In the new episode of the Stay to eat podcast, Ada Parellada reviews a family story that begins by describing the moment when her mother, the most modern woman in Granollers, crossed the street that separated her from the Fonda Europa – “it was like enter another planet” – and her determination, when they began to have children, to make a space in that place where the Parellada grandparents lived, staying in different rooms, to create an intimate space that was as close to an apartment as possible.
Parellada, the youngest of eight siblings, reflects on the life of large families, which “are a clan but also competition,” and the importance of the place each of the children occupies by birth. She also confesses that there are usually wounds that are difficult to heal and that hurt between siblings who grow up competing for the attention of parents who in their case were very busy with the family business.
The owner of the Barcelona restaurant Semproniana, (in fact, more than as a cook she identifies with the term “mestressa”, which for her best defines that woman who has to touch many keys, but who does not stand out in a single one) talks about the times when he studied law to please his father; her about the insecurities with which she started a business of her own with her partner, feeling that she would be judged both by the family and outside her, due to the weight of a surname linked to her good restoration. It was something, she explains, that she achieved thanks to the mixture of those feelings with the daring typical of youth (“you have to puncture the balloon of illusions right away so that it doesn't take you far away”).
He also speaks about the generational change at Fonda Europa, about the role of his brother Ramon Parellada, who, being the fourth, inherited the business, “because Ramon is very good” and how his daughter, Maria Antonia Parellada, now at the front, must fulfill the responsibility of preserving an institution without feeling that commitment as a burden, but with freedom.
Ada Parellada talks about her role as an activist against waste, a battle she undertook at a time when at conferences she heard established chefs give advice to “throw away the least interesting part of the food” or about the need to improve food education .
She also explains, with pain, but driven by her desire to help, the mental health problem that when her children were very young led her to try to take her own life on several occasions and the process to heal, as well as to understand and accept that Depression is a physical problem and that “I wasn't crazy.” Next, she tells of her renunciation of alcohol for more than a decade: “I have banned it due to mental health and addictions.”
Parellada reflects on how society has been changing its relationship with something that went from being a specific drug for moments of searching for communion among a group, to its integration into daily life and at a very young age, with the risk that entails. She also affirms that the existence of a very strong and necessary culture and industry makes it difficult for someone like her, who is dedicated to catering and who loves wine and tasting it, to recognize that alcohol “is shit and destroys people and families.” ”.
