The farm tenant who hung up her habit to open a roadside restaurant in Platja d'Aro

Pepa Sánchez (Barcelona, 1953) found her calling as a chef while working in a thousand and one other jobs, including as a farmhand in Rupià and as an executive secretary in a law firm. One day she was offered the chance to run a restaurant, and she did so well that she realized that what she truly enjoyed was that: cooking and interacting with diners. On April 16, 2011, together with her son Lluís, she opened the restaurant Ca la Pepa, located by the roadside in Platja d’Aro, and today it is a benchmark for product-based cuisine, especially fish from the Palamós fish market, and for good wines, which Lluís, a trained sommelier, is in charge of.I go there on a Saturday at noon to talk to her, and I find the restaurant packed. The customers seem like regulars due to the familiarity with which they speak to the staff. I won't see Pepa until the end of the service, when they're already having coffee and drinks at the tables, because the after-meal conversation is extended thanks to a well-known musician from the house, who sings them songs from a repertoire sewn with well-known classics with his guitar. "Until three years ago, I was alone in the kitchen, but I had to have surgery to have prostheses put in my knees, and then we looked for a cook, Dani," she explains to me. Now Dani and she organize themselves to share the work. "This week, Dani has taken vacation, and then I'm alone in charge, but there will be another week when I'll rest," she explains, adding that since last September she has joined active retirement. She wants to work, and she wants to do it for years.Santa Susanna teardrop peas

The kitchen is small, and it dazzles to think that they can prepare all the dishes on the menu there. As it is spring, I have eaten peas, Santa Susanna tear peas, which were delicate, with a small bite. For the second course, sea bass a la panadera, a good piece, which Pepa has managed to bake with exact cooking. Lluís presents the whole sea bass, and then he selects it, and accompanies it with a green lettuce salad, which is as good as the fish itself.On the menu there are many other dishes, which are Pepa's favorites: the slow-cooked ones. "I learned them from my mother-in-law, whose name was Alba Ibáñez and she was from Tàrrega." My mother-in-law is the one who taught me to make meatballs, stuffed squid, rice dishes, game dishes like pigeon, quail or partridge, which she cooks in various ways, such as pickled. Also tripe, which is another slow-cooked preparation. "From my mother, whose name was Maravillas Rodríguez, I learned the basics of cooking, like sofritos, and from my mother-in-law, the rest".

Pepa continues to explain to me that there is a dish that is currently the one she is asked for the most. It's the farm egg, which she prepares with fried eggs and seasonal vegetables, that is, today with artichokes, and adds Joselito brand bacon. "They ask for it in all services," she assures, and comments that when the artichokes run out, she makes it with green beans.Regarding the peas I asked for, he says they are so good, the teardrop ones, the smallest ones, that they buy them at a very high price, that he only briefly sautés them in a pan with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and adds a pinch of salt. "Nothing else is needed." And the same happens with the broad bean salad, which are so tender that he also cooks them briefly and finishes them with acorn-fed ham.Finally, for those with a sweet tooth, know that Pepa also prepares desserts. She has her favorites, which she has studied to be the ones that people like: cheesecake, egg flan, apple and raisin rum pudding, and chocolate cake. "Sometimes I make others too, and then I make tiramisu." And this is how Pepa talks, conveying a passion for a craft she doesn't want to give up, while in the lounge the music played by the guitarist continues, and her son, Lluís, continues serving drinks.