Praise for La Bodega d'en Rafel

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Memorable bars often go unnoticed. La Bodega d'en Rafel, one of Sant Antoni's monuments, a priori does not meet any of the attributes that would consecrate it as a gastronomic temple. There are no designer furniture, no select clientele, no multi-starred kitchens. It doesn't even have a terrace: "I bought the tables and chairs, but since the City Council gave me trouble, I keep them in the warehouse," Rafel Jordana, neighborhood pope and owner of the place, explained to me.

From Manso street you only see a glass door full of all kinds of advertisements, and once inside, your eyes go to the bar, long as a day without bread and with many regulars parked, drinking. Only if we make our way through the crowd will we begin to see the marble tables and the hideous mosaics, like an Andalusian patio, that tile the place. We said it from the start: here, very little glamour.

But there is an intangible, in La Bodega d'en Rafel, an elusive je ne sais quoi that transforms this aesthetic shipwreck into one of Barcelona's most beloved haunts. Perhaps it's because of the feast, with that surprising, Olympic ham, which no one knows how it can be so cheap. Or perhaps it's the fauna, of retirees in the morning and youth at dusk, Erasmus, freelancers and students from other regions. Or perhaps the secret is the people who work there, locals like Michael, for years the star waiter –or at least our favorite–, an authentic rockabilly who would get dizzy when there were too many people and could take your order up to three times. He died a few months ago, but before that he was able to travel to Memphis and do the Elvis route: upon returning he told everyone about it in great detail.

"You can have the best market in the world next door, or serve the best food, but if you are not empathetic and do not love your customers, people will not come back." And he is absolutely right: judging by the queues that form, Rafel must have a very big heart.

Or, who knows, perhaps the great secret of La Bodega d'en Rafel is, simply, Rafel Jordana himself. He says he never saw himself as a bartender. Son of Astell, in Vall Fosca, he came down to study in Barcelona and immediately found work in the world of motorcycles and advertising. "Until Maria's father, my wife, who ran the place, got sick and died. I left the motorcycles and came here." He has been at the helm of the bodega for more than four decades, which was first called Terra Alta and then he named after himself. In this way, the (unofficial) birth of La Bodega d'en Rafel would be linked to the awakening of the neighborhood, fifteen years before the current hipsterland.

Be that as it may, Rafel, quiet and prudent, knows how to build customer loyalty more than any promotional card. He says it's a family inheritance, a gift learned from his parents, pillars of Pallars: "They taught me to be empathetic with people. Everyone has passed through the ancestral home of Astell, and my mother has cooked for Josep Pla, for many politicians, and also for the Roca brothers." This sense of hospitality, increasingly rare in this era of balance sheets and profit and loss accounts, could be another explanation for the Rafelian intangible. After all, that the shop is made by the shopkeeper is one of the maxims of the house. "You can have the best market in the world next door, or serve the best food, but if you are not empathetic and do not love your customers, people will not come back." And he is absolutely right: judging by the queues that form, Rafel must have a very big heart.