Prize-winning restaurants: “5 Hermanos” which promotes traditional home cooking in Nou Barris

In 1977, the last of Guineueta Vella’s self-built homes were torn down. The urban development plan of 1964 had set the date for eliminating more than 250 single-story houses that made up the old neighbourhood which had grown around the Can Guineueta farm. An agreement had been reached to build a new 14-storey block of flats in their place, which would be called Canyelles. A neighbourhood whose streets are named after poets.

It was from the mid-1960s - with the open wound left by the Ronda de Dalt (Via Favència) ring-road project - up to the end of the 1970s that the local residents’ movement of the time, resisting to the end, organised itself to prevent the transfer of numerous fellow residents to the new blocks springing up in Ciutat Meridiana and other parts of the Metropolitan Area. They refused to leave their neighbourhood, no amount of compensation they were offered would tempt them to change their minds. And they won in the end. Many local residents were able to remain in their old neighbourhood, in the new flats.

Teresa and her mother, who both worked in the food outlet they ran in Guineueta Vella, were offered new premises in one of the new Canyelles buildings. They took on the exchange, premises for premises, with the support of their family and decided to open a restaurant business known today as “5 Hermanos”, on C/ Federico Garcia Lorca, 21, in Canyelles (Nou Barris). The restaurant, which is highly valued around the neighbourhood, won the Barcelona Restaurant Trade Prize for 2018 under the category of “Integration in the neighbourhood”. A distinction that recognises the value of many restaurants around the districts that are examples of high-quality, in relation to the neighbourhood and innovation.

An entrepreneur in the 1970s

Teresa followed the path of an entrepreneur of the era, although this distinction at the end of 1970s, did not quite enjoy the value that the task of starting up a new business on one's own has today. She explains how she decided at the start to provide a service that would open up both family and financial possibilities for her, and that it would be a roast chicken shop. Therefore, she reserved part of the premises for that purpose. Over time, her five children -Javi, Toni, Julio, Manel and Jordi- joined the business, one by one, making it what it is today: a restaurant with normal menus and an à la carte menu, which even offers prepared meals to take away.

The workload is divided up between the five brothers. Julio is the kitchen chef and, given his role, is responsible for the fame enjoyed by the “Cinco Hermanos” restaurant for its most popular dishes among customers, its rice dishes, both of the seafood and black rice with crispy garlic varieties. The grill is also important for meats, as well as seafood, which comes from Galicia, and the fish of the day, which is supplied by a stall-holder at the Mercat de Canyelles. Their vegetables are also produced locally, in Vallès. 

Traditional family cooking

This is a market-cuisine restaurant where Julio prepares dishes which he learnt from his mother and grandmother's cooking. That is why they also have a little à la carte section devoted to these dishes, highlighted as “l'Olla” [stew], which includes pig’s trotters with snails, tripe and home-made cannelloni. Toni is the one who makes the deserts. The other brothers divide up the rest of the work of a business which, besides its culinary expertise, requires organisation above all else. And that is a speciality which falls to the youngest brother, Jordi, along with customer treatment and relations. Because, besides the good quality of its products, this restaurant is also a benchmark in Canyelles among local residents.

Teresa, who started working in the kitchen at the age of 14, explains that she had no other option than to accept that job. She was not sure whether her sons would want to dedicate themselves to it –“a really tough job”, she says - but when she saw they were keen to take part in it, she made another decision which pleased her sons: delegating the work so they could learn from it. Jordi, who nodded his head in agreement with what his mother explained, pointed out that we learn best from our mistakes. Teresa, standing next to him during the conversation, looked at him proudly and seriously. “You need to learn the value of things and that is something everyone has to do”, she expressed.

The prize took them by surprise. In fact, it did so two-fold. Because they hadn’t even been expecting to end up as finalists. The prize has given them publicity outside the Canyelles neighbourhood, explains Jordi, as they are now getting customers from other places. They've been steadily creating new dishes and introducing changes to the à la carte menu, and have digitalised the business with a preference for social networks, as they are now on Facebook and will soon be opening up a profile on Instagram. New adventures.