Closes the fish restaurant in the Llibertat market: "I'm going back to La Pubilla, which is about to turn sixteen"
The cook Alexis Peñalver advances that the chef Carles Ramon, who had worked at Besta, is the one who has taken over the Hermós
BarcelonaIt's Wednesday at noon, and at the bar of the Hermós fish bar, located inside the Llibertat market, in the Gràcia neighborhood, two couples are sitting talking about whether to choose razor clams, mussels, or scallops. At the six-number stall (which means six meters) that the Hermós bar occupies, chef Alexis Peñalver and chef Alejandro Serdà are living farewell days. They explain to their regular customers that this Saturday will be the last day of Hermós, the fish and seafood restaurant in the Llibertat market, which has been four years full of joys and also “losses, linked especially to the restaurant's opening hours, which can only be from 12 to 4 p.m.”. And they also inform everyone that there will be a new restaurant, which will be run by chef Carles Ramon, who will cook new fish and seafood dishes with other techniques and will do it very well. And what will happen to all the dishes that Alexis had made during these four years at Hermós? They will not disappear: “I'm going back to La Pubilla restaurant, which is about to turn sixteen, and there we will continue making them,” he says.
Hermós's adventure began when Alexis accepted, after the pandemic, the proposal made to him by the stallholders of the Llibertat market: to take over the restaurant that had been called the Tast del Joan Noi, which was closed. The establishment had (and still has) a municipal license to cook fish and seafood there, and it is next to the Joan Noi fish stall, still active today. "The market told me that with the bar closed there was a lack of life, and since we have La Pubilla opposite, we accepted it straight away," recalls the chef. So the Hermós fish bar, as Alexis named it, became a high bar with stools, where you could eat from Tuesday to Saturday from 12 to 4 p.m.
Seafood stews for dipping bread
The good reputation of La Pubilla, where the chef, specializing in Catalan cuisine, comes from, and especially the stews that Alexis began to prepare, made l'Hermós quickly establish itself as a benchmark. In these four years, there are two dishes that those who have sat on its stools will especially remember: the sardines stuffed with picada with hanging tomato sofrito (which cost 13 euros) and the sailor stews, such as garlic cream or monkfish with palangre sauce. “The balandra sauce is from the Tarragona region, from the romesco family, and I finish it with a fumet and red pepper,” says Peñalver. In fact, seafood cuisine was the recipe book on which the chef has based himself these four years, who chose a very significant name to christen the restaurant: l'Hermós, one of the friends of the writer Josep Pla. According to the author from Empordà, l'Hermós was one of the few people who had a free life. “l'Hermós was called Sebastià Puig, and according to Pla, with four things he had a meal ready, because he fished and hunted, he was self-sufficient,” says Peñalver.
The Hermós bar will close forever this Saturday, at 4 p.m., and soon the chef Carles Ramon, who had worked at the Besta restaurant in Barcelona, will take over. “Whoever comes to eat will be able to choose a fish, and then ask for the technique as you want to eat it, that is, grilled, baked or more,” points out Alexis Peñalver, who states that he is happy that his successor “is a chef who will bring life to the Llibertat market, which is one of the ones with the best fish in Barcelona”.
In the Llibertat market in Gràcia, recommended to visit and always to buy from the stalls of legumes, fruits, vegetables, fish and meat, and another bar that is in operation, Bar La Clau.