The Glaciar restaurant has been the setting for many chapters in the city's recent history. Known for the ice creams it offered, hence the name, Glacier at first, it opened on the Rambla in 1922. With the celebration of the 1929 Universal Exposition, it moved to the Plaza Real, a location it has maintained ever since. The establishment became a popular canteen during the Civil War; it witnessed the awarding of the Nadal Prize, always on Three Kings' Night, in 1949, and it was the place where the writer Gabriel García Márquez was introduced to society when he arrived in Barcelona, attracted by the literary agent Carmen Balcells. Mario Vargas Llosa, another author of the Latin American boom, also frequented it.
After many comings and goings, including a failed one in 1979, the young restaurant group La Pomada bought it last year, after a last stage more focused on drinks. Javier Lluch and Thaís Ivern have been in charge of giving it a new life. Both come from the world of advertising, where they founded the company Impactmedia in 2003, dedicated to devising campaigns for shopping centers, starting to work in their parking lots, and then moving up floors. In 2018, Exterior Plus bought the company. After a few years making the transfer and complying with one of the clauses of the sale, which did not allow them to continue in the same sector, Ivern and Lluch decided to try their hand at restoration, in the midst of the pandemic crisis, with low transfer costs and the forecast that time would eventually calm down.
"It's a shock," Ivern admits, "it's a very complicated sector, more than we thought, but we are learning a lot." They decided to recover El Glaciar for its sentimental value, but also for its strategic location, with a lot of pedestrian traffic and central. "We want to maintain the original essence," remarks La Pomada's partner, also revitalizing the Plaza Real.
For this, they have renovated the premises, preserving historical elements such as the bar and the floor, and incorporating a kitchen visible to diners. According to Ivern, they have invested about 600,000 euros in the works, which finished in summer. The menu is defined as "Catalan cuisine but with a French touch," as in its origins. And all meals will be served, from breakfast and aperitif, through lunch and afternoon snack, to dinner and evening drinks ---until 3 in the morning---. And its typical oysters with cava will be recovered. In the next renovation, they plan to incorporate a specific space to serve ice cream.
Created in 2021, the La Pomada group now has a portfolio of five establishments. In addition to El Glaciar, it has Baliga-Balaga, in Barceloneta; El Tros de la Rambla and Pocasolta, in Rambla de Catalunya, and La Taverna del Coure, in El Born. After acquiring them last year and renovating them, for which they closed all but El Glaciar, they began to open their doors in mid-2022. The sales forecast for this first year, marked by the openings, will be close to three million euros. They are already working on the sixth opening, which will be the Pirineus 1975 restaurant, on Duran i Bas street, near Portal de l'Àngel.
La Pomada is supported by a group of investors, made up of Catalan businessmen, who wanted to preserve local ownership in city restaurants affected by the covid crisis, thus preventing them from falling into the hands of international chains.