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Eat, dazzle, love

27 Oct 2020

We talked to the gastronomic prescriber Alejandro Biel about the best restaurants in Barcelona, his passion for cooking and the importance of light when working.

The dictionary says that a passion is "a feeling capable of dominating the will". Alejandro Biel's passion for the world of catering began to "dominate" him at a very young age, when he and his parents were already touring the best restaurants in Barcelona.

In 2015, this young critic and marketing specialist created the Gastrobarna community where today, with more than 85,000 Instagram followers, he does not miss a single recommendation on restaurants, specialities and gastronomic trends in the city. "Since we've been out on the streets again, I really like going to El Mirador de Can Cases because it has spectacular views" he says these days, that we all want to go out again and discover new places.

Alejandro knows every corner of the city very well and defines it as very cosmopolitan. Perhaps that is why one of his favourite lamps in Faro Barcelona is the LAMPANOT. It is a portable lamp whose design is based on the drawing of the tiles of the Eixample district, the PANOT, which pays homage to the city's modernist period. As it is portable, you can take it with you wherever you go and choose which of the 3 intensities is best for each occasion.

His photographs are colourful, cheerful, have a lot of light and respond to that "extroverted and cheerful" Mediterranean character that characterises him:

"For me, light is the most important factor when I take my profile photographs. I always look for natural light, but if that is not possible, the light that transmits the same feeling as I have when I taste the dish"

When he cooks - he says he prefers to do so for a few guests - he also needs "lots of light" and therefore has perfect LED strips installed to illuminate the worktop.

If we ask him where his favourite place is, he says he has many, but the first one he went to just after confinement was the Koh-Ndal restaurant "because I owed a friend dinner and it's my favourite Thai restaurant". To read more suggestions you can browse through the pages of Faro Barcelona's catalogue The Collection Magazine, which has a guide to Barcelona and a selection of its recommendations.

There, we have united the best of a modern and diverse city with versatile lighting designs to continue to light up the passions of its people, also between kitchens.