Nati Camps Franquesa: "Our life has been worth it; if not, we would not have met Gerard Piqué, who came to eat at our restaurant"

Santa Coloma de QueraltI interview the sisters Rosita (Santa Coloma de Queralt, 1943) and Nati Camps Franquesa (Santa Coloma, 1947) at the Hostal Colomí in Santa Coloma de Queralt after a meal in which they have shown me that, together with Pep (Santa Coloma, 1974), Rosita's son, they are unbeatable. The restaurant room, full, Nati, in front of the grill, Pep, carrying dishes up and down, and Rosita doing the numbers, who adds at a speed that the MareNostrum supercomputer would envy. "No calculator adds as quickly as my mother," Pep tells me, who calls out the dishes he has served at the tables for her to calculate. When I started writing about gastronomy, twenty-five years ago, the Camps sisters were a benchmark for well-made Catalan cuisine, for local produce, for the seasons. Today it is still like that, and they deserve to be recognized. Why is it so hard in this country to give deserved recognition?

Did the parents open the restaurant?

— The parents, yes, but they had it rented to others. The house belonged to the grandfather. When the parents died, they left it to us. While they had it rented, during the Franco dictatorship, it was called Posada Comercia. Upstairs from the restaurant there were rooms. We no longer have them there; we have put another dining room there, which occupies the same space as the room downstairs. The capacity is for sixty people.

I've seen that you have two shifts for lunch. You are so quick and effective that you can do it, and well.

— Yes, we have two shifts at noon, and we don't open in the afternoons. We have a menu from Monday to Friday. At 9 in the morning, all three of us are here. All three of us get in the kitchen, but I do very little. The ones who do more are Rosita and Pep.

At what point did you decide to start working at the restaurant, the two sisters?

— We have always been here. We studied right here. Even though the parents had it rented out, we were there. We both studied business, which would be today's business administration. My nephew, Pep, trained at the hospitality school on Muntaner street in Barcelona, and also studied sommelier at CETT. He soon understood that he wanted to work with both of us, even though he initially started studying law.

What is the key to success, in your opinion? At noon, in both shifts, you fill the room.

— People know that at Hostal Colomí they will find seasonal produce. We work with local producers. We even serve ear-shaped pastries for dessert, which they also prepare for us. And we love to follow the seasons: mushroom season, truffle season, pea season, artichoke season. Look, today you have eaten the last artichokes, which we cook in two different ways, and the zucchini flower season, of which we have just received the first ones today. We make the zucchini flowers battered, stuffed with cod brandada. Have you seen how beautiful they are? We also handle meat, as we have beef, cow, and Angus.

It must be difficult to get the product you want.

— For ox meat we sometimes have to wait six months; for the rest, we have contact with all the surrounding farmers. We use about twenty-five kilos of potatoes daily, which we serve fried, on a platter.

While I was eating the dishes, the stuffed zucchini flowers, the offal, I thought you cook a very authentic cuisine.

— We believe we make honest food. It's honest because we don't deceive. If you have produce, you cook it as well as you know how.

I saw your sister Rosita in front of the barbecue during the whole lunch. She wasn't wearing an apron. She is dressed elegantly in front of the barbecue.

— She really likes the grill. From 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. we are in the kitchen with Pep and with me. She takes care of preparing the escalivadas; I, of the stews. Rosita is very meticulous with the grill, which we make with oak and holm oak wood. And the dining room doesn't smell of smoke, because we have a good extractor. You haven't smelled it, the smell of smoke, when you've entered, have you?

No. I don't even notice it on the clothes, either. What dish sells the best? Offal, perhaps?

— Everything. We are lucky that we sell what we want, because Pep takes the orders at the tables, sings the dishes and tells them: "Today we have this". And he says so because they are the products we have, which are good. Because we buy products to use them. For example, we don't make our croquettes from leftovers. When we make croquettes, we make them. And the same with the cod fritters. Our fritters are well stuffed, full, because we use cod to make them, and no leftovers. That's why everything is a fritter. I'll put it another way: we don't do "use-it-up" cooking, because every product we buy is to make a dish.

But the offal would indeed be part of a resourceful cuisine.

— Yes, you are right. With the little ones we do zero-waste cooking, we use all parts of the animal.

Personalities have passed through Hostal Colomí.

— President Josep Tarradellas came to lunch after having left his archive at the monastery of Poblet. We had photos of that moment, and we lost them. Pasqual Maragall also came. I would say that almost all the presidents of the Generalitat have come. There is some politician who has never come, like Artur Mas. Oh! And artists also come to us, like Andrea Motis. How beautiful she is.

Has considered not coming to work at the restaurant at some point?

— One moment, I'm summing up this bill. On this table there is a dish that they tell me they didn't like, and so I won't charge them for it because we always side with the customer. We like constructive criticism.

I was wondering if you ever imagine not coming to work at Cal Colomí.

— Yes, of course. We are not eternal. The other day some gentlemen came and told us: "You are the girls from Cal Colomí". And I thought that those girls we were no longer exist. Neither the girls nor the children. We are not Walt Disney, we are not unalterable in time. My sister turned 79 for Saint George's Day; I am 83. We have our years, but we feel good, we like our work, and working is the way to feel good. And every day we see people, and we talk to them.

Of the dishes you cook, which ones do you like the most?

— The sole, which comes to us from the port of Tarragona. The meat, the cutlets, the hamburgers, which we make ourselves. The spoon dishes.

Pep will continue the business.

— I suppose. This is the idea, that Cal Colomí continues for many years, but he has to say it. We have to ask him. I just give thanks for all these years, because I have met many people. You know that sometimes they have compared us to the Reixach sisters from Hispània, but we have never known them. And both of us are not cooks, they are. I specialize in choosing the meat, especially. Look, here comes Pep. Ask him if he wants to continue.

Pep, Cal Colomí will continue with you.

— [Pep] I've been working here for twenty-eight years and everyone knows that Cal Colomí belongs to the Camps sisters. They have been a mirror for me. And my mother and aunt tell me that without me they wouldn't have done the job they've done these years.

If one of the three is not at work, does Cal Colomí remain open?

— No. We close it. If one of the three is missing, we close. I always take one big trip a year, and then we close. This year I went to Egypt and we closed it. Have I told you that we have a menu from Monday to Friday for 25 euros? With coffee, it's 27. From July 15th to September 15th, we don't offer this menu. Then, everything is à la carte.

To conclude, I can only wish long life to Hostal Colomí.

— If we were young, we would do even more things. We are very happy with the life we have had. Sometimes I have wondered if the life I have had was worth it. And then I think yes. It was worth it. Otherwise, we would not have met the former Barça player Gerard Piqué, who came to have lunch at our restaurant.