Once upon a time there was a man from Zaragoza who, from a delicatessen on the old Salmerón street in Barcelona, served the residents of the area as best he knew and could. His name was Víctor Clemente Mellado and, after the Civil War, he moved with his wife, Felipa Paniello Lozano, to Valldoreix (Sant Cugat del Vallès), where he started his own business: a very small crowded
Her granddaughter, Sònia Clemente, explains that she immediately gained the sympathy of the people who lived there. “The owner of the first grocery store that he had opened in the town, which was next to my grandfather's, decided to rent it to him because he was taking in all the customers,” she says, full of pride. The Clemente family ended up purchasing this historic establishment from its owner around the 1950s, where they continued to offer all types of select products. The business, which they called Colmado Víctor, prospered even more.
The couple's son, Víctor Clemente Paniello, ended up inheriting that successful company, who ran it with the same skill until his retirement. After that, they rented it. By then, Sónia was running a restaurant whose license had been granted by the City Council and she had never thought about taking the reins of that store where her people had invested so much time and effort. But everything changed when she lost the concession. “I decided to come home.”
With the help of his family, he ventured into opening an intimate bistro in the space that had housed Colmado Víctor. They tried to respect the essence of the place as much as possible: they kept the white marble counter and the original shelves, as well as the stained glass windows at the entrance, and with the leftover counters they made the tables. “We changed the wallpaper and my father almost got upset,” she remembers with a laugh.
The start was not easy. With the pandemic, they had to jump on the takeout bandwagon. They were afraid of not getting ahead, but those neighbors who had welcomed their grandfather so well, did the same with them. “It was amazing. When we opened, there were lines at the entrance of people who wanted to help us.”
Today, their 24 K-dires (the restaurant was named after the number of chairs they have) works perfectly. They offer many of the recipes that Sònia, Felipa and Espérance's grandmothers made, such as onion soup or pickled rabbit. Other classics on the menu are the delicious eggplants with confit tomato, caramelized onion and goat cheese, or the cod with white beans and garlic mousseline, just right, which they cannot remove "because otherwise they will complain to us," says Sònia. .
She takes care of the kitchen with the help of her mother, Rose Marie Marquès, and the father also lends a hand when necessary, for example, chopping and sautéing leeks for the quiche. They prepare homemade and abundant dishes with seasonal ingredients that they buy from producers and merchants in the area, such as Can Domènech or La Rural. And Xavier Fitó, head waiter and mixologist, serves the tables with kindness and efficiency. I hope they do well for many more years.
