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Beloved Catalan restaurateur Lluis Crua帽as once told the Los Angeles Times, 鈥淚n Catalunya, the first thing you taste after the baby bottle is pa amb tomaquet.鈥� Which frankly makes me wonder why, when my son was a baby, I bothered pur茅eing so much squash and sweet potato 鈥� he could have spent a more epicurean infancy gumming his way through tomato-topped sourdough baguettes. I will add this to my list of regrets, along with the one about why I don鈥檛 currently live in Barcelona.

Upon travelling to the city with my family this summer, I decided to embark on a sort of pa amb tomaquet safari in the overripe heat of mid-August, the air itself pulpy, almost fleshy in its humidity.

I first visited Barcelona 20 years ago and fell fast and hard for the city 鈥� its refinement and whimsy, its broad avenues decorated with plane trees and palms, its seductive mix of languor and intensity.

But memories of my time there come back to me less in moments than in flavours: boquerones (pickled fresh anchovies) and salt-cured Cantabrian anchovies reclining on pan con tomate. I am, as if it鈥檚 not already obvious, a passionate member of the pro-鈥檆hovy community 鈥� I love their assertiveness, their humility, and how well they can hold their own against a chili flake.

I begin my quest almost as soon as we check into the boutique hotel , all elegance and polish, ideally situated in the Eixample neighbourhood, steps away from the Passeig de Gr脿cia 鈥� the Champs 脡lys茅es of Barcelona.

The hotel鈥檚 Virens restaurant is helmed by Rodrigo de la Calle, noted for his Michelin-starred Madrid restaurant, . A pioneer of so-called 鈥済astrobotanica,鈥� he casts vegetables as the 鈥減rotagonists鈥� of his artful plates.

I stay on theme and order the tomato salad, starring seven different varietals, each one tasting like every tomato the world over aspires to taste. I sample Virens鈥� pan con tomate, elevated by bread baked on-site and olive oil hailing from de la Calle鈥檚 family farm in Ja茅n. The Andalusian oil seems as close as you can get to tasting Spanish sunshine spilling over olive groves.

About his feelings for pan con tomate, de la Calle reminisces as though he were penning a memoir: 鈥淚t was the summer of 1982, August, mid-afternoon. We were coming from bathing in the Guadalquivir, in my beloved J谩en, where I grew up surrounded by nature. My father called us to have a snack; he was picking tomatoes from the garden in front of our house,鈥� he writes to me, after my trip.

鈥淗e took a bag of ripe tomatoes; we went with him to the kitchen, and in a bowl, I watched the tomato pieces fall, the juice they released, and if that wasn鈥檛 enough, without any measure, my father added a generous splash of Puerta de Las Villas olive oil and a good handful of salt.鈥� The snack is to locals what the madeleine was to Proust.

In search of my own tomato-based core memory, we head to the Passeig de Gr脿cia, the summer heat as wavy and undulant as a Gaudi masterwork. The architect鈥檚 appears on the boulevard, as if from a fever dream 鈥� or heat stroke, as it were 鈥� its blue-green, broken-tile-mosaic-lined roof shimmering like a mermaid tail in melting Spanish sunshine.

But the Passeig de Gr脿cia is made for strolling, not snacking. So, we continue onward to the El Born neighbourhood, its narrow pedestrian streets packed 鈥� like, well, anchovies in a tin 鈥� with tapas bars. Hunger compels us to pop into the first one with an available table.

We promptly order a pan con tomate, and are then promptly disappointed as undertoasted bread arrives with a miserly rub of anemic tomatoes and table salt. Life delivers more painful letdowns than a mediocre tomato, but I couldn鈥檛 think of what they might be in that moment.

We push on from the misstep. For recommendations, I launch a poll 鈥� surveying waiters, hotel concierges, a local food guide 鈥� which points us to El Xampanyet. Founded in 1929, this old-world, blue-tiled bar is packed with ham legs and happy clatter, the whole place summoning the festive energy of popping corks (El Xampanyet is named after the house-made cava). Packed is not just a turn of phrase: there is not a free marble table here for the foreseeable future.

Similarly, the chic also comes with accolades and the queues to match, its crowds spilling out like Jerez from a bottle. Pan con tomate here is served as a prologue to a toothsome feast: mussel and clam stew, fried anchovies, and a made-to-order Spanish tortilla with a masterful ooze quotient oft cited as the best in Barcelona.

We wander into the stonewalled La Tinaja on a pedestrianized streetlet. The restaurant 鈥� which feels like it could have made a cameo in an Almod贸var film, with its warmth and red-lipsticked patrons 鈥� is lined with earthenware jugs and bottles of Spanish wine. The atmosphere is somehow both romantic and familial; diners include toddlers who swap their pacifiers to chew at razor clams and platters of hand-cut jam贸n Serrano.

Order the excellent pan con tomate at La Tinaja, and you鈥檒l be presented with the ingredients: plump cloves of garlic, toaster-bronzed bread and ripe tomaquets de penjar 鈥� hanging tomatoes, their thick skins and high juice content making them choice for this dish. The mise-en-place ensures that not a second of freshness is compromised by the transit from counter to terracotta plate.

My quest begins to feel increasingly absurd as quests go. 鈥淒o you know pan con tomate?鈥� I ask my taxista in the crumbs of Spanish coming back to me from my university days. She responds with something along the lines of 鈥淒uh?鈥� as if I鈥檇 just asked her if she knew her own name.

When I continue to detail my search for the finest tomato bread in Barcelona, she reacts as though I鈥檇 announced my plans to write about the city鈥檚 best glass of water. The best, she says, is found at her own kitchen table.

Accommodation was provided to Olivia Stren by Almanac Barcelona, which did not review or approve this article.