Can Violí Restaurant: a journey of flavors between Catalonia, Italy, and the Mediterranean

Pep Bielsa was born in L'Hospitalet de l'Infant, on the Tarragona coast, in the heart of the Mediterranean. There, in the family home, he began to feel the culinary bug watching his mother cook typical Catalan dishes, those we call "chup-chup."

He studied history and, after completing his studies in Naples, discovered the connection between Italian, Catalan, and Mediterranean recipes. That's why, upon returning to Barcelona and with the help of a partner he met in the Italian city, Alessandro Miraglia, he opened Can Violí in the Sants neighborhood in 2018, to capture and merge the union of the three concepts: Naples, the Mediterranean, and Catalonia, in a menu. "What concerns me most is knowing how to convey the essence of this small establishment, why I opened it. That's why I believe the menu is the best way," says Pep. To bring this vision to life on the plate, Pep recruited chef Samuele Lastrucci, born in Florence, one of the birthplaces of Italian gastronomy.

We started by sharing the confit artichokes with black truffle and Manchego cheese sauce, the prawn rolls with goat cheese, Iberian ham, and basil emulsion, and the baby squid with slow-cooked egg and ham. For the main course, we ordered the steak tartare, the lamb-stuffed bains with caramelized onion emulsion and kimchi, and the duck magret with muscatel sauce and bone marrow. We finished the last glasses of Teix, a Montsant red wine from Celler Serra Major, by sharing the dessert: the cheesecake. in basil with berry jam and tiramisu, both homemade.

A little brother

In the early days, Pep was everything at his establishment: he cooked and ran the dining room, but now he has to share the work because, as he says, "Can Violí's little brother has been born." He has opened the restaurant Ultramarins Riera, also in Sants. "We created it with the intention of making it more of a tasting dish, of spending more time at the table," explains Pep. He speaks with special affection about his first restaurant, because it was the beginning of everything. "It's like a painting that emerges, that you paint gradually. At first it was one thing, and now it represents you more and more. I created it, with my magic, and it's done in the first person, and that makes me proud," says Pep, puffing out his chest.

Like a good historian, Pep explains that the name of the establishment is a small tribute to the neighborhood's past. "In this square, there was a homeless man who played the violin for a living, and we think that if that violin is still playing, he's still alive and so is the neighborhood." It's his way of weaving ties between his mother's cooking, his history studies, Naples, the Mediterranean, and Catalonia. As the saying goes, history is written by the victors, but at Can Violí, it's written by flavors and traditions. This little corner of Sants beats to the rhythm of Pep Bielsa, who continues to cook and simmer his own history, savoring the past and present in every bite.