Not far from Barcelona's beach district, you'll find the historic 7 Portes, the place where the stars go for some grub. No seriously, folks like Antonio Banderas, Yoko Ono, Charlton Heston, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Lou Reed and Michael Douglas have feasted on 7 Portes' generous portions of cannelloni, paella, fish stew and roast suckling pig . Even the current King of Spain Juan Carlos I and revolutionary Che Guevara chowed down here (presumably not at the same time). I guess if you've been serving up good food since 1836, you eventually get a reputation for drawing an upscale crowd, even if they are more of the tourist variety these days. That said, the restaurant, which has an authentic Old World feel to it, is often busy, but is open all day without interruption (not always a common thing here) from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m.

And, if you're into trivia, here are a couple unusual tidbits for you. The restaurant is housed in the "Pòrtics d'en Xifres," a building that was not only declared a national monument, but brace yourself, is supposedly the first place in Barcelona where running water was installed AND was the backdrop for the first photograph ever taken in Spain. There you have it - useless pieces of information to mull over while sipping a glass of bubbly, known here as cava.

Metro: L4 Barceloneta
Location

Pg. Isabell II, 14

Born/Barceloneta

Barcelona, 08003

Spain (Espana)