About a year ago I came across this pseudo-mythical creature on Gordon Ramsay’s F Word. He was hunting for it somewhere oceanic and in the process commenting on the rarity and exclusivity of this thing. Always a very keen eater of bizarre food, I got SO excited but gave up my hope as this thing called “goose barnacles” are nowhere to be found in the UK.
What are goose barnacles? Legend has it–or perhaps confuses it–that goose barnacles are young barnacle geese. Now, you fancy seeing what they look like, don’t you?
BARNACLE GOOSE?
GOOSE BARNACLES?
LET’S SEE THEM AGAIN …..
GOOSE BARNACLES???????
BARNACLE GOOSE??????????
Your sight hasn’t just failed you. Some Welsh monk in the Middle Ages claimed he saw the goose barnacles transform into barnacle geese. WTF??
Never mind. So, what’re actually goose barnacles?
They are a type of crustaceans–in an easy term “shellfish”–that cling themselves onto oceanic rocks and cliffs and rely on the raging motion of the waves for feeding. They are rare and very expensive because they cannot be easily harvested. Men–I don’t mean to be sexist–risk their lives repelling themselves unto the cliffs and the waves and have seconds to extract these goose barnacles from the rocks. Plus, you can only find them near oceans, say France–where they were called pousse-pieds–Portugal and Spain–where they called Percebes.
What’s more, ones of the best goose barnacles are harvested in Galicia, northern Spanish coast!?
SWEEEEETTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!
That’s very close to Barcelona 
At La Boqueria, Barcelona’s amazing market, I saw these visions of goose barnacles.
This …
THIS ….
THESE ………
OMFG!!! They were not visions. THEY ARE SO RREEAALL!!!! They were rather common stuff in Barcelona but how could I get the cooked ones? Also, these were not the Galicia ones. The ones from Galicia ones are called Percebes Gallecs and I was in utmost desperation shouting at La Boqueria,
WHERE COULD I F**KING EAT THEM!!!!?????
Gastronomic despair somehow activated my brain. The first thought that came to my mind was, I might as well find somebody to cook them for me! I ran back to the hotel, scribbled something down a piece of paper, hopped down to the concierge and asked for it to be translated!
There it was …
And there it read in English:
“If I buy the goose barnacles, could you please cook them for us? Just boil them a couple of minutes in salted water”.
As for my back-up plan, in case the Spaniards didn’t cook them for me, I showed the concierge guy this photo of the Galician goose barnacles and asked which restaurant served the goose barnacles.
About €59 per kilo, that wasn’t too bad, I thought.
The concierge guy didn’t know but ….
He took my phone to the hotel’s kitchen and showed my photos to the chefs in case they might know.
5***** Star Service, wasn’t it?
He came back, after leaving me getting frustrated for five-or-so minutes, with two of the restaurants that did goose barnacles.
Back to the room and licking my lips, I rechecked the restaurants’ websites to make sure if the goose barnacles on the menu. One of them didn’t; the other did. As if a natural step, I picked up my phone, called the goose barnacle restaurant for a table.
I got it….
And I will be blogging my trip to this goose barnacle place, how the thing actually looks or tastes like very, very soon
PS I take the picture of the Barnacle Goose from the BBC website I really like. They write fantastic stuff about animals and bird-watching. Thank you, BBC xxx
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