Ada Parellada: "Catalan cuisine is in intensive care in restaurants, and it's dead at home."

BarcelonaAda Parellada (Granollers, 1967) comes from a family that has been serving food for seven generations and more than 250 years. She learned the trade of cook and restaurateur at Fonda Europa in Granollers, the Parellada family's main house, "the university of hospitality," in her words. Since 1993, she has had her own restaurant in Barcelona, Semproniana, where every March 8th she brings together some of the most prominent Catalan women for the Festa del Davantal. In this interview, Ada Parellada explains why her restaurant doesn't have avocados and why sushi is a traditional dish for Catalan children.

This March 8th, you brought together 70 women for the Festa del Davantal to cook and dine together. What does this gathering represent for you?

— I've been doing this for 15 years. It's a day to have a great time, to put on our aprons, to enjoy cooking, and that's all there is to it. But it's true that these are all women whom I admire greatly, and who, in order to have the public presence they have, have had to sacrifice their family space, so to speak. Many have had to hang up their aprons. This was one of women's first demands: to hang up their aprons so they wouldn't be tied to the kitchen. The apron, as a symbol of the household chores that suffocated you and didn't allow you to have a life outside of work, nor an income, which are extremely important for freedom.

Would you say that lately you've been in control, as your mother used to tell you?

— Yes, I'm in control, but my mother gave me a more pragmatic one: you have to hold the key to the till. You have to be in charge whenever you can, but above all, never give up your financial independence.

You're the youngest of eight siblings. Does that mean you were the spoiled one?

— Yes, sir. I was very spoiled by my parents and very well-educated by my siblings. I was the youngest, with older parents. They had seven children close together, and several years later, I was born. Therefore, you could say I'm my parents' granddaughter, and they were very indulgent with me.

You've always been surrounded by many people, many siblings, customers at the restaurant... When was the last time you lived alone?

— Never. I've never lived alone. Also, I'll confess one thing to you: I have a terrible fear of loneliness. If I'm alone, I'm scared shitless. That they'll break in, that a ghost... Maybe it's also the fact that I'm the youngest, that you're more protected and therefore more afraid. But I'm also terrified of true loneliness. I think it's a divine punishment not to have company. A couple of years ago, a man came to the restaurant alone for lunch on Christmas Day. Look, I'm bursting into tears. At dessert time, he had an overwhelming need to talk to someone. He called me and started crying. "Do you think that with five children I have to eat alone?" he said. I thought it was cruel.

One of the last interviews you and I conducted was at the Mental Health Marathon in 2021. There, you explained that, twenty years ago, you had suffered from severe depression and attempted suicide. What were the consequences of sharing what had happened to you?

— Just as the interview ended, you said something to me that you might not remember: "Go check your phone, you'll have a ton of messages." The truth is, the result was precisely this: an avalanche of messages of support and also confessions from people who were in the same situation or who had also suffered from it. The truth is, I don't like to talk about it, but it's no less true that, since the Marathon, they insisted a lot on how useful it could be. I'm very happy to have gone because, although I don't like to talk about it, it's lifted a bit of a weight off my shoulders. These are things that need to be talked about, and although we may have smoothed things over a bit, they are still stigmatized. I don't regret having told it. If I regret anything, it's having done it. Now I've closed that story. It's been many years, 24, and I'm very healed. Anyone going through a similar situation should know that you can heal, that you have to let the doctors guide you, that you take medication if necessary, and that you let time pass.

I'm seeing a lot of bottles of wine here at the restaurant. When was the last time you opened a bottle?

— You're bringing up all the topics, right? Well, look, it's been fourteen years. Fourteen years since I last drank a drop. I'm much happier. It's the best decision I've ever made, and I feel bad telling you this because, you see, we're surrounded by bottles of wine. We're a culture in which wine is one of our pillars, along with olive oil and wheat. We can't remove wine from our culture, because then we'd be crippled. On the other hand, there's a wine and spirits industry in Catalonia that exports a lot, and therefore we must be able to maintain it. What worries me enormously is drugs, the use of alcohol to change, to relax, to have fun, to elevate yourself. Using alcohol is an absolutely pernicious practice, which can end very badly and can impact your entire environment. We must be very careful about that, because it has a lot of prestige.

Unlike other drugs...

— Yes. In all of them, you start laughing and end up crying. But alcohol is socially very well-regarded, and when you're both feet in it, it's hard to get out.

Let's change the subject. How do you see Catalan cuisine these days?

— Good, I see it well.

You answered very quickly. Why? Wouldn't you have answered the same thing a few years ago?

— Catalan cuisine is now in the ICU, but it's not dead; we'll gradually recover it. It has been greatly discredited, undervalued, and abandoned.

But we have had the best chefs in the world!

— Yes, but not with Catalan cuisine. With evolved cuisine, if you wish, but not with canonical cuisine. Canonical cuisine has been hidden, it's a brown color, it doesn't look good on Instagram. However, it's a cuisine that has immense evocative power and is coherent and sustainable.

What makes you more optimistic lately?

— We chefs are getting excited about this cuisine and bringing it back to the table. Restaurants already acted as a kind of museum for this cuisine, but they were outside the major metropolitan areas. You had to go looking for it in remote villages, "on the way to..." or even in industrial estates. Tourist pressure makes it seem easier for us to sell ceviche than fricandó. But the trend-setting chefs, the renowned ones, are bringing it back, because it turns out this cuisine generates appeal for foreigners because it's exotic, and for locals because of its evocative power. It's a sustainable cuisine and a cuisine of memory. We've realized that the traditional dish our children will miss from home, when their parents are gone, will be sushi. Because it's what they've shared most with their parents. They're children of six, eight, ten years old, the age of absorbing memories, with forty-year-old parents already sushi-maniacs. Friday is pizza and Saturday is sushi. Are you with me or not? So, what do you want these children to end up yearning for? It's an absolutely dramatic situation, and the chefs have seen that they must recover this country's identity, and they've gotten their act together. Because this land, as Ferran Agulló, a politician from the early 20th century, said in a beautiful speech, we are a country because we have our own language, our own territory, our own administration... I don't know what else he said... and because we have a cuisine. When you eat that croquette, that fricandó, those noodles in a casserole, your memory transports you to Mom. I would say that Catalan cuisine is in intensive care in restaurants and is dead at home. Luckily, these chefs are bringing it back to restaurant tables, and that will encourage people to revive it at home. And I would add one more thing: if you take away the adjective Catalan, is also dead. The kitchen is dead at home.

Within this panorama of Catalan cuisine, what role does Ada Parellada play?

— Someone from the outside must be telling you this. I'd say I haven't lost my way, but I've also done a lot of stupid things. If you see everything going that way, you adapt to the tide so you don't drown yourself. I've always tried to stay within Catalan cuisine, but we must admit that, from time to time, I've slipped up.

What do you mean by "slip"?

— Man, avocado has entered here, we've given you all the salmon you want. Now avocado and salmon are absolutely prohibited. And mangoes are also banned. That's three bans.

Why do they come from so far away?

— Yes, but not only because of that, because the high demand is causing many farmers here to rethink their cultivation in line with the climate, uprooting it and planting avocados. We shouldn't consume what we haven't seen. It's a very poetic phrase, but it means that what isn't in our landscape shouldn't be in our kitchen.

Is your responsibility in the kitchen inside with the pots or is it more here, with some cameras, spreading a message?

— I'm not a cook; someday I'll have to admit that. Or I'm not just a cook. It's true that I have two feet: one in the kitchen and one outside. And my father taught me this a lot. A restaurant is 100 percent cooking, but you should always try to pay close attention to the dining room and the service. I dedicate myself to cooking; I don't do anything else. Just because I don't stir the pot all day doesn't mean I'm not dedicated to cooking.

So what word is there to define you?

— We don't know, perhaps more restorative. Why should we despise this word? There was a very beautiful word in Catalan, but I'm a bit embarrassed to say it, which is mistressI'm embarrassed to say this, because you call yourself a master. But if we take away that aura of a knowledgeable person, you're the person who can stir a stew, change a light bulb, or carry a plate to a customer. They're the person who's on top of everything that's going on and isn't shy about rolling up their sleeves and getting the job done.

What is your hope right now?

— Wait, let me think about it for a moment. Okay, yes: living in peace with myself. I'm very demanding of myself; this desire to do and do, you make commitments, and some days you feel like you can't do any more. I'd like to achieve that peace, which I sometimes envy in people I see. Like you.

This is very misleading.

— I know it's very misleading, but sometimes you see people who have a serenity that I lack, and I want to work toward that goal. We won't achieve it, will we?

The last two questions are the same for everyone. What's a song you've been listening to lately?

— Alfonsina and the sea, by Mercedes Sosa, which makes me cry a lot. I also listen to Sílvia Pérez Cruz a lot.

The last words of the interview are yours.

— There are more good people in this world than bad people. We should all have a dedicated NGO, to which we contribute, not just with money, but also with our work. Everyone should have a cause. In my case, I work to reduce food waste.