When it comes to stylish drinking places, Barcelona is way out in front. Here’s where to sample your first kiwi ice sherbet
“It was always a pipe dream,” says Tom Godfrey. We are sitting at a high table in Foco, the bar in the Gracia area of Barcelona he opened nine months ago with his friend and business partner, Theo Quinn. Both in their late twenties, Godfrey and Quinn are two young Englishmen taking Barcelona’s cocktail scene by storm.
We talk on a balmy Friday night in midsummer, as the evening crowd is just starting to arrive. Well-dressed young Barcelonites settle into stools at the bar or make their way to the stepped seating at the back of the room. Quinn mixes me a sublime martini, complete with butter-infused olives, while Godfrey explains how this all came about. They met in Bristol a decade ago, when they were working at the same bar, before they went on to master their trade at some of the best bars in Europe.
“We lived together, we worked together, we have a familial bond,” Godfrey jokes. “We’d always said we’d open a bar sometime. Then at the end of 2021 we decided to go for it.”
The result has been an instant hit. In the short time Foco has been open, it has quickly established itself as a new destination in a city that was replete with great cocktails. Everything is designed to facilitate conversation and introductions. “We want people to come here and talk to someone new,” Godfrey says. They already have a loyal crew of locals, including some, Godfrey says, who routinely bring first dates here.