Bar Granja vs. the Brooklyn Bodega

Now that it’s September, our corner store is finally open.  Living in New York City, we are conditioned to be able to run to the corner and easily pick up a loaf of bread, eggs, beautiful flowers, or the one ingredient we are missing for dinner.  So I was relieved to find that the corner store exists in Barcelona, too. 

Here, they are called “Bar Granja” and they are all over the place. When it was closed in August, I figured it was a watering hole.  But it’s not.  I don’t know what “bar” means, because it does not serve alcohol.  “Granja” means farm in Spanish, and that gets closer to the root of the matter. 

At a bar granja, you can not only pick up key necessaries, like you can in New York, but also stop in for a light breakfast or snack.  The sign on our BG door advertizes desayunos (breakfasts) and meriendas.  A merienda is an afternoon snack and snack is one of my two favorite words in the English language, the other being “lunch.”

We can speak Spanish at our Brooklyn bodega; the kids know Don Pablo, who seems to be there all the time, pretty well at this point.

But here’s the difference:  “key necessaries” translates somewhat differently in Barcelona than it does in Brooklyn.  At my corner bodega, I can purchase any flavor of Haagen Dazs and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, at least 15 varieties of cereal, a dozen kinds of tea not including Lipton, a rainbow-colored variety of sports drinks, and lottery tickets.

The Bar Granja, too, sells bread, milk, and candy.  But despite its smaller footprint, the BG carries a number of items I’ve never seen in my local bodega.

Here are some things you can purchase at my corner BG:

·      A wide assortment of canned seafood, including sardines and clams

·      A decent bottle of wine

·      Bottled lentils, chickpeas and white beans

·      Cured meats and other charcuterie items

·      Several kinds of olives

·      A sit-down breakfast

But the biggest difference between the BB and the BG has to do with the “when,” not the “what.”  Whereas the bodega is open 24/7, the bar granja is a bit less available, and predictable.  Ours seems to be open in the mornings, but closed for a few hours in the afternoon, then open again for a few hours between maybe 5 and 8.

So I guess in the final analysis, the BB wins for utility, but I do like the personal connection we have at the BG.