The family seafood restaurant that turned an impossible corner of La Sagrera into a benchmark restaurant

In 1989, Francisco Peñaranda made two bets. The first: to open a bar in a corner of La Sagrera. The second: to trust that, when the eternal works of the AVE were finished, the place would become a reference point. With the works, he was overly optimistic. With the restaurant, not so much. In the beginning, the place was a neighborhood bar, but in 1991 Francisco Peñaranda decided to change course and turn it into a seafood restaurant. All this is explained to us by Esther Peñaranda, his daughter, who has practically grown up within these walls. "As a child, I already ran around the tables. This place is my life," she recalls.Perhaps that's why she studied hospitality: because there are futures that are not chosen, they simply await you. She worked in the kitchens of the Majestic, the Ritz, or the Princesa Sofia, trying, or pretending to try, to escape the family business. But destiny has a very deft hand and little patience. For twenty-eight years, Esther has captained from the dining room Marisqueria Esthvan, in the Sagrera neighborhood. "I am the visible face, but my father is still here," she says, laughing. And he truly is. Francisco continues to be in charge between stoves and early mornings, selecting products at Mercabarna or at the fish market with the clinical eye of someone who has been speaking the language of fresh fish for decades and knows that, in a seafood restaurant, prestige begins long before the customer sits down at the table. Seeing the menu we have in front of us, we decide that it will be Terrers, a Recaredo Brut Nature, that sets the pace for the meal. And the pace is exactly this: direct cooking, honest product and little desire to impress with artifice. Here there are no foams or kilometer-long speeches about the concept of the dish. Here the seafood arrives, is cooked well and served without the need for disguises. Which, given the current situation, almost ends up seeming revolutionary. The festival begins with some dishes to share: fried whitebait, prawns in milk, fresh squid and some tender and well-executed baby squid. Everything comes out with that hard-to-explain touch that restaurants that have been doing the same thing for years have, and precisely because of this, they know exactly what to do and what not to touch.But Esther doesn't hesitate when it comes to choosing the main course. "You can't miss the seafood grill," she says with the certainty of someone who knows the answer perfectly before asking the question. And she's right. A generous, powerful, and very well-executed grill arrives: razor clams, scallops, langoustines, prawns, and crayfish grilled, accompanied by half a lobster per person. A dish that forces the table to fall silent for a few minutes. Sensational.The desserts, Santiago cake, cheesecake and honey with curd cheese, extend the after-meal conversation without haste. With the coffees already served, the gaze inevitably drifts towards the restaurant walls. They are full of photographs with clients, friends, and locals from the neighborhood. There are familiar faces and others that surely only they know, but all tell the same story: the history of a restaurant built more on loyalty than on fashion.The merit of the full table

“Filling this place is not easy, because there are neither shops nor theaters here that bring you passers-by,” explains Esther. And probably for that reason, every full table has even more merit. At Esthvan, customers don’t arrive by chance; they arrive because someone has spoken to them about it before.She is also the one who reveals the origin of the restaurant's name. "It's the mix of the names of Francisco's daughters: Esther and Vanessa". And perhaps here lies the key to everything. Esthvan is not just a seafood restaurant. It is an extension of this family.Esther summarizes it by talking about her father. “Whenever the family gets together, he cooks. And he always ends up doing what the grandchildren ask him to do.” Said like that, it seems like a small thing, but probably here lies the secret of many restaurants that survive over time: people who continue to take care of theirs as if it were still the first day.Who knows if in a few years it will be precisely these grandchildren who will take over. What is evident is that, while Barcelona continues to wait for the works of La Sagrera to be finished, Francisco Peñaranda completed his great work a long time ago.