Eva and Alberto found love in Gràcia and, thirteen years later, they have built a house there open to the neighbors

Eva and Alberto share almost everything: life, work, and also a way of understanding Gràcia, the neighborhood where they live and where three years ago they decided to open a restaurant. They have been a couple for thirteen years, and when they started looking for a place to set up their own business, they were clear: they wanted to create what they felt was missing in their neighborhood. "There is a lot on offer here, there is everything, but we noticed that there were no restaurants that felt like home. And we decided to create it ourselves," explains Eva.

The initial idea, however, was different. To set up a classic, lifelong bar, one of those places to go for a drink and a bite to eat while extending the conversation. But they soon realized that customers arrived with another intention: they wanted to sit down, have dinner, and stay. And they decided to listen to them. They gradually extended the bar's hours, the kitchen gained prominence, and, almost without realizing it, it ended up becoming a restaurant. This is how El Fino Bar was born, a project that Eva and Alberto launched with three other friends, each with a very specific area within a shared adventure. Eva Monge took care of the design and communication of the establishment; Jorge, the wine list; Jandro, the numbers; Pau, the staff, and Alberto Ibáñez, the kitchen.

Precisely the magic of El Fino is that, although today it functions as a restaurant, it does not have a kitchen as such. "Since we have a bar license, we cannot have stoves, a deep fryer, or a griddle," explains Eva. And this forces Alberto to cook in a different way, to find his own way, and to turn a limitation into a style. Everything happens at the bar. Without large appliances, but with a lot of imagination. And this is how he has managed to build a solid, surprising, and, above all, very personal menu. We start with the house special pork rinds, accompanied by bread with tomato, and somegildasclassics. Then come the tomatoes dressed with Valencian onion and caper berries; the creamy smoked cheese with roasted celeriac, grapes, and almonds, and the steak tartare. Among the hot dishes, a coca of beef sobrassada with honey and smoked cheese and, to finish, a sausage fricandó with black trumpet mushrooms and St. George's mushrooms that surprises with its intensity.

Without artifice

A kitchen that, like Fino itself, does not need much artifice to explain who it is. But if there is one thing Eva is clear about, it is that the key to Fino is not just what comes out of the bar. It is the customers. Especially the neighbors. “The most loyal ones are people from the neighborhood. Some have even told us that they don't do their grocery shopping and come to have dinner here,” she explains. And in a place that wants to be a home, perhaps there is no better proof of success than that. Being from the neighborhood, however, also means being there when it matters. If necessary, leaving the restaurant and reaching a neighbor's house. “The other day, a customer who never fails broke his leg and we brought his lunch to his house,” explains Eva. She doesn't say it like a great feat, but like someone explaining something that simply has to be done. As happens in homes. At the entrance of Fino, Serafino always waits, a toad with a glass of wine in his hand. He is a kind of silent host who welcomes those who enter.

Eva and Alberto met while having dinner at a restaurant in the neighborhood. Years later, they decided to open El Fino there. And now, when it seemed they had already found their place, they have just opened a second project, Sra. Virtudes, also in Gràcia. There are couples who share a life. They, in addition, share a neighborhood, a job, and two houses open to others. Because perhaps that is, in the end, El Fino: the way Eva and Alberto have found to put everything they love in one place. Cooking, caring, meeting up, building community. And continuing to choose each other, thirteen years later, in the same place where one day they met for the first time.