Barcelona' s evolving dining scene

City's restaurants retain creativity, but exchange lavish ingredients for accessibility.

Conventional wisdom has it that dining out in Barcelona means bouncing from one Michelin-starred restaurant to the next, with chefs like Ferran and Albert Adria and Albert Raurich leading the way. But as the Spanish economy has suffered in recent years, the fine-dining scene has hit its share of road bumps. Tourism, in large part, has been able to sustain many of the great temples of Spanish cuisine, though not all have survived. Can Fabes, a restaurant outside of Barcelona that earned three Michelin stars every year from 1994 to 2011, closed in August, while Madrid's two-star restaurant Sergi Arola Gastro closed months before, after owing back taxes (though it has since reopened). Albert Adria has even gone as far as to say that "the high gastronomy formula doesn't work now."

That has led to the emergence of a new restaurant scene, where accessibility is favored over lavish ingredients, but with creativity remaining as the driving force-still drawing from, and reimagining, the great traditions of Catalan cuisine. The big names remain, but are offering meals in more modest settings and at relatively lower prices - that are less about providing once-in-a-lifetime experiences than just consistently great ones.