Restaurant: Mian
Location: Carrer de Girona, 49, 08009 Barcelona
Date: June 12, 2016
Cuisine: Chinese
Rating: Tolerable Chinese
On this Sunday night we didn’t have a prearranged reservation and so did a quick internet search not long before. Having had a bunch of straight Spanish food we picked a place that appealed to be “Asian influenced tapas.”
Mian turned out to be more or less straight up Chinese food with portion sizes adjusted for the Spanish market. But my loyal readers know, I’m a fan of Chinese food so let’s see how this Barcelona version stacked up.
Fairly modern interior.
The menu.
We ordered this rose, which turned out to pair well.
Seaweed salad.
Curried shrimp rolls. These springroll like things were one of the better appetizers. Hot and fried, they had a nice mild curry flavor.
Xiangsu battered ribs. Little pork riblets deeply fried. VERY fried, and with lots of gristle and bone. tasted pretty good though.
XLB. The classic pork dumplings. Coating was way too heavy and the filling had very little flavor.
Shrimp dumplings. Better than the pork, but still not amazing.
Vegetable Noodles. Sort of a lo-mein. Passable.
Beef noodle soup.
Vegetable fried rice. Ok.
Shrimp noodle soup.
Garlic eggplant. A mushy somewhat mediocre version of this dish. Not that garlicky or spicy. Not horrible or anything, but nowhere near a great version — and I’ve had some great versions.
Crispy noodles with seafood. Edible, but not like the amazing Elite Seafood version.
Mapo tofu. MSG laden non spicy version of this classic. If I’m going to take the MSG hit, I’ll go for it like this. Or make it myself.
Sir fried chicken. Simple, but one of the more effective dishes.
Beef with scallions. Soft and tasty meat. Pretty good.
Duck Conbao. Not bad, not great.
Egg fried rice. Is what it is.
So Mian ended up being a middling Chinese place — kind of like Westside Chinese with slightly smaller portions. Prices were reasonable and it was fun enough, but they used lots of MSG and I had a big headache an hour latter. So, since I’m spoiled with great Chinese it was just acceptable — because Chinese is rarely so bad as to be awful.