Nomo will open in the Eixample and in the 'Gourmet Experience' of El Corte Inglés de Goya

Fifteen years have passed since the opening of Nomo Gràcia, the Japanese restaurant inaugurated in 2007 on Gran de Gràcia street by brothers Borja and Juan Molina-Martell, with their brother-in-law, Ramón Jiménez, and chef Naoyuki Haginoya. The four partners have woven over these years a restaurant group that today has a network of eight restaurants located in Barcelona (3), Madrid, Girona, and on the Costa Brava, in the towns of Llafranc (2) and Sant Feliu de Guíxols. The business is complemented by Nomomoto, the home delivery service, operational in the Catalan capital for more than ten years and in Madrid for two.

With a turnover that in 2022 reached 15 million euros ---above pre-pandemic revenues---, Grupo Nomo faces a new phase of growth with the recent opening of Nomo Mar in Llafranc (in the premises of the old Jani restaurant), plans to open a restaurant in the Eixample, and an agreement with El Corte Inglés that will allow it to inaugurate its second establishment in Madrid this summer. Specifically, Nomo is finalizing the launch of a venue in the Gourmet Experience that the department store group owns in El Corte Inglés on Goya street. Nomo will thus become the only establishment specializing in Japanese food in this gastronomic multi-space in the Spanish capital, which combines tasting with the sale of gourmet products.

The new Nomo, already under construction, will occupy a 90-square-meter space within the Gourmet Experience and will be open all day, operating with a continuous kitchen model that will offer all kinds of sushi and hot proposals such as gyozas, rice dishes, or noodles. "It will be a reduced adaptation of the Nomo menu, with some novelties," Borja Molina-Martell, general director of the group, tells The New Barcelona Post. According to the executive, with this opening, Nomo will recover the NomoMarket brand, which it had used for the delivery service of the old Kuo (now Nomo Galvany) and which it put on stand by when launching the Nomomoto brand.

"Our goal is to test this new format with a more reduced offer, which we will call NomoMarket, in the Gourmet Experience in Goya, and if it is successful, we could replicate it in other El Corte Inglés stores, in other shopping centers, or even in airports, which is a business line that we are very interested in exploring," explains Molina-Martell.

This second opening in Madrid joins the recent launch of a tasting area with capacity for a dozen diners at the Nomomoto establishment in the Spanish capital, located on Eugenio Salazar street. "On Eugenio Salazar we only had the central kitchen to handle online orders, but now we have opened a room with eight or nine tables," he highlights. In Madrid, 70% of its delivery business is generated through Glovo, with whom they work exclusively, while in Barcelona the percentage is totally inverse, as Nomomoto's own website absorbs 70% of orders, compared to 30% for Glovo.

Search for a location near the Bernabeu

Nomo landed in Madrid in the midst of the pandemic, in July 2020, with a restaurant located on Braganza street that they inaugurated in alliance with swimmer Ona Carbonell, a great friend of the family who, at that time, had just won MasterChef Celebrity and was interested in venturing into the gastronomy sector. "The truth is that Madrid has welcomed us very well; we are very happy," highlights the co-owner of Nomo, who has already started looking for a second location to establish themselves in the area of the Santiago Bernabéu stadium. "Once we inaugurate NomoMarket in the Gourmet Experience, we would like to open a second Nomo in Madrid with capacity for one hundred diners, at the end of 2023 or in 2024," he anticipates.

There are also plans to grow in Barcelona, as Nomo is already in negotiations to rent a space in the Eixample that will be its first opening below Diagonal. "In the second half of this year we are going to open a fourth Nomo in Barcelona, in the area of Valencia, Aribau, Muntaner and Balmes streets," says Molina-Martell.

According to the restaurateur, in 2024 the idea is to consolidate these three new openings (Gourmet Experience, Madrid-Bernabeu and Barcelona Eixample) and prepare to "make the leap to new cities" starting in 2025, when the Nomo brand could reach places like Zaragoza or Valencia. "People ---he emphasizes--- are a limiting factor for growth, which is why we have launched a training school led by Nao, our gastronomic director." The school is located on Calabria Street in Barcelona, in facilities where Nomo has also located its dessert workshop and the R&D kitchen-center where Nao Haginoya develops the new dishes on the menu.

New headquarters on Londres Street

In parallel, to face this growth process, Nomo has also recently opened a new corporate headquarters on Londres Street, where the offices are located and the entire group is managed, which already exceeds 200 employees and a turnover that in 2022 reached 15 million, above the 12 million recorded in 2019, the pre-pandemic year. This year revenues could reach 16 million. The average price of its restaurants ranges between 40 and 45 euros, placing it in the upper-middle segment of Japanese restoration. "Our obsession is to maintain quality and offer very good service to customers," emphasizes the director of Grupo Nomo. "We summarize our values in the word PACO, in allusion to Passion, continuous Learning, Quality and Obtaining results," he adds, after pointing out that they are also based on the kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement.

Borja Molina-Martell assures that the group is not open to the incorporation of financial partners and that its commitment is to reinvest 100% of the profits and to prudently rely on bank debt to finance its growth plans. They can, however, allow partners to enter to open in certain locations, as they did in Madrid with Ona Carbonell and on the Costa Brava, where they partnered with the Figueras family and Xavier Rocas to manage Far Nomo, Nomo Nàutic and Nomo Mar. "We are very conservative, we like to go step by step. Several funds have come looking for us, but we do not want to open up the capital, we want to remain a family business and we have the dream of passing this business on to our children," he concludes.

Nomo x Varela Tacos, collaboration with Grupo Varela

Following the successful collaboration with chef Nino Redruello, with whom they created a Japanese dish with Armando escalope, Katsudon, this month Nomo has partnered with Grupo Varela "in homage to 15 years of friendship" between the two Barcelona restaurant companies. Chefs Naoyuki Haginoya and Carlos Alluè have opted for the taco concept to unite "the best of Japan and Catalonia in a single bite." Thus, each chef has designed a taco representative of their gastronomy and, from June 15 to July 15, they can be tasted jointly in both Nomo restaurants (Gràcia, Sarrià, Galvany and Far Nomo) and those of Grupo Varela (La Xarxa, Varela and Bodega La Puntual). Each serving, which includes the two tacos, costs eight euros.

Carlos Alluè, from Varela, has designed a braised beef taco with mirin, soy, hoisin mayonnaise, gherkin and pickled onion, while Nao has opted for a tuna tartare taco with mató, anchovy and sobrasada sauce, a product whose potential he discovered thanks to his summers in Menorca, an island to which the four Nomo partners are very attached.

"We are delighted to celebrate our 15 years of friendship with this very special collaboration. The Nomo x Varela Tacos represent the union of our visions and the reflection of our shared passion for cooking. We got involved in this proposal with great enthusiasm, convinced that the customer will enjoy it," explains restaurateur José Varela.