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.

“Hello, my name is Montserrat, I'm from Plans de Cornet I'm eighty-three years old, and today I'm going to make you a wild boar stew”, she tells us, as she opens the farmhouse door for us. If we look in the Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balear we find that singlar, also written singlà, appears “as a synonym for senglar" in Igualada, Calders, Centelles, Manresa, etc. Our wise woman is from Bages. She lives in a neat farmhouse, where geese, dogs, rabbits, and chickens also live, in addition, of course, to part of her family. Today she is accompanied by one of her granddaughters, from Manresa, who, smiling, tells us: “I'm her assistant, but she goes on her own!” It's true. Our wise woman is agile, she doesn't stop moving, lifting pots. She immediately cuts fuet (homemade) to offer it to us.

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.

The Boqueria Market has named Carles Gaig alongside other great figures, as it has included him in its Council of Sages. A recognition also received by Juanito Bayén (from Pinotxo), Jean-Louis Neichel, Isidre Gironès, Josep Lladonosa, Jaume Subirós, or Francesc Fortí. The history of the Gaig family and gastronomy began in 1869 in Horta, when his great-grandmother created a "little tavern", in the chef's words, with chairs and a watering trough for horses. People passed by there to avoid entering Barcelona, where they had to pay a few cents to pass. So, to avoid the tax, many people used this route to go from Sant Andreu del Palomar to Esplugues and save themselves the fee. The great-grandmother, with a commercial nose, began to offer simple dishes, and that's how the business started and predestined Carles Gaig's future long before he was born. Today, he receives this tribute with his wife, Fina Navarro, National Gastronomy Award for her work in the dining room, and their daughter Maria, the fifth generation who has already joined the restaurant, seated in the front row.

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.

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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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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I interview Clàudia Gozzi (Barcelona, 1990) and Jaime Bes (El Burgo de Ebro, 1992) hours before they cook dishes alongside other colleagues of their generation and profession. We are at the Reversible restaurant (inside the Hotel Indigo) in Barcelona, and the dinner that has led them to move from La Pobla de Segur to Barcelona is called Generación del 25, which brings together the chefs nominated last year as best at the Gastronomic Forum Barcelona. They were among them. As we talk, we greet the others, gathered for the same reason: Fran Baixas, from Franca; Ricard, from El Cup Vell; Jeffrey Ruiz and Helena Termes, from La Cort del Mos, and Robert Lechuga and Esther Gómez, from the future restaurant Arrel, in Mataró.Clàudia and Jaime opened the restaurant El Raier in La Pobla de Segur in July 2022, where they have become a benchmark both for the region and for others due to their excellent new Catalan cuisine.

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I interview Pep Salsetes, that is, Josep Lluís Sabatés Ibáñez (Barcelona, ​​1945), at the Documenta bookstore in Barcelona. We've arranged to meet a few hours before he presents his book to a loyal audience. Let's cook! Catalan cuisine for the whole family (Rosa dels Vents), where she explains recipes for young and old to cook together at home. Pep has driven from Ametlla del Vallès, where he livesHe's brought boxes of food because there will be refreshments after the presentation. He's even reproduced some pages of the book in color and attached the actual food he describes. Literally. He's a creative man who grows vegetables at home, then recycles them, as well as writes and cooks.

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"Welcome to Clos de Ca Gras. I invite you to a calçotada and I'll make the sauce for you," she tells us. It's Pilar Dolç, a surname—what sonorous surnames, Catalans!—that seems to have predestined her in the kitchen. She's the daughter of farmers and now, at seventy-eight, she's still going strong.

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Bar Milagros has a name from another era, but it's a modern restaurant (with a menu and website in Catalan) that draws inspiration from France in its service and decor. On the table, you'll find top-quality products, which you can even choose yourself from the display case showcasing the fish and seafood. The day I ate there, the case held cockles, razor clams, langoustines, mussels, and monkfish.

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I interview chef Àlex López (Banyoles, 1992) at his restaurant Arraval (c. Marquès de Barberà, 22), which opened last November. It's 7 p.m., he's just finished dinner, and he's getting ready to start the day's service, which is always early evening, except on Saturdays, when they also serve lunch. The restaurant is bright and located on a side street off the Rambla del Raval. A few meters further on is the legendary Bar Cañete. Arraval is one of the best options for Catalan cuisine in the Raval neighborhood, along with Suculent and Ca l'Isidre. The average bill is 50 euros, and it seats between forty and fifty people, in addition to a private room for twenty-five. Àlex, a good conversationalist, I met last summer at the Alkostat del Mar restaurant, inside the Finca Victoria hotel, located on Sa Riera beach, Begur.

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It's the restaurant at the Seventy Barcelona Hotel (c. Córcega, 344-352), called The Patio, and it's a lush garden of olive and lemon trees where you can have breakfast, lunch, dinner, or drinks. For those looking for a quiet place to eat and chat in the heart of Barcelona, ​​this is an option that will exceed all expectations. The hotel's main entrance is right in front of the restaurant, so you don't have to go through reception to say you're going to the outdoor dining area. If you go on a chilly day, like the ones we've had this winter, there's also an indoor restaurant with wooden tables, sofas, and private areas if you need more privacy.

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If keeping up with chef Nandu Jubany and learning about all his business ventures, from efficient catering to well-traveled croquettes, is already difficult, he's now added a new chapter to his long list of collaborations. Anyone flying Singapore Airlines from Barcelona from May 1st onwards, if they fly in business class, will be eligible. businessHe will be eating the menus designed by the Catalan chef.

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This week's featured woman is so wise that she has instilled in her three children a love for cooking and a passion for it. One of them, Josep Sucarrats, is a food journalist. He has written books on food and edited a magazine. Kitchen And he writes for various publications. His mother says that he and his two brothers have been raised in the kitchen since they were little. "At home, we drank water from the well. At nightfall, since we have a shop here at the farmhouse, we go and choose a cabbage, or whatever is in season, so it's fresh and good, it adds up. Everything comes from Grandma. Eating good fruit, eating rabbit, good wine is what matters most, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. eh?"

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I still remember the day we met. I was working in France, and one weekend when I returned to Sant Pol, I went to cook at Salvador Sauleda's house with Josep Vilella. During that meal, they mentioned a man named Santi Santamaria; I'd never heard of him before. They told me he had a restaurant in Sant Celoni, a town in the Baix Montseny region. "He has two Michelin stars," they said. And so I went back to Paris.

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Grandfather Josep Perich, a charcoal burner by trade, was forced to change jobs when butane gas appeared. "They offered him the position of butane gas representative for the region, but he turned it down; he was that visionary," explains his grandson, Jordi Perich, the cook at Cal Carter, with a touch of irony. Having lost his job, he and his wife, Margarita Singla, opened a restaurant in Mura on Puig-Geli Street. Initially, the establishment was called Cal Batista, after the house it was located in, but it soon became known as Cal Carter because, in addition to the restaurant, Grandfather also found work as a mail carrier. He had to pull every string to bring home a paycheck. The restaurant took off, and his two sons, Martí and Jordi, "who were mischievous," would spend their days there after school. When the eldest son was 18, his mother, Margarita, died, and he had to take over the kitchen. The youngest son started in the dining room. And so they continued with a job that led them to serve up to two hundred meals in a single service. "Dad and uncle cooked a lot," explains Jordi.

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I interview Joan Junyent (Sitges, 1973) at his restaurant, Windsor (c. Córcega, 286). Customers who have just enjoyed the Catalunya menu congratulate him on the idea and leave enthusiastically through the automatically opening door. The warm reception of the menu, which he launched last September, has led him to extend it for several more months into 2026; in fact, he's considering keeping it available year-round. He conceived it to coincide with World Gastronomy Region, but, as a staunch advocate of Catalan cuisine, Joan wants to keep it going. Considering the number of dishes prepared with high-quality ingredients, the value for money is unbeatable: it costs €69.

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Joan Font (Barcelona, ​​1961) takes on the challenge of presiding over the Catalan Academy of Gastronomy and Nutrition when it has only been a month since the death of Carles VilarrubíThis Wednesday, at the traditional game luncheon that the Academy holds at the La Venta restaurant, he will officiate his first act as president, a position he will hold until 2030.

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It's Wednesday, and I'm sitting at the bar of Kiosko Universal, one of the four restaurants in Barcelona's Boqueria Market, which The chef Quim Márquez, Quim from La Boqueria, always recommendsNext to me, at a round table near the bar, a couple has ordered a seafood platter. It costs 36 euros and is so generous it could easily be a main course. There are mussels, clams, prawns, squid, razor clams, and langoustines. I consider ordering it, but today I opt for other dishes recommended by Borja Domínguez (Barcelona, ​​1991).

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