Restaurant in Barcelona, Spain
Michelin-recognised Catalan cooking at €€ prices.
Vivanda is the easiest yes in Barcelona's credentialed dining scene: a Michelin Bib Gourmand holder at €€, serving traditional Catalan platillos and rotating monthly dishes in a renovated Sarrià house with a tree-shaded terrace. Booking is straightforward, the value is clear, and the rotating menu format makes two or three visits worthwhile.
Yes — and it's one of the easier calls in Barcelona. Vivanda holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand for 2024 and 2025, sits at #471 in the Opinionated About Dining Casual Europe ranking for 2025, and charges €€ for Catalan cooking that earns credentials most restaurants at twice the price would be satisfied with. Booking is not a battle: this is not the city's hardest table to secure. The real question is how many visits to plan, because a single meal doesn't cover the range of what the kitchen does across platillos, monthly rotating dishes, and the patio experience in warmer months.
Vivanda occupies a renovated house in the Sarrià district — the quieter, residential quarter of Barcelona that sits apart from the tourist circuits of the Eixample and Gothic Quarter. The interior runs high tables for tapas-style eating alongside conventional restaurant tables, which means the room works for a quick plate and a glass of wine or a longer seated lunch. The draw in warm months is the tree-shaded patio-terrace, fitted with a retractable roof, which fills quickly once the weather holds. If you are visiting between late spring and early autumn, request the terrace when you book , it changes the character of the meal considerably. In cooler months, the interior is more compact and the high tables near the front make it feel more like a neighbourhood bar-restaurant than a destination dining room.
The cooking is traditional Catalan, anchored in market ingredients and filtered through modern technique without the performance layer of Barcelona's tasting-menu circuit. The format centres on platillos , small plates that share structural DNA with tapas but are more deliberately composed , alongside rotating monthly dishes that revive older Catalan flavour combinations. Two preparations have built enough reputation to be referenced in the venue's own awards documentation: the ham croquettes and the steak tartare. Both are worth ordering on a first visit. Beyond those anchors, the rotating monthly dishes are where the kitchen takes more interpretive latitude, which makes return visits genuinely different rather than a repetition of the same menu.
Vivanda is structured for repeat visits in a way that most €€ restaurants are not. Here is how to think across two or three trips.
First visit: Sit inside or on the terrace depending on season. Order the croquettes and steak tartare to calibrate the kitchen's baseline. Add two or three platillos and at least one of the current monthly dishes. Lunch is the natural starting point , the 1:00–3:30 pm window is how the neighbourhood uses the restaurant, and the pacing suits a two-hour meal without pressure.
Second visit: Return in a different season to catch a new set of monthly dishes. If your first visit was lunch, try an evening service (Tuesday through Saturday, 8:00–10:00 pm) to see how the room shifts , the terrace behaves differently after dark, and the high-table area becomes livelier. The platillos format means you can build a very different meal from visit one without touching the same dishes.
Third visit: If the patio is the reason you came back in summer, book early in the dinner window before the terrace fills. By a third visit you have enough context to skip the anchor dishes if you want, and trust the monthly rotation entirely. This is where the kitchen's seasonal intelligence becomes the point of the meal rather than the background to it.
Vivanda is closed Mondays. Lunch runs 1:00–3:30 pm Tuesday through Sunday. Dinner runs 8:00–10:00 pm Tuesday through Saturday; Sunday is lunch-only. Booking difficulty is rated easy, though the terrace fills faster than the interior, particularly on weekend lunches in summer. Book a week out for a standard indoor table; book two weeks out if the terrace is the priority. There is no booking system linked in the available data, so contact directly or check through third-party reservation platforms for Barcelona.
| Venue | Price | Format | Booking Difficulty | Key Credential |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vivanda | €€ | Platillos / small plates | Easy | Michelin Bib Gourmand 2025, OAD Casual #471 |
| Cinc Sentits | €€€€ | Tasting menu | Moderate | Michelin starred, modern Catalan |
| Cocina Hermanos Torres | €€€€ | Tasting menu | Moderate–Hard | Two Michelin stars |
| Disfrutar | €€€€ | Tasting menu | Very Hard | Three Michelin stars, #2 World's 50 Best |
| Lasarte | €€€€ | Tasting menu | Moderate | Three Michelin stars |
Vivanda sits at a different price point from the rest of Barcelona's credentialed dining options, which makes direct comparisons partly a question of what you are actually spending. At €€, it is not competing with Disfrutar or Lasarte , both are three-Michelin-star tasting-menu formats at €€€€, requiring significant planning and budget. What Vivanda offers is Bib Gourmand-credentialed Catalan cooking without the tasting-menu commitment, at a price point that makes two or three visits feasible within a single trip. If your Barcelona itinerary includes one high-spend tasting menu, Vivanda functions as the intelligent second restaurant: lower effort, lower cost, and genuinely different in format.
Within the casual-to-mid segment, Vivanda has a clearer identity than most. The Sarrià location separates it from the Eixample cluster of mid-range options, and the platillos format gives it more flexibility than a fixed-menu competitor. If you are comparing it specifically to other Bib Gourmand-level options in Barcelona, the terrace and the rotating monthly dishes give Vivanda a structural advantage for repeat visits that more static menus cannot match.
For context across Spain's broader dining scene, Vivanda operates at a different register from destination restaurants like El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Arzak in San Sebastián, or Azurmendi in Larrabetzu , all of which require dedicated trip planning. Vivanda is a neighbourhood restaurant that happens to have earned national-level recognition. That positioning is the point. Book it for what it is: a confident, credential-backed Catalan kitchen in a residential setting, at a price that makes the decision easy.
Explore more: Barcelona restaurants | Barcelona hotels | Barcelona bars | Barcelona wineries | Barcelona experiences
| Venue | Cuisine | Price | Booking Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vivanda | Catalan, Traditional Cuisine | €€ | Easy |
| Cocina Hermanos Torres | Creative | €€€€ | Unknown |
| Disfrutar | Progressive, Creative | €€€€ | Unknown |
| Lasarte | Progressive Spanish, Creative | €€€€ | Unknown |
| Cinc Sentits | Modern Spanish, Creative | €€€€ | Unknown |
| Enoteca Paco Pérez | Modern Spanish, Modern Cuisine | €€€€ | Unknown |
A quick look at how Vivanda measures up.
Yes. The high tables for tapas format suits solo diners well — you can order a few platillos and eat at your own pace without the awkwardness of a full table-service setting. At €€ pricing with a Michelin Bib Gourmand behind it, Vivanda is one of the lower-friction solo options among Barcelona's credentialed restaurants. Arrive at lunch Tuesday through Sunday for the easiest seat.
Lunch is the stronger call for most visitors. The terrace is most appealing in daylight, Sunday lunch is the only option if you want to visit on that day, and the 1:00–3:30 pm window fits naturally into a Sarrià afternoon. Dinner runs Tuesday through Saturday until 10:00 pm and suits those staying in the area — but if you're coming in from central Barcelona, lunch makes the trip easier to build around.
The database does not document specific dietary accommodation policies. That said, the kitchen works with market-fresh ingredients across a small-plates format, which typically gives more flexibility than a fixed tasting menu. check the venue's official channels before booking if restrictions are a factor — the address is Carrer Major de Sarrià, 134.
Vivanda is a Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant in Sarrià, the residential quarter of Barcelona that sits away from the tourist centre — factor in travel time. The format mixes high tables for tapas, standard dining tables, and a tree-shaded terrace with a retractable roof. It is closed Mondays, Sunday is lunch-only, and at €€ pricing it is one of the more accessible credentialed addresses in the city.
Vivanda has high tables designated for tapas, which function as the informal counter-style option within the room. This is the closest equivalent to bar dining here. It suits shorter visits and solo diners looking to order a few platillos rather than committing to a full sit-down meal.
The room includes a mix of high tapas tables and restaurant-style dining tables, plus the terrace — so the layout can handle small groups, but there is no documentation of a private dining room in the venue record. For groups larger than four, check the venue's official channels to confirm table configuration and any advance booking requirements.
The ham croquettes and the steak tartare are specifically called out as dishes to order. Beyond those, the kitchen rotates 'dishes of the month' designed to revive traditional Catalan flavours, so the menu shifts with the season. The Bib Gourmand recognition — held in both 2024 and 2025 — reflects consistent quality across the whole offering, not just one or two headline dishes.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
