The hidden restaurant with a green garden by chef Jordi Vilà where you can eat tapas and Catalan cuisine dishes

BarcelonaIt is Friday midday and on Carrer Major in Sarrià, a few meters beyond the Foix de Sarrià pastry shop, the waiters at the Vivanda restaurant suggest to those entering for lunch whether they want to do so in the interior room, with a wooden floor and white walls, or in the garden. The answer I hear is unanimous: the garden. And I head there too. I find trees, a large palm tree, ivies, and well-distributed, spacious tables that make you think you have entered a small oasis. No traffic can be heard, there is calm, and a familiar, neighborhood atmosphere. We are at the restaurant with a green garden of the chef Jordi Vilà, the Vivanda, which he has been directing for eighteen years. As we have just started the month of June, Vilà has just changed the menu, so we will taste summer dishes.

Before going to the pantry, Jordi briefly reviews his career. We just remembered that Jordi has been at Vivanda for eighteen years, and we do the math. "I started my own business, opening the shutters, paying bills, suppliers, paying everything and cooking, in 1998, at the Abrevadero restaurant, that is to say almost thirty years ago". Before that, he had studied at the Joviat hotel school in Manresa, where he coincided in the same course with the chef Oriol Rovira (Els Casals) and, one year below, with Oriol Castro, from Disfrutar. In 2008, when Vivanda, which has traditionally been considered a tapas bar, opened, other restaurants of the same style were opening in Barcelona: Albert Adrià was cooking at Inòpia; Carles Abellan, at Tapas 24, and the late Fermí Puig, at Petit Comitè. And another piece of information, which I must mention: in 2004 Jordi Vilà achieved a Michelin star for Alkímia, when the restaurant was located on Carrer d’Indústria in Barcelona. In 2016, he moved it to the first floor of the Moritz factory (ronda de Sant Antoni, 41), where it is located today.

Tables with tablecloths

And now, the food. The tables are set, with tablecloths. On the menu, there are croquettes, with thick breading, tubular in shape, with Iberian ham, millimeter-sized cubes inside and copious. "We make the breading ourselves with baker's bread; we started making croquettes like this in 2008, at a time when croquettes weren't made like this, as they were then breaded with biscuit flour," points out the chef. As starters, there are also omelets, which will remind you of those from the Alkostat restaurant: they have caramelized onion and potato. Individual size. You will also find a creative Russian salad, Catalan style, with capers, with Iberian ham cut into thin strips. Andalusian-style squid, the good kind; cod fritters, round and stuffed. And dishes that demonstrate Jordi Vilà's sense of humor and good taste: try the roastVic, the authentic Catalan roast beef, according to the menu, made with pork roasted with pickles, mustard mayonnaise, and capers. You will also find hot starters, such as green beans with 'botifarra del perol' (those of you who go to Alkostat and Alkímia will know it) and clams, mussels, and whelks.

Secondly, summer options that are highly recommended: the fish, for which you can order a half portion of wild fish. They will tell you at the moment what fish they have, and they will serve it to you with vegetables and romesco. Order bread with tomato, which is made from coca bread, is well soaked and seasoned with extra virgin olive oil, and eat it at the same time. To continue, rice dishes and dishes of meat, among which I highlight the Wellington fillet made in Jordi Vilà's free style, which means it is filleted on puff pastry, foie gras with mushrooms and Port wine sauce.

"El Vivanda is a restaurant where you can come and not worry about anything because you will find dishes you will like: now in summer, tomato salad, which I go and get myself from Maresme, organic; also a rice dish, arròs a banda, Catalan style, which I prepare in two courses with cubes of monkfish and squid and then: lanternfish, sea bass, prawn and langoustine," explains the chef when defining what Vivanda is. I ask him about the first floor, because Vivanda is on the ground floor, but I see that the restaurant occupies a whole house in Sarrià. Well, on the first floor there is a private room, named Privanda, with a capacity for twelve people, which has windows overlooking the oasis garden, the one with the palm tree, the trees, the ivy. A privileged space. A detail of the garden that I hadn't written down: on the wall that separates it from Carrer dels Graus there is a large ceramic fruit tree, with all sorts of fruits crowning it, which is a pleasure to observe. It makes you marvel at the beauty, and shows that good food always enters through the eyes, even in art. Be aware also that on Carrer dels Graus, which runs from Via Augusta to Carrer Major de Sarrià, you will find another door to the Vivanda restaurant: it is the one that connects directly to the garden, through which you can also enter.

To finish, I dedicate a whole paragraph to prices. "When we started, we had all dishes at one digit, because it was our strategy, but taxes went up, it became law that prices had to include VAT, and then we moved to double digits." Despite this, today, in 2026, the prices of Vivanda's dishes are very competitive, designed so that you can go to Vivanda often. The average ticket price is 50-60 euros. And I have forgotten to say that for dessert you will find Pauet curd cheese with honey, which was the winner of the cheese competition in the last edition of the Làctium de Vic competition. You can also try hot puff pastry and apple pie with vanilla ice cream, crema catalana, strawberries with cream, or cheese flan and red berries.

El Vivanda is the green garden with a restaurant with the best cuisine by Jordi Vilà. A garden to celebrate the beginning of summer.