Why should flan be relegated to being just another dessert at the end of the menu? As if it were a wild card that seems essential in any restaurant, but to which little attention is often paid. Why not turn it into the reason someone enters a pastry shop? That is the question that had been circling in the mind of pastry chef Adrián Ramírez, better known on social media as El Chef con Botas (The Chef with Boots), and which has now taken shape in Los Flanes, an establishment dedicated to reclaiming this sweet in all its versions. Opened this October in the Gràcia neighborhood (Puigmartí, 6), the pastry shop is born with a clear premise: to stop treating flan as a secondary dessert and turn it into the true protagonist. And it does so with special attention to the flan parisien, a French specialty that combines a puff pastry base with a creamy, curd-like filling. A recipe that, despite its popularity in Parisian pastry shops, still has a discreet presence in Barcelona establishments.
The opening also adds to an increasingly visible gastronomic trend in the city: that of businesses that forgo offering a wide assortment of sweets to concentrate on a single creation. If for years pastry shop display cases have gathered croissants, tarts, cakes, and specialties of all kinds, now some proposals are betting on making a single recipe their hallmark. First came cheesecakes and American cookies, then tiramisus and other international specialties arrived, but traditional sweets, like crema catalana, have also found their space. In recent weeks, Barcelona has even added a shop dedicated to artisanal torrijas (French toast) and now another focused on flans.
In the case of Los Flanes, it is a project that its creator had been imagining for more than a decade. Ramírez's professional career began as a pastry assistant in a five-star gastronomic hotel in Andorra. From there, he worked in different hotel establishments for a decade, always with pastry as the common thread of his career.
A few years ago, however, he decided to explore another way to share his knowledge: social media. Under the name of El Chef con Botas (The Chef with Boots), he began to publish recipes, disseminate techniques, and offer online cooking courses. A curious pseudonym that plays with the expression "ponerse las botas" (to feast), but also fits with another of his hobbies: traveling to discover the sweets that are part of the gastronomic identity of each place. It was precisely one of those trips, this time to Paris, that finally shaped the idea for this new establishment.
There he discovered to what extent the flan parisien was the authentic best-seller of French patisseries. In Barcelona, on the other hand, he barely found establishments that gave it the same prominence. "Not all patisseries have it on their menu, and those that do leave it as just another pastry item, next to the croissant and the rest," he points out. For him, the logic should be precisely the opposite: "It deserves to be indisputably the star piece." In January of this year, he decided to get to work and shape his own establishment. Nine months later, that idea has finally materialized.
French flans and traditional recipes
The flan parisien, the star of this establishment, is a classic French pastry. On a puff pastry base (similar to a croissant) a thick pastry cream is placed which, after baking, acquires a firm texture on the outside and delicate on the inside. The result brings together two elements that Ramírez considers essential in pastry: the crunchiness of a butter-based dough and the smoothness of a cream that melts in the mouth.
Based on that recipe, Los Flanes offers different interpretations of the Parisian flan, with Madagascar vanilla as one of the most classic versions. But the menu includes more creative proposals, such as the triple pistachio, which combines a creamy texture with toasted and salted pistachio praline; the tiramisu, which fuses French and Italian traditions; and the lemon pie and hazelnut with 64% chocolate versions. Along with these creations, Ramírez also revives traditional flavors with the "castizo" flan, based on the traditional recipe he grew up with.
For the moment, the project maintains a daily production and two bakes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. All products are prepared in the workshop located in the establishment itself, which also functions as a sales point. For now, the premises are designed for take-away, without tables or chairs, so that the spotlight falls entirely on the product. And its creator's goal is ambitious: although it has landed in Barcelona, the idea is to create a network of establishments throughout Spain.
From cheesecakes to torrijas: sweets with their own name
Barcelona is experiencing a sweet fever. In recent years, the city has seen a proliferation of businesses that have made a single dessert their raison d'être. Instead of opting for a varied menu, these establishments, like Los Flanes, focus their offer on a single recipe and explore its possibilities with different combinations of flavors, ingredients and textures, until it becomes their main hallmark.
Cheesecakes were among the first to pave the way. From El Born, Jon Cake became a benchmark for this recipe, and has been expanding its presence with new points of sale, totaling five establishments, one in Girona. The formula of a single product per store has also caught on with other sweets from abroad. American-style cookies and cinnamon rolls have found their own spaces in Barcelona.
Tiramisu, one of the great classics of Italian pastry, has also found businesses in Barcelona that claim it as a unique product. This is the case of Valentina e Pasqualina, which has recently joined the female gastronomic project of Juno Kitchen, and Demartini Tiramisù. The latter, after a year of activity in the Born, has just opened a second establishment at number 226 València street, in the Eixample, a few meters from Passeig de Gràcia, which has more than 300 square meters of workshop.
Traditional specialties have also joined this trend. This is the case of crema catalana, which has in Sucre Cremat an establishment dedicated to reclaiming this classic of local pastry. And, in this sweet Catalan capital, torrijas have also recently joined, thanks to another content creator: known as La Cocina de Santiaguini, he has launched Santorrijas (Mallorca, 371), a place focused on this sweet that allows it to be customized with ingredients such as candied almonds, neulas, Oreo or Kitkat, in addition to pistachio, white chocolate or salted caramel sauces.
From cheesecakes to flans, passing through tiramisus, crema catalana or torrijas, all these businesses share the same formula: turning a recognizable dessert into the core of their proposal and reinventing it through new flavors, ingredients and textures. With the opening of Los Flanes, this phenomenon adds a new chapter in Barcelona. Adrián Ramírez's commitment demonstrates that even a classic dessert like flan can become, by itself, the protagonist of an entire business.
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