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The history of the disappeared Café Restaurante Suizo begins shortly after 1850 with the construction of the Plaza Real in Barcelona, ??carried out by the architect Francisco Daniel Molina on the site of the convent of the Capuchin fathers of Santa Madrona, on the occasion of the confiscation of 1836.
It was when the Swiss citizen Mario Zanfa, in 1857, decided to install a Café at number 17 of the new Plaza Real. After renovating the premises with classic decoration, it opened its doors on November 1, 1857, All Saints’ Day.
Despite the notoriety that the establishment acquired, Mario Zanfa changed his activity and decided to sell the cafe in 1871 and abandon the hospitality sector.
He offered the premises to Maffioli and Starna (two Italian partners), owners since 1852 of the Fonda Falcon on Escudellers Street on the corner of Còdols. They had experience in the hospitality industry and wanted to expand their businesses in the area, so they acquired Café Suizo.
The place had initially opened its doors as a cafeteria, but Maffioli and Starna see that it has more possibilities and install a small kitchen to make sandwiches and simple dishes, which are well received by customers.
Given the acceptance, in 1886, they decided to reform the kitchen to be able to offer restaurant service. Thus, the new Swiss Café Restaurant was born, which not only triumphs but is known by customers as El Suizo.
Suddenly, more changes. In 1880, one of the premises behind the Swiss Restaurant located on Ramblas 40, decided to abandon its business and sold the premises. Maffioli and Starna study the possibility of combining the two establishments and decide to acquire it and expand the restaurant business.
With the expansion, the new establishment now has two entrance doors, one on Plaza Real 17 and another on Rambla del Centro 31. Thus, it will quickly acquire great prestige among regular customers and also among visitors to the city.
The restructuring allows them to create a reserved area on the mezzanine so that clients can hold family, business, private and even political meetings.
They found that politicians quickly took advantage of meals to socialize without being observed and hold work meetings.
Among those who visited its dining rooms the most were the Captain General of Catalonia, General Primo de Rivera; the regionalist politician Francesc Cambó, or the radical Alejandro Lerroux and the millionaire Juan March.
But it was not only the politicians who took over the booths, but also the wealthy families who organized their celebrations in an atmosphere of absolute privacy.
Among the intellectuals who frequented the local gatherings were Valentí Almirall, Pitarra, Conrad Roure, Santiago Rusiñol, Narcís Oller, Ferran Agulló and the chronicler Tomàs Caballé i Clos, who came to set up his usual place of work there.
During the years of editing the Renaixença newspaper, an intellectual war was established between the writers of the gathering, as they spent entire afternoons defending the syntax of the form of plural words.
While some were in favor of using them in “es”, others thought that the correct thing would be for them to end in “as”. This led to entire afternoons of off-color discussions. Finally, the supporters of the “as”, to avoid arguments, abandoned the gathering and moved to the Café Español.
In 1926, the place appears in a scene from the film La Malcasada, directed by Francisco Gómez Hidalgo and played by María Banquer and José Nieto, based on a true case, “the wedding of a Spanish lady with a Mexican bullfighter for interests”.
However, the evolution as a restaurant came from the hand of Miquel Matas i Jorba, a young man from Martorell who, in 1908, had started working as a counter assistant. His arrival in Barcelona had been motivated by having to leave the family farm because of the phylloxera plague that had ruined the family and had diverted his working life to the world of restoration.
Matas was working at the Lyon D’or and Mundial Palace, where he became maitre d’. In 1932, he consulted with his brother to offer the descendants of the owners of El Suizo the purchase of the premises and manage it between the two of them. The operation was carried out and they consolidated the premises, turning it into one of the first restaurants in the city.
Its progress was so great that it was hard won that its halls held the presentation of one of the most important literature awards in the city, the Nadal, from the Planeta publishing house, whose creation was in 1945 by the magazine Destino, which celebrated until 1949, the last year they were held at the premises.
The degradation of the surroundings and of the Plaza Real itself, the lack of security in the area caused Miguel Matas himself to make the decision to close the restaurant permanently on March 30, 1949.
Miquel Matas then took charge of the Terramar Hotel in Sitges, where he continued dedicated to restaurants and hospitality.
After the closure, Destino magazine published an article by Miguel del Puerto, in which, among other anecdotes from El Suizo, he told the origin of the Parellada paella.
Juli Parellada was a regular customer of El Suizo, who lived in the palace on Canuda Street that today houses the Ateneu. One day in 1902 when he was in a hurry, he asked for a plate of rice previously emptied and cleaned of thorns, bones and hulls.
The formula was successful and when the waiter placed the order in the kitchen he asked for Parellada rice, a name that ended up taking hold to refer to this dish, so common today on the menus of Barcelona restaurants.