Paula Carreras: "In Barcelona, it's hard to find a place to just have a drink"

What kind of consumer are you?

— I think I'm quite a social consumer. With the pandemic, I realized that there were a lot of people who said that they drank a lot at home alone, but that didn't happen to me. I didn't need to drink alone. I haven't started a bottle alone and I don't think I ever will. On the contrary, I really like the idea of saying, "let's choose a wine between two, three, four people." I don't feel like it's because of the inertia of seeing people with glasses, but because I get the urge to share.

Why did you decide to dedicate an entire gastronomy section to the cultural podcast? Pleasures of life?

— Because Pleasures It was born with the intention of being a cultural magazine and everything invited it to be something that related enjoyment with culture. Obviously, the gastronomy part is also there because it has a very cultural and very social component. You can talk about gastronomy and culture at the same time without having to talk about gastronomy books, but simply food as such is also cultural, and we don't eat the same here as we do on the other side of the world, and we don't even eat the same here as we do in the next town. With Anna Pérez Martí, who is the girl who does the gastro section, who knows a lot, we made a match to create this section on gastronomy and culture.

Wine is a gastronomic and cultural element, but it also has a dark side. Have you thought about how to talk about it through your communication channels?

— In Pleasures Not so much, because perhaps we have focused on the more gastro part, but in Shitty people Yes, we have talked about alcohol, and we have even been on live shows with a beer in our hand or a glass of wine. We always think "be careful", because we know that it gives a certain image and even more so when you are in front of a microphone. It is also true that we only speak from our own experience and we do not set ourselves up as anything. We will never make a speech in defense of alcohol, but we will not hide either that we like wine or that we like beer and that we can drink it calmly, because none of us has any problem with alcohol.

Do you think there is a good gastronomic offer for having a drink in Barcelona?

— There are two things going on. The first is that it is becoming more and more difficult, at least in Barcelona – which is where I live and the city I know best – to find a place where you can just have a drink and a few snacks and that’s it. They immediately force you to have dinner. Sometimes it’s seven o’clock and I just want to have a drink and go home for dinner. And this is becoming more and more difficult and it’s a shame, because it is part of our culture and is being lost for basically economic reasons and also for reasons of the city model, which are designed for other people who have a different culture. The second is that I think that in Barcelona, ​​​​lately, the offer is becoming more homogenous. All the places are a bit the same, in all the places you find the same tableware, the same decoration, the same salmon tartar and the same burrata salad, and you end up paying forty euros that you don’t know where they are sold from.

If you had to recommend a place to go for a drink, where would you say?

— There are quite a few that I like, for example Canvis Nous, which opened recently. It's a place that serves natural wines – by the way, very much in favour of natural wines – and they do it very well. The guy who runs it knows a lot and knows how to fine-tune his recommendations very well. And they also have a bit of a menu, without too many pretensions, so you can have anything to eat with the wine, but they don't expect you to eat from this menu either, which is what we said I miss. I could tell you many other places because I have my Google Maps full of recommendations, but this is the first one that comes to mind.

What price are you willing to pay for a bottle?

— I have a friend who makes wines, who once told us that behind a bottle of wine that costs less than ten euros there is an exploited farmer. And I apply that maxim quite a lot to myself. So it is normal that if I go to buy any bottle of wine, it will cost me more than ten euros, but I don't mind paying thirteen, fourteen, fifteen euros or, if the occasion is worth it, twenty or twenty-five euros. That is, if the bottle is good and the occasion is worth it. I am also very fond of bringing a bottle of wine on a birthday, because we are going to enjoy it. Now, for any given day, twenty-five euros is perhaps going too far.

What influences you when choosing one bottle or another?

— I would love to tell you that I am not influenced by the label, but yes, it clearly does. But also because I really like design, in general, and it is very difficult to say that you are not influenced by aesthetics. I am always in favour of beautiful things, in all creations, and I also apply that to book covers. A beautiful label does not work against the wine. I am in favour of the aesthetics of the label favouring the purchase of bottles.