Carrer de Blai is the reason food-minded visitors trek out to Poble-sec. This short pedestrian street is lined almost end to end with pintxo bars, the Basque-style snack joints where small bites come skewered on slices of bread and laid out along the counter for the taking. You grab a plate, help yourself, and pay at the end by the number of toothpicks left behind — most skewers cost a euro or two, washed down with a small beer or a glass of vermouth.
The crowd is young and local, the atmosphere loud and convivial, and on warm evenings the whole street fills as drinkers spill out of one bar and into the next. It is best treated as a crawl rather than a sit-down dinner: start at one end, eat three or four pintxos, move on. Places like Blai 9 and La Tasqueta de Blai are perennial favourites, but the joy is in grazing your way down the whole strip.