If you enter Mundana (c. Aribau, 34) for the first time, after crossing a shop window where you will find sardine cans, shoes, and a bottle of cologne that smells like pencil, you will find everything you need to have a vermouth or an aperitif with the best brands from Catalan artisans and from other towns. And whoever says aperitif and vermouth, also says knives from the Pallarès brand from Solsona. If hunger can wait, at Mundana you might find that artisan, Catalan-brand piece of clothing that suits your taste: take note of the sweaters from the IAIOS brand, from Granollers, by designer Gemma Barbany Arimany. And if you are interested in the cologne you saw in the shop window, know that it was created by Barcelona designer Oriol Montañés. And that the scent is cedar, that is, the one that makes the freshly sharpened pencil: sweet, dry, and warm at the same time.Behind the store that sells everything design-related in food, clothing, and decorative objects are siblings Anna (Barcelona, 1964) and Jaume Colomer (Barcelona, 1979). One, a molecular biologist by training, specialized in cancer studies; the other, an industrial designer, specialized in industrial creativity. One day they decided to reinvent themselves and six years ago opened their dream, which was to illuminate what local designers create. After having been in the Gràcia neighborhood, they have been installed for two years on Aribau street, near the restaurants Mont bar (with two Michelin stars), Mediamanga, and the indispensable La Valenciana.

I interview the chef Romain Fornell (Toulouse, 1976) at the Hermanos Torres restaurant, hours before he dines on turbot and sole from the aquaculture brand Neptura. He is a chef of calm appearance despite the volume of work he has. He directs the Goût Rouge group, which has restaurants in Barcelona especially (the last one he has opened is Casa Tejada), and four more in Paris. Fornell arrived in Barcelona at the end of the 90s to work as a chef at the now-defunct Maison du Languedoc Roussillon. In 2003 he opened the restaurant Caelis, which is now located inside the Hotel Ohla Barcelona and obtained a Michelin star.¿How has it been that you are the chef of four restaurants in Paris? In the last interview I did with you, you told me that you didn't want to take any planes to have to go to work.

Emili Feliu (Barcelona, 1968) says that he follows to the letter the recipe written down by the baker Eduard Crespo, from the Balmes bakery, the creator of Sant Jordi bread. And with this recipe, and mastery, he has won, for the third time, the competition for the best Sant Jordi bread organized by the Panàtics association. "I have adapted the bread dough, because we prepare it with sourdough, the same one we use to make our breads," he explains on the first day of Sant Jordi week. As Sant Jordi is on Thursday, Emili has decided to dose the amount of Sant Jordi breads he will be making: Monday and Tuesday, about thirty; Wednesday, about two hundred, and Thursday, the big day, about eight hundred. He works with the intention of selling a thousand, which they sell for €28.50 per kilo. That is, it is a bread they sell by weight, which varies between two hundred and fifty and three hundred grams. Therefore, the price will be around six to seven euros.

I interview the cook Ada Parellada (Granollers, 1967) one afternoon after she has finished recording recipe videos. She offers me a piece of a blueberry pie, delicious, which she has prepared with nine ingredients. Only nine ingredients, because that way everything is easier, she says. We start the interview by talking about the last one I did with her, in which she told me the story of her family, and how it was that she decided to open the restaurant Semproniana with her partner. Ada Parellada has just written the book Els plats del dia (Rosa dels Vents), in which she vindicates set menus, like the ones she prepares at her restaurant daily for 23 euros, and which are dishes made from start to finish, and elaborate Catalan cuisine.

Neither sardines nor anchovies. The most sold fish in our country is farmed salmon, which, for this reason, is gray and is dyed a range from pale orange to orange-red depending on the country where it is sold, because it is known that every land fights its war in colors. The popularity of salmon is probably explained because its nutritional benefits have been spread: as it is oily fish, it provides readily available omega-3. Sardines and anchovies from our ports also provide it. And you will say that salmon has no bones, and it is true, because they are removed with industrial machinery, and I counter-argue: the nutritional benefits of salmon, that is, the polyunsaturated fatty acids that regulate blood cholesterol levels and help reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, are only achieved with sardines, anchovies, and oily fish in general with a short lifespan. And with wild salmon. Farmed salmon is another story, and I will explain why.To begin with, in floating cages there is a large number of salmon with a relatively small volume of water, states marine biologist Anna Bozzano, and this fact leads to all sorts of disadvantages. First: medicines have to be used because they are all together and a disease would be easily acquired by all of them. Second: the excrement they form there is organic matter that ends up at the bottom of the sea and suffocates marine life: "There is no animal that can eat it, and that is why the seabed under salmon aquaculture cages are deserts." Fattened with soy feed

To continue, farmed salmon is fattened with feed, made from small caught fish, processed into meal and with soy. “Until a few years ago, to grow one kilogram of salmon, five kilograms of small fish were needed. With soy, it has been balanced to one kilogram of small fish per kilogram of aquaculture; the rest is done by soy”, says Bozzano, who warns that if the proportion of soy with which they make the feed is higher than what the fish can absorb, they get sick because their system is not designed to feed on it. In this fact, the data must be highlighted: small fish and soy are needed to feed aquaculture, and these foods create consequences in the entire system. The small fish used to fatten salmon can come from other areas where the cages are located, such as Africa or South America.And, to finish, let's talk about the color of salmon. Wild salmon eat shrimp that contain a natural pigment, astaxanthin, but there are no small shrimp in the feed, which is why farmed salmon have gray flesh, which the market would not accept if it were put up for sale. So they dye it at the source before putting it on the market. Depending on each country, a different Pantone color. In our country, orange; if you travel and find other shades, lighter, redder, remember that it depends on the final pigment they have given it because it is the color that is liked in that country. A detail: the pigment can be natural or synthetic, which is allowed, but in the latter case, the exact amount that is healthy for the human body is measured, informs marine biologist Anna Bozzano.Despite all this, salmon is the best-selling fish. In 2023, eight thousand tons were sold; in 2024, nine thousand. The second best-selling fish, monkfish, is six thousand tons behind. It is clear, then, the abundance of salmon, but perhaps there is a way to save it: in a growing world population, with an emptying sea, is it perhaps the fish that can provide us with animal protein? But if the sea runs out of small fish, will farmed salmon also not be able to be fed? Perhaps we should eat small local fish and not a distant one, farmed crowded and fed with fish caught on the other side of the world. It is the (dyed) fish that eats its tail.

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The Ninot cheese from the Sant Gil d’Albió cheese factory is the best in Catalonia, according to the Làctium contest in Vic, which chose it from a total of sixteen, from different categories, that had passed a previous elimination phase. A specialized jury, made up of ninety people, met this morning at Casa Ricart in Vic to choose the best of each specialty so that they could advance to the final. In one of the categories, the most popular in recent years, that of cheesecake, the winner has been Jon Cake, a name that refers to the producer Jon García, who started with a shop in El Born in Barcelona and is currently in full expansion, with shops in other neighborhoods of Barcelona and also in Girona. The cake contains three types of cheese: buffalo blue and Garrotxa, both from Muntanyola, and cream, from L’Esquella. García will donate 10% of the sales of this cake to the Fundació Ampans, the non-profit organization that manages the Muntanyola cheese factory.

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The Basque chef Martín Berasategui (San Sebastián, 1960) is opening the restaurant Bera in the coming days on the ground floor of the Monument Hotel Barcelona (paseo de Gracia, 75), which celebrates the tenth anniversary of its inauguration this year. It will have an all-day open kitchen, designed for passers-by and also for tourists staying at the hotel, and focused on product. The goal they are working towards is for it to be a place to go for breakfast, to have a cocktail in the mid-afternoon or at night, as well as to eat and dine there. Regarding the restaurant's name, the hotel has explained that it is a play on the first two syllables of the chef's surname and also the word vera, which in Catalan means true and in Spanish would also mean near.

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Salustià Álvarez, president of the Regulatory Council of the Qualified Designation of Origin Priorat, passed away this Wednesday at noon. Born in Porrera in 1960, Álvarez had worked as an oenologist on various projects, currently the personal one, Álvarez Duran, but also at the Vall Llach winery. He was “the trusted man of Enric Costa and Lluís Llach from 2001 to 2013, in the years when one worked in Vic as a notary and the other was giving concerts,” explains Albert Costa, co-owner of the winery with Isa Serra.The news of Álvarez's death has left the region in consternation; his figure was well-known as a neighbor and also for the various institutional positions he has held. He had been mayor of Porrera, in addition to president of the Regulatory Council of the DOQ Priorat. In a statement released by the DOQ Priorat itself, it is explained that “Salus Álvarez has been a key figure and an indispensable benchmark for understanding the evolution and projection of the DOQ Priorat in recent decades.”

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If two years ago the Corpus of Catalan Cuisine included the recipe for gazpacho, which caused a great stir, the new edition brings grilled fish. "We don't understand how we hadn't included it yet [in the Corpus]; now it's there and also another novelty, fish 'romesco' instead of meat 'romesco'," states Pepa Aymamí (Vallmoll, 1945), who also adds that in the new edition they have included exhaustive files for all ingredients.

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I interview the winemaker Josep Grau (Barcelona, 1965) at Bar Milagros, where we taste two of his wines, the white Granit, made from white Garnacha, and the red La Florens, made from black Garnacha. We pair them with a dish of peas with sea cucumbers and the famous chickpeas with squid. We take the photos in one of the most prized vineyards, in El Pas de l’Estudiant, near Capçanes, where there are vines from 1907. Josep produces a total of eleven wines, which are four whites, six reds, and one rosé, most of them within the Montsant appellation and also within the DOQ Priorat. And this, after starting only 23 years ago, in 2003. He's been in Priorat for ten years. He decided to change his life when he was 50 because he wanted to achieve his dream, and today he says he has accomplished it. His wines sell for between 13, 20, and 60 euros. The most expensive is the Carenes, a white. In total, Josep Grau produces 135,000 bottles annually.

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Eggs have seen it all. There was a time when the advice was to only eat three a week. If you made a potato omelette with eight eggs or prepared a tower of omelettes, you had already consumed more than the recommended percentage. And then what? Our bad cholesterol would increase, we thought. A few years ago, nutrition studies showed that we had suffered counting the weekly eggs consumed for nothing, because dietary cholesterol does not have a direct or significant impact on blood cholesterol, as nutritionists Anna Costa and Anna Grífols state. Therefore, today we live in a golden age for eggs because we can eat as many as we want without worrying about having excess cholesterol in our blood, the kind that accumulates in the arteries, forms plaque and, consequently, increases the risk of heart attacks. Perhaps because of this and also due to dietary trends, egg consumption has increased throughout Europe: in the last ten years we have eaten 20% more than before.Regarding cholesterol, it should be said that nutrition knows that "a good part of it is manufactured by ourselves in our liver, and that what has the most impact is the entirety of the daily diet and the lifestyle we lead," explains Anna Grífols. In other words, we can eat an egg every day, which will have no consequence on bad cholesterol, but, on the other hand, if we accompany that egg with saturated fats, ultra-processed foods, and caloric excesses, then everything changes. And everything changes even more if we lead a sedentary life.The golden age of eggs

To continue, the golden age of eggs is also explained because we like to eat them for breakfast, for dinner and also at , according to data from the Poultry Federation of Catalonia (FAC), which clarifies that the

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In a time of change, the most emblematic festival of sparkling wines from Sant Sadurní d’Anoia is also taking a turn. "We have hired an advertising company to search for and propose another one, which includes all sparkling wine producers in the territory," explains the mayor, Pere Vernet i Caldú, who advances that they have not found it yet, but are working to achieve it. "We know that the name Cavatast is very consolidated," he states. "One of the conditions that the producing wineries not affiliated with the DO Cava have set for us is that we change it if we want them to be included," he explains. It is clear that in the Sant Sadurní City Council, the organizer, they want them to be included, because otherwise, they considered that it did not reflect the richness of the producing territory, and that is why they have commissioned an advertising company to find a name.

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The winegrowers of Penedès have not been so afraid of the future as they are today. They have several indicators to reinforce their fear: Freixenet (which is 100% owned by the German group Henkell) for the past two years is believed to have stopped producing forty million bottles annually within the DO Cava (a figure the winery neither confirms nor denies), last harvest there was an excess of grapes and base wine, and the figures being released on the sale of wines and sparkling wines in general are not optimistic. For all these reasons, the president of the Associació de Viticultors del Penedès, Josep Anton Vendrell, states that they are living through “a very critical situation, in which 35% of the planted vineyard in Penedès would be surplus (between seven thousand and ten thousand hectares of vineyard), and in this upcoming harvest, the price of grapes could plummet; last year the DO Cava paid between 46 or 60 euro cents”. If there is surplus vineyard, if there is aid from the European Union to uproot it, it is clear that the territory could change in a few years to cease being the green lung between Barcelona and Tarragona, and give way to industrial estates or fields with solar panels, historical threats derived from urban pressure. To this situation is added a certainty: the transfer of some wineries from the DO Cava to Corpinnat, a brand that works to ensure an agreement with the winegrower with a steadily increasing price each year.

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I interview Ricard Llop (Valls, 1995) together with his colleague Pau Feliu (Tarragona, 1992), seated at the table closest to the kitchen of the restaurant El Cup Vell. Both have proposed that I eat a menu (I will remember the turnip Russian salad with sorrel for a long time) in which I have verified the good work of both. El Cup Vell is located in the upper part of Tarragona, on a street where there are other restaurants. Its has the appearance of a private house, with a wooden door framed by a semicircular arch with voussoirs. The interior is cozy, with two spaces, and it is clear with the old vat, underground, which can be observed through a glass. Pau Feliu opened the restaurant in December 2017 together with another colleague, and three months later Ricard joined him. Nine years later, Pau and Ricard are the ones in charge. Before interviewing them, I ate some of the dishes from the menu, and paired them with kombucha tea. They also have wines, and no popular brand of soft drinks.

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They are called Mourtalla Diop, Mamadou Diop, Cheikh Wele and Thierno Sene; they were born in Senegal and speak Wolof as their first language. None of the four knew each other before meeting at the ports of Vilanova i la Geltrú and Cambrils, where they work. All four share a similar story of overcoming adversity: they come from fishing families in Senegal, a country they had to leave because one day what they knew how to do, fishing, had become a profession with no future. They left the so-called Global South of the African coast to look for a new job, a new life, and they have found it in the Catalan ports. “I like fishing because it’s what I’ve always done,” explains Mamadou one afternoon at the port of Vilanova i la Geltrú. Mamadou shares the same surname as Mourtalla, but they comment that they are not related. “We met working at the port of Vilanova,” they say, adding that the surname Diop is common in Senegal.

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Paella sparks discussions even on the day it appears as a prize. On March 1st, the day Òmnium Cultural awarded Josep Piera (Beniopa, 1947) the Prize of Honor for Catalan Letters, the entity did so with a Valencian paella, large in diameter, but, alas!, the debate began. "That it was white, and not yellow, that it wasn't right for me to be given the prize along with a paella because it was associating me with a cliché, it was even said that from now on Majorcans should receive prizes with ensaïmades, and Catalans, with botifarra and beans", calmly explains the writer Josep Piera in Lleida, where he has gone to participate in the Lleida Poetry Festival. But if Josep Piera has dedicated dozens of pages to paella! If he has dedicated countless hours of study to paella! If the angels sing to the paella that Josep Piera cooks!

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In an artisanal sausage, the ingredients can be counted on one hand, and there are usually some left over. They are meat, salt, and spices. Industrial sausages, let's call them that because the law allows them to be differentiated from artisanal ones, contain more additives, including lactose, which on the ingredient list of the cured meat can be mentioned as whey,milk powder, lactitol or directly lactose, explains dietitian-nutritionist Anna Grífols.

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Bread with tomato is linked to Catalan identity, and we probably wouldn't find another food that identifies us so emotionally in such a clear way. The slice of bread spread with tomato, then salted and finally drizzled with extra virgin olive oil is a (universal) symbol of Catalans, but there are those who don't like it, who don't eat it, who only see drawbacks, and who, despite all this, are also Catalan, that's clear. The latter are the ones who, when they order a sandwich or some slices of bread, kindly ask for the bread to be only with olive oil. You will hear them emphasize it a few times, because they know that, in our home, by inertia, the bread will be with tomato. The novelty is that, over the years, another group of people has joined this last group, who maintain that currently barbarities and sacrileges are being committed with a food that, in theory, is very simple to prepare, and which has an economic cost. The sacrileges or barbarities are multiple: grated tomato with a grater on top of the slice of bread; tomato sauce obtained after crushing the tomatoes, with skins included, and spread on the bread with a brush; acidity of the food due to using tomatoes that are not ripe, red, or shiny. To all this we can add that the food has not managed to become universal despite the fact that there are Catalan chefs who have opened restaurants around the world and put it on the menu. The longed-for Montse Guillén did it in her restaurant in New York, and the Catalan Clos family also currently does it in the hotel they have in London and Madrid, where at the breakfast buffet they serve bread with tomato, and made in an orthodox way and, therefore, good. We cite only two examples; surely we can find more, but they have not amplified the food to make it a Catalan icon in the world. Thus, when we travel, we don't need to try to explain how to make bread with tomato because it will be difficult for us to get it right: at most we will manage to get the tomato cut into slices between the bread, which, it must be said, is how bread with tomato is eaten on the islands of Mallorca and Ibiza.Indignation like the Italians do

At the Semproniana restaurant, chef Ada Parellada assures that "without pan con tomate" she would die, because for her "food is home, comfort". She thinks it's great that "people get indignant if it's done badly", just like Italians do with their dishes, who, when they are not prepared in an orthodox way, raise their voices to the sky. "If we get indignant about bad pan con tomate, we don't let ourselves be trampled on, and perhaps there are few dishes that make us indignant when they are poorly prepared". When should we say no to pan con tomate? When it's pureed, the sauce is placed in a bowl, and they dip a brush in the sauce to put it on sliced bread. "And they do it in front of us, defying our eyes; that's when I celebrate people getting angry". And it's like that because the chef maintains that it's not that difficult, because there are four ingredients: bread, tomato, salt, and olive oil, and because "we have good products". In fact, the same "tomate de colgar" (hanging tomato) "is technologically manipulated to have good skin, to be picked with tweezers, and good pulp, so that it comes off on the bread when we moisten it", says Parellada, who adds that she understands that restaurants, when working in large volumes, might find it quicker to have the tomato pureed beforehand to moisten it. "I understand, but I repeat that it's easy to prepare it when they ask for pan con tomate". To all this, she only has one more nuance to add: "if the tomato is ripe it won't be acidic, and you also have to be very picky because those of us who eat it regularly have a very integrated taste". Meanwhile, at the Trü restaurant in Barcelona (C. Córsega, 232) the slice of pan con tomate is prepared by the chefs with ceremony and passion. The "tomate de colgar", you will see it from the table or the bar where you eat; the chefs pick one while they toast the slice of bread in front of you. Then they rub the tomato on it, add salt, and drizzle with oil. Chef Artur Martínez and his entire team show that there is hope when it comes to eating a very good one.On the other hand, to understand how a slice of pan con tomate has become a symbol of a people's identity, we have to go back centuries, but not too far. The tomato arrived from America at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors, and when it arrived in Spain it didn't arouse passions, quite the opposite: that intense red color could only be a sign of the devil, it was believed. The 16th, 17th, 18th centuries were passing, and it wasn't until 1884 that a Catalan writer, Pompeu Gener (whom bestselling author David Uclés confesses he would have liked to meet) mentioned the dish in a writing. The one who first explained Pompeu Gener's reference was Néstor Luján, who wrote it down in a newspaper article a century later, in 1984. A year later, the artist Leopoldo Pomés wrote it down in the most complete and original book on pan con tomate, "Teoría y práctica del pan con tomate", that the oldest reference was from 1884. And since then we have relied on this data, which is difficult to verify in Pompeu Gener's work, or at least, we must confess that we haven't succeeded. The phrase that the journalist and writer Néstor Luján said was the first written literary reference to pan con tomate was the following: "What we ate one night was bread with oil seasoned with tomato". In any case, Leopoldo Pomés maintained in his book that the orthodox way of preparing it was with "pan de payés" (a type of rustic bread), spread on both sides with the "red and substantial varnish", then salted, and finally, drizzled with olive oil. The order of the ingredients is basic, because if the salt was placed after the olive oil, it would then slide down. On the contrary, if the salt is put on before the olive oil, it sticks to the bread. For the dish not to be acidic – one of the reproaches of the anti pan con tomate crowd – the important thing is the ripeness of the tomato and also that the maximum acidity limit of olive oil is 0.4. "You also shouldn't rub the tomato hard; the spreading shouldn't be excessive", because spreading pan con tomate is not like putting jam on it. "The exact point is what gives it a red tint", said Pomés, who also theorized about the centimeters needed for distance when applying olive oil to the slice: 10. And above all, skins should not be used, the tomato skins, which are only useful for handling, for picking them with your fingers and rubbing them on the bread.Beyond the orthodox recipe, let's remember this: with both sides spread, Leopoldo Pomés also revealed a conversation he had with the founder of Motel Empordà and Hotel Almadrava, Josep Mercader. In a conversation they had, Mercader had told him that he "considered it a mistake to add sugar to tomato sauce to soften its acidity", so those who had thought of this resource so that acidity wouldn't be an argument to reject the dish, wouldn't be doing it right either. For the tomato to have a good flavor on the bread, he would cut the tomatoes in half, remove the water and seeds, wrap them in a clean cloth like a small bag, and hang them in the refrigerator overnight. This is how "the tomato shed all its acidic liquids, and then acquired a natural and splendid sweetness", wrote Pomés. Chef Jaume Subirós assures that even today this is how they prepare it at Hotel Almadrava. Finally, the author of the book dedicated to pan con tomate assured that it was a very economical dish. In 1985, preparing one cost 17.60 pesetas, which if euros had existed would have been approximately 10 cents. With the accumulated inflation from 1985 to 2026, it is difficult to say that a slice of pan con tomate has this cost. However, Pomés maintains an argument that remains very current today: pan con tomate is versatile and adaptable. You can eat it for breakfast, lunch, a snack, or dinner. It can be a festive dish or help you survive a meal. And for many more advantages we find, there is always the freedom of those who don't like it, those who say that Catalan identity cannot be identified with a dish that we haven't been eating for so many centuries. Long before we ate pan con tomate, we ate bread with oil and garlic.

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In Sant Sadurní d’Anoia and in the Penedès region in general, everyone knew it would eventually happen, but no one knew when. The day has arrived. The Juvé & Camps winery, from Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, has abandoned the Cava designation of origin to enter its annual production of two and a half million sparkling wines into the Corpinnat brand. After two exhaustive audits in which Corpinnat verified that the winery meets the requirements to be included, Juvé & Camps submitted its withdrawal request to the Regulatory Council of Cava last Wednesday. "We have taken a natural step, and it was a decision made with great prudence," explains the CEO, Meritxell Juvé, adding that in a company that works with the future in mind, everything is well thought out. She says this because Juvé & Camps sparkling wines have a resting period of six to seven years before they are released to the market, and because the winery is centenary. "My father is 83 years old and is aware of everything. In fact, he himself says he won't make a mistake with the words Cava or Corpinnat, because he always says he makes Juvé & Camps," says his daughter.

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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".

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