Paco Solé Parellada, owner of the 7 Portes restaurant and a great fan of Catalan cuisine, has died.

BarcelonaPaco Solé Parellada, owner of the 7 Portes restaurant in Barcelona and professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), died early Thursday morning, according to a statement from the Catalan Academy of Gastronomy and Nutrition, of which he was a member.

The restaurant, located on Passeig de Isabel II, is located in a building whose anecdotes he knew like no one else. "Do you know there's a love story behind the restaurant? A man built it out of love for his wife, who was in love with Paris, where she lived, and he built it exactly like the buildings in Paris, so that she would come back and stay with him. She came back, yes, but when she saw the building, she didn't like it enough, and she went back."

Born in Barcelona in 1944, he was a well of wisdom, a Renaissance man, we could call him, because his fields of knowledge covered economics, history, architecture, music, gastronomy... "Do you see this window on the first floor, where we now have a lounge of the self? I used to sit at a table and study when I was young," Solé recalled at the press conference in which he presented the Manuscript by Joana Caules, dated 1750, volume number 10 of the enormous work he proposed to create to make the historical recipe books of Catalan cuisine available to everyone.

Catalan cuisine and its study were his passion. "Ten years ago, when someone wanted to consult books like Sent Soví's, they needed God and help, and I thought: why can't we publish it, so that everyone knows what Catalan recipes were like in 1324?" And so began the collection, which enjoyed the support of Barcino publishing house from the first volume and, this spring, reached number ten with the news that changed the French paradigm: mayonnaise was invented in the Menorcan city of Mahón and not in France, as the neighboring country had always maintained. At least, a manuscript from the second half of the 18th century confirmed it. "If it hadn't been for Paco Solé, this manuscript would not have been disseminated," explained doctor and chef Pep Pelfort, who thanked Solé Parellada before everyone for his generosity, having bought the original manuscript from the Menorcan who had it in his personal library and to whom he had never given much thought.

The mother, from the Fonda Europa in Granollers

Paco Solé Parellada, first cousin of chef Ada Parellada, studied industrial engineering and economics and combined his university work with the family restaurant, which his wife, Susanna Sánchez, now runs. His mother worked at the Fonda Europa in Granollers, the family restaurant, and it was his grandfather who bought 7 Portes. The grandchildren were born and raised there until their father made them go to a Josepets boarding house to study what he suggested, because Paco would have studied fine arts, not industrial engineering. In fact, anyone who was always around him knew he had a knack for creating beautiful drawings in a snap. At the Mos Awards gala in May 2024, where Paco Solé Parellada received an award, he drew a farmhouse with trees and mountains in just a few seconds. It is a fond memory of him today.

He eventually bought the 7 Portes restaurant from his father; he was 28 years old and running it in 1972. There was a time when he combined teaching with serving until he applied for a professorship and then devoted himself to university full-time. Mediterranean. He went on to write hundreds of publications and dozens of books.

In addition to being an exemplary professor, Solé Parellada goes down in history for having the restaurant where the best rice is served. With top-notch chefs who have passed through, such as Josep Lladonosa, and with loyal customers, who even have his plaque written on the walls. He knew every nook and cranny and the job well, because he had worked at the counter, in the dining room, as well as in maître and served as director until, at the age of 35, he sought out a manager, with whom he met weekly to discuss management and the kitchen. After retiring from university, he once again became the sole partner of 7 Portes, along with his children, with whom he had grown the restaurant. "I don't like to call it a group, because the word means things that don't fit with what we are," said Paco Solé Parellada when referring to the other two restaurants he owned in Barcelona under the name 7 Portes.

Among the anecdotes he most often told about his restaurant was the fact that it never closed, not even during the Civil War, but it did due to Covid. And it always had Catalan cuisine as its flag, the same one he waved so everyone would love him. In 2024, Paco Solé Parellada received the National Gastronomy Award, awarded by the Catalan Academy of Gastronomy and Nutrition.

Recipes from the 7 Puertas restaurant

Paella parellada, see it here

Cold cream of roasted vegetables, see it here