There is another cameo: El Quinto Pino’s very fine combination of pink-fleshed anchovies with cold vanilla butter. The butter soothes the anchovies the way the vermouth in a martini helps the gin settle down. (On a related topic, the short cocktail list includes a deceptively soft-spoken number called the Kanpai Martini. It’s a variation on the Vesper, which itself is the amended martini that Ian Fleming had James Bond order in “Casino Royale.”)

At times Saint Julivert reminds me of Cal Pep, in Barcelona, Spain, whose plain, cramped counter looks like the last place in the world where you are going to have an epiphany of the taste buds, right up until the moment the txipirones and thumbtack-size clams knock you off your barstool. Like Cal Pep, and unlike nearly every other New York restaurant, Saint Julivert serves gooseneck barnacles when they’re available, boiling them with bay leaves and salt and mounding them on a cloth napkin before they cool so that when you twist the wrinkled sheath of skin away from the sweet, edible meat inside there is a good chance somebody in the vicinity will get hit with a squirt of hot barnacle juice.

Mostly, though, any Spanish-ness in Saint Julivert has more to do with its spirit than its recipes, which come from all over: the deep-fried Puerto Rican cylinders of cornmeal known as sorrullitos; a kanpachi collar whose juicy meat is shockingly white under a black rub of jerk spices; tender slices of warm beef tenderloin on a fist-size roll, known in Portugal as a prego sandwich.

There is also the crispy tuna bake, a peculiarly satisfying hybrid that crosses a tuna noodle casserole by way of India with fideuà, the Spanish dish that treats pasta like the rice in paella. The noodles, short ridged tubes, are toasted and cooked with oil-cured tuna in a tomato sauce that is seasoned with turmeric and curry leaves. It is one of the most fearless, not to mention filling, dishes on a menu that could use a little more of both qualities.