Ada Parellada
Granollers-born chef from a centuries-old restaurant family, feeding Barcelona's Eixample from Semproniana since 1993.
- Restaurants
- 1
- Born
- 1967 · Granollers
Ada Parellada is the chef-owner of Semproniana in Barcelona's Eixample, which she opened with Santi Alegre in 1993 in a former publishing house. Born into a Granollers family that has run a fonda since the early eighteenth century, she cooks market-driven, home-style Catalan food, has written several books, and received the Creu de Sant Jordi in 2016.
Biography
Early years
Ada Parellada was born on 26 February 1967 in Granollers, into one of Catalonia's oldest restaurant families — her ancestors have run a fonda in the town since the early eighteenth century. Her parents pushed her towards law rather than the kitchen; she chose the family trade anyway.
Career
In 1993, aged twenty-five, she and co-founder Santi Alegre rented a vast former publishing house in the middle of the Eixample and turned it into Semproniana — in her own telling, 'we replaced the books with menus', filling the dining room with baked sea bass, black botifarra and her chocolate 'delirium tremens'. By 2016 she ran three Barcelona restaurants, with Pla dels Àngels and Petra alongside the flagship. She has also written steadily: Tocats del bolet (2004), Les receptes de Semproniana (2012, with Joan Pluvinet) and the novel Vanilla Salt (2016). In 2016 she received the Creu de Sant Jordi, the Generalitat's highest civil distinction.
Philosophy
Parellada cooks the Catalan market: seasonal, thrifty, homely food served without ceremony in a room that keeps its publishing-house bones. Semproniana's register is deliberately warm and slightly mischievous — grandmother's technique, contemporary appetite.
Restaurants
On Guidavera
1Ada Parellada in our guides
Editorial guides featuring Ada Parellada’s restaurants.
Accolades
- ·Creu de Sant Jordi (2016)
- ·Chef-owner of Semproniana since 1993 — more than three decades in the same Eixample dining room
- ·Author of Tocats del bolet (2004), Les receptes de Semproniana (2012) and Vanilla Salt (2016)
Frequently asked
Who is Ada Parellada?
A Granollers-born chef from a family that has kept a fonda since the early eighteenth century. She opened Semproniana in Barcelona's Eixample in 1993, aged twenty-five, and still runs it today; in 2016 she received the Creu de Sant Jordi.
Does Semproniana have a Michelin star?
No. Semproniana is not a starred restaurant and does not aim to be one — it holds a Repsol Solete and is loved as market-driven, homely Catalan cooking served in a former Eixample publishing house.
What should I know before going to Semproniana?
It is casual, generous, market-led Catalan food in a big, characterful room — the kind of place locals take visiting parents. The chocolate 'delirium tremens' dessert is the house classic.