When writer and filmmaker Robin Willis sat down for lunch at Bar Pinotxo in Barcelona’s famous Mercat de la Boqueria, he wasn’t expecting to be cooking behind the bar the next day.

“Bar Pinotxo is this tiny restaurant in the famous Boqueria market that is world renowned as a good place to go,” Willis said. “I went there for lunch one day, and one of the things they were serving was baby squid in pinto beans.”

Willis, an “adoptive Barcelonian,” who occasionally spends time in Portland, had picked up some of the Catalan language spoken in Barcelona and, to the surprise of those working behind the bar, blurted out the name of the dish in Catalan: “calamarsets amb fesols de Santa Pau.”

“They were surprised that I could speak Catalan,” Willis said. “Then, Jordi (one of the owners) came out and said, ‘You come tomorrow at six, and I’ll show you how to cook this stuff.’”

The next morning, Willis was cooking garbanzo beans and going on hunts for morcilla (blood sausage) with the world-famous cooks at Bar Pinotxo, who have fed visitors for 85 years.

“It became a friendship,” he said. “Then later, it became a book.”

Willis’ book, “Bar Pinotxo: God is in the Garbanzos,” released in 2016, details his friendship with the family who owned the bar and includes their most famous recipes. Now, he is bringing the taste of Bar Pinotxo to Port Townsend.

Willis will host a cooking class and lunch at 12:30 p.m. March 10 in Port Townsend. The details will be revealed to people who buy tickets, Willis said. Everyone who attends will help prepare a meal that will be shared together.

“In Spain, Sunday lunch is a big thing with families,” Willis said. “They start cooking around 12, start eating around 2, and then they can chat away as long as it goes, which can be to 6 or to midnight.”

The class will begin at 12:30 p.m., and lunch will start about 2 p.m., Willis said.

“The recipes from the bar are simple in terms of how they’re prepared,” said Sasha Kaplan, a Port Townsend caterer who tested recipes for Willis’ book. “There’s not a huge number of ingredients. But they’ve got flavor. They’re not wimpy.”

Kaplan is helping Willis organize the class by sourcing local ingredients for the Catalan dishes.

Some ingredients might be difficult to find, such as nyora peppers, while others might be near impossible to find, such as baby squid.

But Willis, who spent summers in Port Townsend when he was a kid, is hoping to find local ingredients that will add a Pacific Northwest taste to the dishes.  

“Vacationing in Discovery Bay was one of my earliest memories of cooking, actually,” Willis said. “My dad and I would get clams together and cook them.”

Willis’ book explores his relationship with cooking and living in Barcelona. It also tells the unique history of the family who owns Bar Pinotxo, starting with Catarina, who bought the bar, to Catarina’s kids, grandkids, great nieces and great nephews who run the bar today.

“This is a bar that, sure, tourists come to, but fishermen come there and eat their breakfast,” Kaplan said. “You start reading these stories about another culture, and it expands your world. There’s life beyond straight meat and potatoes.”

Willis will discuss the book, the stories and the people during the cooking class.

“We’ll learn as we go. Everyone will have something to do,” he said. “Spanish cooking is really simple stuff and really participatory. That’s half the fun of the Sunday lunches, is cooking everything together.”