and it is called Espinaler. What made it famous beyond the town was not the vermouth. It was a sauce, thin and sharp and orange-red, in a small bottle with a red and yellow label, that the bar shook over its tins of shellfish and that customers began asking to take home.
Today Espinaler is three things at once: a tavern, a producer of conservas and olives, and, above all, that bottle, which sits on the counter of most bars in Catalonia. This is the producer guide: what is in the sauce, what the family makes, and how to use it. For the ritual it belongs to, our guide to the vermut hour is the companion piece.
The tavern
The Espinaler tavern belongs to the tradition of the Catalan bodega: marble tables, barrels behind the bar, a siphon of soda, and a menu that is mostly tins. The house vermouth is poured from the barrel over ice with an olive and a slice of orange, the tins are opened at the table, and the sauce is on every table without being asked for. Barcelona's vermouth revival of the 2010s sent a generation of young people up the coast to see the original, and the tavern is now a kind of pilgrimage on a Sunday. The family's own account of its history, on its website, dates the tavern to 1896 and the sauce to the mid twentieth century.
The sauce
Salsa Espinaler is a vinegar sauce seasoned with paprika, chile and spices, thin enough to shake through a dropper cap and sharp enough that a few drops are plenty. The exact recipe is the family's; the ingredient list is short and the flavor is unmistakable: acid first, then the sweet warmth of paprika, then a faint chile heat that fades fast. It was designed for one job, to cut the richness of oily fish and to brighten shellfish in brine, and it does that job better than lemon, which is the usual alternative, because it adds spice as well as acid. Our hot sauce guide calls it the Spanish outlier, a sauce that is not really about heat at all.
Use it by the drop. Three or four drops on a mussel, a cockle or a clam straight from the tin. A shake over a plate of thick olive-oil potato chips, which in Catalonia is a snack in its own right. A few drops on a slice of tinned sardine or mackerel on bread. Over boiled potatoes, a fried egg, a plate of grilled prawns, a bowl of chickpeas. The bottle is small because the sauce is strong; one lasts a season of Sundays.
The olives
The anchovy-stuffed olives are the second thing on every Espinaler table: small green Manzanilla olives, lye-cured in the Spanish style for a crisp, mild flesh, each filled with anchovy paste. They are the standard Spanish bar olive and the reason a bowl of them appears with every vermouth, and our olive guide places them in the wider family. Serve them cold or at room temperature in a small bowl with a saucer for pits, or drop one on a pick into a glass of red vermouth, where it seasons the drink.
The conservas
Espinaler also sells tins under its own name, mostly Galician and Cantabrian shellfish and fish packed for the tavern's table: mussels in escabeche, cockles, small clams, razor clams, sardines, anchovies. The tins live in the Espinaler collection when in stock alongside the sauce and olives. When you see the mussels in escabeche, buy two; with a few drops of the sauce they are the single most Catalan bite a person can eat outside Catalonia.
A vermut table from the Espinaler shelf
The sauce, the olives, a tin of mussels and a bag of Torres olive-oil chips is a complete aperitif for four, assembled in the time it takes to open the tin. Add bread, add a slice of jamón, add something cold and bitter to drink, and it is the no-cook dinner party. The whole point of Espinaler is that a century-old family worked out the minimum number of things a table needs to feel generous, and then bottled the one that ties them together.
The sauce, olives and conservas are at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com. If you are ever in Barcelona on a Sunday, take the train to Vilassar de Mar and order what the next table is having.
