Oh show me the way to the next gin tonic bar

Funny how these things happen. You stumble across a bar that makes some really fine Gin and Tonics - and hey presto you pick up the paper the next day and there it is in a feature about the city's best G&T bars.

The G&T here is many miles away from the colonel's pre-dinner tastebud killer that it is in Britain, where it tends to be served with miniature ice cubes and a translucent and tiny slice of lemon in a dainty shot glass.

Here, quite rightly, it's a hearty post-dinner cocktail designed to get the conversational juices flowing. Take a big brandy style schooner, throw in four large chunky ice cubes and pour over a large helping of gin without the aid of a measure. Then get the flavour in - plenty of lime, cucumber, lemon or mint depending where you are.

At the xixbar where we were last night, it was cucumber in the glass and lime wiped round the rim.

The xix incidentally formed the endpoint to a delightful evening that covered all the bases within a few hundred yards on Calle Tamarit. Start out at the minuscule Casa Jacinta at 154 for a vermouth and anchovies. Then a full dinner of amazing tapas at Albert Adria's Inopia (104) and then across the road to xix (actually at Rocafort 19, but who's counting?).

Other G&T bars on the La Vanguardia list today, none of which have been tried (yet):

• Dacksy (Consell de Cent 247)
• Coppelia (Rera Palau 4)
• Snooker (Roger de Lluria 42)
• Shenu (Londres 91)

To which I'd add the Ideal (Aribau 89)