The Tickets restaurant will be renamed Teatro

After many months closed, activity is once again being detected at the Tickets restaurant in Barcelona. Although timidly, employees are beginning to be seen at the premises preparing for the reopening of the establishment after it was acquired by businessman Manuel Lao Hernández, founder and former owner of the gaming and leisure group Cirsa.

As The New Barcelona Post already explained, Lao plans to reopen Tickets next March, but cannot do so under this brand, because it is owned by Albert Adrià, who is not involved in the project in this new stage. The name chosen for the reopening of the restaurant is Teatro, in homage to Paral·lel, according to sources close to the new owner, who is finalizing the signing of a chef to lead the establishment.

Another of Lao's objectives is to recover the cocktail bar that accompanied Tickets during its first years and that in 2014 ended up transforming into La Dolça, a space within the restaurant dedicated to desserts. Thus, the old Coctelería 41ºExperience will be reborn under the Backstage brand, which will have its own access from Paral·lel.

The opening of the new Teatro restaurant and the Backstage cocktail bar comes after Lao rescued a group of restaurants from bankruptcy proceedings that suspended payments as a result of the pandemic and the high debts they were dragging. After putting around 2.5 million euros on the table, the businessman was awarded in court a package of assets that, in addition to the Tickets restaurant, also includes the restaurants Rías de Galicia, Espai Kru, Casa de Tapas Cañota and Pakta. These are the main establishments that made up Grupo Iglesias, one of the most important in the restaurant sector in Barcelona and which was a reference partner of Albert Adrià in the now defunct elBarri group, which had Tickets as its main locomotive. The purchase of these establishments will allow 63 jobs to be saved.

Tickets, which in 2019 was the twentieth best restaurant in the world according to the prestigious ranking The World's 50 Best Restaurants, opened in 2010 by Albert Adrià, who created in this place an authentic school of international reference and the so-called "contemporary tapas style". Now, the venue will be reborn under the Teatro brand with the aim of continuing to be a spectacular and top-category restaurant in Barcelona.

"These restaurants are a benchmark for the city and could not be lost," a spokesman for Manuel Lao justified in December, adding that the businessman has made the investment individually ---apart from his investment group, Nortia--- to help preserve as much as possible the legacy of Tickets and the elBarri and Iglesias groups and recover the gastronomic splendor that the Paral·lel-Lleida street axis has experienced in the last ten years.

The new owner is also working on the reopening of Pakta, while the famous seafood restaurant Rías de Galicia and Casa de Tapas Cañota operate normally.