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Barcelona’s old bodegas are resilient specimens. Despite facing the forces of development and gentrification, they have had an incredible capacity for preservation, remaining one of the few businesses in the city still alive with the same energy of decades past. The strong attachment of locals in Barcelona to the magnetic personality of their neighborhood bodega is the secret of these survivors’ evolutionary strength.

Bodega Josefa, located in El Farró neighborhood’s Lesseps, is a prime example. Originally a 1920s cellar and shop for bulk wine called Casa Paco, now the bodega offers one of the best homey lunch menus and vermut aperitifs in the area, as well as stomping grounds for neighborhood FC Barcelona fans.

“Do you see it? Here it is, Laporta, the president of Barça,” the bartender Jordi Balsalobre exclaims as we walk in, pointing at the wall. It is so packed with posters, press clippings, humorous postcards and photographs, that it takes us a full minute to finally see the picture of Joan Laporta in this very bodega, with Jordi by his side dressed head-to-toe in Barça blue and red.

We order vermut, and go to snap a picture of Jordi serving it to us when he pulls out a pair of bright red plastic lips. “He is a total character!” a regular turns to tell us, laughing.

Jordi is one of the owners of Bodega Josefa, and a quick look around makes both that and his status as a jokester quite clear. He is dressed in costume after costume: a reverend, a footballer and one of his own creation, “Buffalo George.” Aside from the barrels of wine and Barça paraphernalia are more homages to the American Wild West cliché. An animal skull hangs on the wall, as well as various “wanted” posters. We spot pictures of Jordi and others from the neighborhood square dancing, dressed as sheriffs, cowboys and fugitives.

Jordi tells us that between 2000 and 2012, he got really into American Country music and dancing. The bodega used to organize parties, dinners and line dancing events. But around 2013, they started embracing a more local passion, one closer to the neighbors’ daily concerns: FC Barcelona.

It’s clear Jordi’s comedic personality has brought a lot of life to the bodega, which locals affectionately call “Pepeta,” an endearment for the name Josefa. In fact, Jordi’s aunt, Josefa Mata, was the real star when she took over the business in the 60s – giving Casa Paco her name and serving up its first tapas on marble tables she had installed. Pepeta’s nephews, Jordi and his brother Manel Balsalobre Mata, took over the bodega after she retired.

Bodega Josefa offers one of the best homey lunch menus and vermut aperitifs in the area, as well as stomping grounds for neighborhood FC Barcelona fans.
The two added their tasty, homey lunch menu and vermouth aperitifs to the tapas list. Jordi says since the bodega dedicated itself to FB Barcelona, their concept has simply become “menús, vermúts y fútbol!” They are wholly committed to the culé cause, he adds, using the local slang term for “Barça fans.” (The name comes from “cul,” meaning “ass” in Catalan. At FC Barcelona’s first playing grounds in the early 1900s, Barça fans used to watch games while sitting atop a wall surrounding the pitch. Any passerby who happened to look up would catch sight of a sea of backsides.)

Just as their enthusiasm for Barça has further solidified their customer base, so have their Thursday rice dishes. On this day of the week, the bodega is always crowded with diners. Well-cooked and succulent, the rich dishes change each week. They could be muntanya (mountain rice, with meat and vegetables), a seafood rice, codfish or black rice (with squid or cuttlefish and their ink). One never knows, but it’s always a welcome surprise.

The changing lunch menu is also highly celebrated amongst the local neighborhood’s culinary offerings. For tapas, Pepeta offers anchovies, gildas (skewered pickled vegetables and cured anchovies), and cheese and charcuterie boards.

In the kitchen, Encarna García, Manel’s wife, manages the stove. She uses a mix of her Andalusian roots, intuition and knowledge of traditional Catalan market cuisine to bring unpretentious and excellent dishes to life. She humbly tells us that it is really all about using quality products. Some of her specialties, besides the prized rice dishes, include a dish of snails and a couple varieties of Andalusian stew – she concocts ones of beans, potatoes and chard, or others with eggs and chiles. She also perfectly poaches eggs, and can grill up some mean meat and fish.

“For a long time, I used to eat out, and I was eating awfully,” she tells us. “So, when it came time for me to cook for others, I said, ‘enough!’ I try to be honest and open about what is going in my cooking. My kitchen is open, diners can just come in and see what I’m doing.”

This open-door policy is one thing we and locals love about Bodega Josefa. We hope to keep seeing them open for a very long time – evolving with the locals, accumulating more jokes and silly pictures, celebrating and dancing among the barrels of wine.

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Published on January 17, 2022

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