Sopa Restaurant: Close, Healthy And Quality Food
Located in the 22 @ district of Barcelona, the Sopa restaurant offers a balanced vegetarian menu at a popular price.
Vegetarian food doesn’t have to be bland, boring, or expensive. This is the philosophy of the Sopa de Barcelona restaurant, of vegan and macrobiotic inspiration, located in the 22 @ technology and services district.
Its history began 10 years ago in Madrid. The designer Jorge Morales and Jaime Arias opened a restaurant there (on Calle Nieremberg, 23, in the Prosperidad neighborhood) because they couldn’t find a place to eat during the week according to their dietary convictions and their tastes.
As they spend half a year in Bali, they opened two stores there (the Warung Sopa and the Warung Sopa at Garden). Then Morales and Arias met in Barcelona with Sergi Mas, with whom they inaugurated the Soup of the Catalan capital 5 years ago.
Fresh and varied vegetarian menu with exquisite desserts
Mas explains that his goal is to offer a daily menu at the same price as popular restaurants, but with many added values.
In order to offer fresh, seasonal food, from the environment and largely organic, they do not have a menu, but a menu that changes every day and that allows them to cook and sell everything they buy at seven in the morning, without practically saving nothing for the next day (they hardly have stock in storage and they only have a small fridge).
In addition, the teachers and students of naturopathic dietetics at the Roger de Llúria Professional Training Institute supervise the menus so that they are balanced, which represents an added guarantee for regular customers.
Star dish: soup
The star dish is soup, complemented with rice, couscous, quinoa or spelled bread. Every day you can choose, as a first, between five soups or several salads. The second course can be a rice, a pasta or a recipe with legumes, often inspired by oriental cuisine.
The day we went to the Soup, we tried a soft carrot soup with basmati, some delicious ginger spaghetti and, for dessert, a cheese cake with exquisite jam. And to drink we have … a beer made in the neighborhood, in the middle of the technological district!
The pastry is one of the strong points of the restaurant. A cook is dedicated each day to preparing five or six artisan cakes and pies, including vegan, sugar-free or gluten-free recipes.
People looking for a snack can turn to the offer of hot and cold sandwiches or have a fresh vegetable juice.
Diverse clientele seduced by vegan recipes
Among the 200 daily customers (some choose the take away option, especially people who receive the menu by mail or through Facebook) are office workers, people from the neighborhood and university students and professors.
A diverse audience that is 90% non-vegetarian, but has discovered a pleasant and light meal.
“We do not advertise ourselves as a vegetarian or macrobiotic restaurant so that customers do not enter with prejudices. Many discover that this type of food is good, it leaves them satisfied and they do not sleep in the afternoon,” Sergi tells us.
Part of the success is surely due to the characteristics of the premises: spacious, with an informal atmosphere, natural wood surfaces, with plants, large communal tables and glass walls.
Headquarters of a consumer group
El Sopa has a social vocation that has recently materialized by becoming the operations center of one of the consumer groups organized at www.lacolmenaquedicesi.com.
Customers make the purchase online and collect it one day a week, when farmers and producers leave it at the premises, a moment that they can take advantage of to chat with them.
Before or after eating, Sopa customers can browse and shop in a corner where there are accessories, jewelry and organic food, or they can relax with a yoga session in the adjoining room (managed by www.yogaenmadiram.com).
