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Sant Antoni sits at the bottom corner of the Eixample grid, pressed up against Poble Sec and the old city. For most of the last century it was unremarkable: a working neighborhood built around a big iron market hall, with bodegas serving the people who worked there.
Then the market closed for renovation, stayed closed for the better part of a decade, and the streets around it quietly turned into the best eating in Barcelona that no visitor had heard of. The market reopened in 2018. Carrer del Parlament, two blocks south, became the city's brunch and vermouth corridor. And a neighborhood that had never seen a tour group started getting a handful of very good ones.
Two are worth your money. Here they are, with what they cost as of this week.
| Tour | Duration | Group | Rating | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tapas Like a Local: Sant Antoni | 2.5 hrs | Max 8 | ★ 4.9 (101) | €99 |
| Sant Antoni Market & Fork Breakfast | 2.5 hrs | Small group | ★ 5.0 (3) | €95 |
Prices checked 13 August 2026. Operators adjust seasonally, so August and September rates sit above the winter floor.
The short answer:Book Tapas Like a Local. It is the only tour on this list that stays inside Sant Antoni for its full length, it caps at eight people, and it is run by Devour, the most consistent food tour operator in the city. The other two are good, but both spend half their time somewhere else.
An honest word before you book
Sant Antoni has fewer bookable food tours than almost any neighborhood of comparable quality in Barcelona, and the list churns. Two well-reviewed Sant Antoni tours have come off the market in the past year alone: a Sant Antoni and Poble Sec walk that ran for years, and a two-market tour pairing it with La Boqueria. Both are gone or unbookable as of this week.
The reason is structural. Sant Antoni is residential. The bars are small, the margins are thin, and an operator can run a higher-volume tour three Metro stops away in the old city with less effort. So the tours that survive here tend to be run by people who chose the neighborhood deliberately, and there are not many of them.
That is the case for going, not against it. But it does mean you should book earlier than you would elsewhere, and it means this page is short by necessity rather than by omission.
What Sant Antoni actually is
Administratively, Sant Antoni is a neighborhood of the Eixample district, so if you have read our guide to Eixample food tours you have already met its bigger, grander sibling. In practice nobody in Barcelona thinks of them as the same place. Eixample proper means Passeig de Gràcia, modernista apartment blocks and the Sagrada Família. Sant Antoni means a market, a lot of bodegas, and rents that were affordable until recently.
The neighborhood runs roughly from Ronda de Sant Antoni down to Avinguda del Paral·lel, with the market at its centre. It is small enough to cross on foot in fifteen minutes, which matters, because the long-block problem that makes an Eixample food tour a route march does not apply here.
The market
Mercat de Sant Antoni is a nineteenth-century iron hall, and the renovation that closed it for years turned up a stretch of the medieval city wall underneath, now visible below the building. It is a working produce market rather than a tourist attraction, which is precisely the difference between it and La Boqueria. Nobody is selling you a two-euro fruit smoothie in a plastic cup.
On Sundays the surrounding streets fill with the old book and collectors' market, which has run in some form since the 1930s.
Esmorzar de forquilla
The Sant Antoni speciality worth planning around is the esmorzar de forquilla, the Catalan "fork breakfast". This is a full plated meal eaten mid-morning, historically by market porters and labourers who had already done four hours of work: botifarra, beans, tripe, grilled cuttlefish, and a glass of wine, at ten in the morning.
Very few visitors ever encounter it, partly because the timing sounds implausible and partly because the bars that serve it look like nothing. If a tour offers it, that is a strong signal the operator knows the neighborhood.
The two tours, ranked
1. Tapas Like a Local: Sant Antoni Neighborhood Tapas Tour
From €99 · 2.5 hours · Max 8 people · ★ 4.9 (101 reviews)
The clear pick, and the only one here that treats Sant Antoni as a destination rather than a stop. Run by Devour Barcelona, who also operate two of the tours in our citywide ranking, so this is a known quantity rather than a gamble on an unfamiliar operator.
Five stops in two and a half hours, all within a few blocks: a family-run bodega, a cellar where wine still comes out of the barrel the way locals refill bottles from home, a modern bodega for cava and three tapas, a craft brewery with an artisan sandwich, and a final dessert stop. Six drinks are included, which is generous, and the food is explicitly enough to count as dinner. You pass the market exterior and the medieval wall on the walk between stops.
The cap of eight is the other reason to book it. Sant Antoni bars are small, and a group of twenty in one of them stops being a tapas tour and becomes an inconvenience for everyone already drinking there.
Best for: Anyone who wants the neighborhood itself rather than a greatest-hits circuit. Couples, solo travelers, repeat visitors to Barcelona.
Skip if: You're vegan. The operator can handle vegetarian, pescatarian and gluten-free with notice, but says plainly that vegans will have a thin time of it. Also not wheelchair accessible.
2. Sant Antoni Market Tour with Catalan Fork Breakfast
From €95 · 2.5 hours · Small group · ★ 5.0 (3 reviews)
The one that goes after the thing this neighborhood is actually famous for. It starts outside Els Tres Tombs on Ronda de Sant Antoni, walks the market stalls to see what locals are buying, then sits down to a proper esmorzar de forquilla.
And they do not soften it for visitors. The fork breakfast here runs to pork trotters, salt cod, snails and callos, eaten mid-morning the way market porters have eaten it for a century. That is either exactly what you came for or completely not, and the listing is refreshingly upfront about which.
Run by Barcelona Born & Bred, a two-person outfit rather than a tour company. Eli is Barcelona-born with fifteen years guiding; Libor handles the bookings and also guides. Reviews name them individually, which is usually the mark of an operator who actually shows up.
Be aware: only three reviews on Viator, though they average 5.0 and the same tour holds 5.0 from seven reviews on other platforms. That is a real operator with a thin booking record on this particular channel, not a red flag, but it is a smaller sample than the tour above.
Best for: Repeat visitors to Barcelona. Anyone who wants the market rather than the bars. Morning people.
Skip if: Offal at ten in the morning is not your idea of a holiday, or you want an evening tour.
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Quick decision: which one to book
- Want an evening in the neighborhood's bars? Book #1 (Tapas Like a Local). Five stops, eight people, all inside Sant Antoni.
- Want the market and the tradition? Book #2 (Market & Fork Breakfast). Mid-morning, and genuinely unusual.
Going without a tour
Sant Antoni is one of the easier Barcelona neighborhoods to do unguided, because the density is high and the walk is short. If you'd rather not book anything:
Go on a Sunday morning for the book market around the hall, then eat at one of the bars on the market's perimeter.
Walk Carrer del Parlament end to end. It is four blocks long and contains most of the neighborhood's newer vermouth bars and brunch places. Busy from noon on weekends.
Order vermut de grifo, from the tap rather than the bottle, with an olive and a slice of orange. It arrives sweeter than you expect. Our guide to ordering in Spanish covers the phrasing.
Try the fork breakfast if you can get up for it. Ask for the esmorzar de forquilla at a market-adjacent bar before eleven.
The bigger picture
Sant Antoni is the fourth Barcelona neighborhood we've covered in depth, after the Gothic Quarter, El Born and Eixample. If you're deciding between them: the Gothic Quarter has the deepest history, El Born the best modern cooking, Eixample the grandest setting, and Sant Antoni the fewest other tourists.
For the citywide view across all neighborhoods, see our ranking of the 9 best food tours in Barcelona, and for what to actually order once you're in front of a menu, our 15 dishes worth prioritizing.