Opening a new restaurant requires a minimum investment of €400,000 for a space of about one hundred square meters in Barcelona's Eixample district. This figure can quickly increase, depending on the luxury you want to put into the restaurant (type of wood, lighting, furniture in general) and also depending on whether the work on the space needs to start from scratch or not. However, having the money isn't the most important thing for a successful start, because there are many other obstacles, not always financial, that can make the opening take from three months to a year. Among the difficulties are bureaucracy, municipal permits that don't arrive quickly; the dining room and kitchen equipment, which in today's hospitality industry is one of the biggest headaches, and also getting manufacturers to commit to completion dates for the construction. But many more obstacles can be added, such as the possibility of soundproofing the restaurant, which may be an unforeseen event that hadn't been taken into account. Thus, opening a restaurant is an odyssey that has a distant Ithaca: ensuring the restaurant is full of diners.

Cruix is the go-to restaurant in Barcelona for good rice dishes; everyone knows this, and it's no prophecy. I interview Valencian chef Miquel Pardo (Onda, 1989) one afternoon, just before service begins, and he tells me he's having a very busy few weeks because he's opening a new Cruix on Calle Mallorca, but he still has work to do and probably won't open until September. He's also decided to adapt to customer demand, which is to lower the prices of his menus. After the pandemic, people suggested very exclusive dishes with expensive ingredients. Now, he says, that's no longer the case. So, of the three menus he offers, priced at €43, €56, and €72, he'll reduce them to €39 (the first) and €69 (the third). And he has yet another new dish, his own onion soup with Tête de Moine AOP cheese, which won the Cheese Chef's Challenge held in Barcelona last March.