By Laura Morris
When people think about life in Catalonia, they often think first of Barcelona.
And honestly, who can blame them? Barcelona is beautiful, chaotic, stylish, infuriating and brilliant in equal measure. It gives a lot – culture, food, sea, architecture, ideas – but it also gives that strange urban tiredness that comes from being surrounded by thousands of people and somehow still feeling disconnected.
It took a while, but I found another Catalonia. A quieter, wilder one that doesn’t particularly care whether you have found it yet or not! It’s not the coast, or Girona but the almost unknown region of Pallars Jussà.
A couple of hours from Barcelona, in the pre-Pyrenees, Pallars is a region of cliffs, lakes, old villages, dark skies, mountain roads, vineyards, olive groves, wild herbs, serious geology and bloody good cheese. There are no polished tourism vibes here, or an oversubscribed list of things to tick off. It is a place that simply asks you to slow down enough to notice it.
I ended up here in the slightly ridiculous way many expat stories begin: with a dream, a building, a dangerous amount of optimism a good mortgage broker and no full understanding of where it would all take me.
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I bought and began restoring Fox House, a medieval garrison, dangerously perched on the edge of a cliff in Santa Engràcia. The house is over a thousand years old, built into the rock, with views across a landscape that looks like it was designed by someone with a flair for drama.
When I first arrived, I thought I was restoring a building. In reality, the building was restoring me. Through a winding 10 year journey this once ruin became a rural guest house and my home, and on the way I met my now husband Karl!
Our home is nothing short of a picture postcard. But living here has taught us that the landscape is more than scenery. It is a true living system. The food, the people, the language, the weather, the producers, the festivals, the land, the bureaucracy – all of it is connected. Sometimes beautifully. Sometimes maddeningly. Often both before breakfast.
Running this magical space has also taught us something important about hospitality in rural locations. It is not good enough to build a beautiful place as an escape to the endless 5* soulless spaces you once travelled to for work – you need to create a meaningful exchange, and give visitors a deeper experience, whether they’re here with friends, family or a small work gathering – it matters to them, and to the people who live and work here all year round.
That idea has become central to Fox House. It is more than a casa rural. It is a place for people to gather, eat, think, reconnect and experience this extraordinary corner of Catalonia properly.
Food as the way into a place
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You can read guides, scroll Instagram, visit monuments and take photos of mountain views, but sit at a table with wine, bread, olive oil, cheese, honey, meat, herbs, salt and vegetables grown nearby -and suddenly the place feels different.
Pallars has an incredible food culture, but it is not always obvious from the outside. This is a vast region, and many of its best producers are hidden in small villages, up steep hills and along extreme winding roads, working quietly and brilliantly. You would struggle to find them even if you knew they were there.
There are cheesemakers, winemakers, bakers, butchers, olive oil producers, beekeepers, growers, cooks and craftspeople whose work tells the story of this landscape better than any marketing campaign ever could.
That was our starting point for TASTE, our seasonal gastronomic series at Fox House. It is an intimate food and wine weekend built around the land, the producers, the chefs and the season. Each edition explores Pallars through what is growing, being made, cooked, poured and shared at that moment in the year.
It is not a restaurant weekend , not a retreat and certainly not a normal hotel stay with dinner included.
It is something more immersive: a mountain-framed encounter with a part of Catalonia many people have never experienced.
What actually happens at TASTE?
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The format is deliberately small. We have 9 rooms, so that’s a maximum of 18 guests . It means people actually speak to each other. Dinners feel generous and alive rather than anonymous. The chefs work in the open kitchen and interact with the guests. The atmosphere is amazing.
Guests arrive on Friday and settle in slowly. There is time to breathe, look out at the mountains, have a glass of wine, meet the other guests and let the week fall away. Over the weekend, we gather around seasonal meals, local wines, producer stories and shared tables. We have digital maps to guide you if you want to venture out, and wine tasting at local bodegas for those who want to see the makers in person!
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The food is led by brilliant, Michelin recognised local chefs Jamie and Claudia, and built around hyper seasonal KM0 produce. Our suppliers are an integral part of the story. The point is not just to eat something delicious (although that definitely helps) but to understand where it came from, who made it, and why it tastes the way it does here.
For our first edition in February, the theme was Love: warmth, depth, fire…the kind of food you want when the mountains are cold and the house is glowing. The next edition, from 5–7 June 2026, is built around the theme of Renewal.
The landscape changes colour. The evenings stretch out. The herbs, vines and fields are alive. It is the perfect moment for a mid year refresh – not in a fluffy “reflect and find a new you” way, but in a more honest sense of the word. Returning to energy. Reconnecting with appetite. Remembering what it feels like to be properly present.
A different kind of escape from Barcelona
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For people living in Barcelona, the temptation is often to escape to the coast – beautiful and easy to get to. But there is something very different about heading inland and up above the clouds.
The journey itself changes the mood. The roads widen, then narrow. The city falls away. The landscape becomes stranger, older, more cinematic. By the time you reach the us, you are no longer in the same world you left behind.
That is part of the point.
So much of modern life is frictionless but strangely unsatisfying. We can book quickly, eat quickly, travel quickly, photograph quickly and move on quickly.
TASTE is designed as an antidote to that.
It is for people who want beauty without the performance. Good food, without pretension. Comfort, with soul. A weekend away with a sense of meaning. It is for people who love the city but occasionally need the contrast and perspective of places that breathe differently.
It is also for those of us who live here as foreigners and want to understand the place more deeply. Many expats build a life in the city without ever really connecting to life outside in a meaningful way.
Believe me, the reward for making the journey is huge. You will see the country differently. You begin to taste it differently too.
Why this matters
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There is a lot of talk now about sustainable tourism, slow travel and regenerative models. Some of it is meaningful. Some of it is just nice language sprinkled over the same old extractive nonsense – the world over.
For us, this form of generating experiential tourism is our way to make it work for more than the visitor. It’s the best way to support local producers, respect the landscape, extend the season, create reasons for people to spend money with small businesses, and attract guests who understand that a place like this is not a commodity – in either direction.
This is the kind of tourism we believe in. Food that has not travelled unnecessarily, wine from nearby vineyards, bread from the local baker, olive oil from the region, stories told by people who know the land, and a table full of guests who have slowed down enough to enjoy it all.
Small scale. High quality. Deeply local. Human.
And with bloody excellent wine.
Come and taste Pallars
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The next edition of TASTE takes place at Fox House from 5–7 June 2026. The theme is Renewal, and the weekend includes seasonal menus, local wines, long-table dining, producer-led storytelling, a wine tasting, mountain views, slow mornings and the particular magic that happens when people gather in an old house in a tiny village and let the outside world go quiet for a while.
Come and let Pallars surprise you.
If you are tired, curious, hungry, over-Zoomed, under-inspired or simply in need of a weekend that feels like more than a change of scenery, we would love to welcome you.
You don’t need to go away for the weekend – you just need to arrive somewhere properly.
For more information including options for transfers from the city – contact us:
Website: www.foxhouselife.com/taste-pallars
Instagram: @forkthemainstream @foxhouselife
