Vintages is a small restaurant in the Old City (Barri Vell) of Girona, almost opposite to Cal Ros. It has an attractive front door decoration, which was what attracted my attention in the first place, with postcards and Tiffany lamps. The menu that it shows is of nothing extraordinary, but I decided to give it a try. The only problem was that every time when I planned to go it was close. Eventually I got lucky. As I was told later, it is close only on Monday. The web address that is printed on the card is not correct (www.vintages.es) and I have not been able to locate another one.
The decoration inside is plain and subdue, with shelves that display different types of alcohol, since its most famous feature is it's wine bar. Menu is written in chalk on a board hang high on the wall on top of the door, light is faint, and on the right hand side is the wine cellar. Wine selection is indeed great.
Space is limited and the room is elongated. It is more of a bar setting where one meets friends and chats over a bottle of wine.
We had an Amarone from Speri 2001. It was treated with respect and the first time that both of us were offered to taste the wine.
As for food, the dishes that we tried were all right and carefully presented. For first I had octopus au gratin, which turned out to be a bit too heavy and the taste of the octopus was overwhelmed by the cheese and cream. It filled me up before I tried the second.
Another first dish that we tried was pickled bonito, this one was delicious; the fish was very tasty and the serving quite abundant.
For the second dish I ordered tripes with chickpeas. I knew it was not a wise decision, such traditional robust dish has to be eaten in a wet market, for example, or a dive.
I proved to make all the wrong choices that evening! The other dish was fantastic, lamb with spices, the taste of which was picked up by the mixture of spices. It was delightful.
Not to be unfair I am not going to mention desserts. Though I have the photos I quite forgot what they were and I was at that stage too full to appreciate too much. We were offered a liqueur on the house at the end.
Service was fast and the waiter was friendly. There was only one person serving and from what he said, it seemed that he was the cook also. As said, it is a good and informal place where one goes to taste the wine and has something to eat, in that order of importance.
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