Behind the dining room of his Enigma restaurant, in the workshop where he and his team brainstorm ideas for their new menu and for various projects they have in hand, Albert Adrià confesses that he is finally noticing an improvement in the sector, that he believes a good summer is approaching. and a comeback of the Barcelona restoration. “I know a lot of people who are looking for spaces to open new businesses, there is an offer of high-level restaurants and more and more movement.” He himself, he says, is considering finding a place for next year where he has thought of offering the hamburgers he created for that fleeting afternoon session that Enigma tried and that would end up leading to the current formula: opening at night and also on Fridays. at noon.
The changes have become commonplace in a city that is increasingly willing to dine early (they start in mid-afternoon) and that has adapted to a wide and changing repertoire of opening days and hours. These are effects of the pandemic, which left a motto as part of that new normality: everyone organizes themselves as they can, depending on the structure they can afford or their commitment to reconcile.
Like Adrià, the chef from Caelis, Romain Fornell, is also an optimist, whose business expansion has led him to become one of the most gourmand places in the city due to its spectacular terrace with views. What was the Blue Spot, very close to the W Hotel, will be the new Azul Rooftop Barceloneta and will open after Easter, after having been closed for three years. Fornell is aware that these are not easy times, and that there is no choice but to reflect the rise in costs on the bill for diners. But he was very clear that it was worth betting. “Barcelona needs this type of establishment: many people come for a few days and want to combine a high-level restaurant, with one where they can go for tapas and a third where they can enjoy the proximity of the sea, the food and a lively atmosphere. We tend to look for that in the islands and we forget that this city has fantastic views of the sea”.
He explains that the sector has become very attractive for people with money who approach professionals like him. “Because money is just money, but having an interesting restaurant is very seductive.” And more in Barcelona, ??a city of which he is proud and which he sees as “the destination” for his French compatriots. “It has it all: climate, culture, sea, gastronomy, and in a setting that is not a set, like you find in Dubai or Miami.” But it is necessary to believe it and be encouraged. “Here it is very difficult to say that things are going well for you; You have to complain that Madrid works better when they have their identity and we have ours”. His group, he explains, has had the best turnover for a January and a February in years. They have also been the best for Pau Santamaria, who supplies vegetables to restaurants, although in his case he acknowledges that where he does the most business is in Madrid. Even so, he maintains that the level of Barcelona is very good and that it deserves greater recognition in the guides. “I still don’t understand why an Enjoy still doesn’t have three stars or an Alkimia two.”
Ferran Soler opened Can Marlau in autumn, where he serves breakfast and lunch. “I started with fear and it is working much better than I expected, although the breakfast offer costs and I have to think about whether we redirect it. But the feeling is that the city is starting up and in just a few months we already have a clientele that is delighted to repeat”. Of course, there is no margin for confusion: “the rise in prices forces us to be very aware of the scandal.”
This management care is also crucial for Ana Alvarado, CEO of Ático, a restaurant management and consulting company that she has promoted with chef Eugeni de Diego. Alvarado points out that there are interesting places and that there is more happiness and a greater desire to go out, but that more and more something very special must be offered and managed very well. “We move with an average ticket of around 25-30 euros without drinks, and that requires a lot of control over resources, leaving intuition aside and impeccable management, and we see that even the smallest restaurants are incorporating tools to it. Alvarado believes that the trend “although it sounds like marketing is to focus much more on the client and not so much on that chef who imposes what you will eat, but rather to adapt to what the diner wants and provide very good service.”
Lito Baldovinos, Enric Rebordosa’s partner in the La Confiteria group, with various restaurants and some of the most successful cocktail bars in the city (his Paradiso is number one on The World’s 50 Best Bars list) is convinced that Barcelona is experiencing a very interesting moment . “We already know that if we compare ourselves with the euphoria of the sector in Madrid we will lose out, but that does not mean that Barcelona is bad, quite the opposite. The city is resurging and I still think it is one of the best on the planet in terms of gastronomy. It has been seen that we have three cocktail bars in the top ten in the world, something that does not happen in any other city and a level of restaurants that has recovered the highest quality. To this we must add an increasingly interesting offer in the neighborhoods, something very important. Most of the most recognized establishments that closed due to the pandemic have reopened in one way or another and we are a benchmark”.
Jordi Vilà, chef at Alkimia and Al Kostat, also affirms that for him it is still one of the best cities in the world to have a restaurant due to its characteristics. “And despite the attrition campaigns, everyone knows that Barcelona continues to be a great destination.” In addition to the magnificent restaurants, “we must add the pastry shops, the proliferation of good baristas and coffee roasters, or the fact of having more chocolate factories, bean to bars, than Paris”. The gastronomic and tourist level is once again strong, points out Eduard Xatruch, from Disfrutar, who indicates that the numbers for January and February, “usually very weak months, are good again, and the most difficult times that the city has experienced have gone falling behind and it seems that good times are coming”.
Feelings are sometimes contradictory, says Núria Gironès, from Ca l’Isidre, who relies on great opportunities such as the Copa América, such as the Mobile World Congress, to contribute to the resurgence of a city as attractive as Barcelona. But there are many pending issues to make it safer and not offer that image of so many open streets in the canal. And attract a tourist of as high a level as the one who comes to Barcelona and visits only those world-reference venues, such as Enigma or Disfrutar. “The volume is back, but is it what we wanted?” Gironès says that in Raval, where Ca l’Isidre is located, there are many more security measures than in the past, “and that’s great, but there’s a lot to improve. On my way home I pass two markets that I see languishing”. Jordi Vilà agrees, we must take advantage of these opportunities, such as Mobile, to be the ecological and local city that we can be. It is not going to happen to us like so many of my generation with English, that after studying all our lives we still have no idea. You have to learn from the experience to be proud of having taken advantage of the opportunity”.