A 1957 Gòtic bar hangs a 'Mori el Brunch' banner to push back on Barcelona's brunch boom

Bar Haití, a family-run bar at Carrer de Jaume I, 3 in the Gòtic, has been serving traditional Catalan cooking since 1957 and is now run by its third generation. On 11 September 2026, Catalonia's Diada, staff hung a banner reading "Mori el Brunch" ("death to brunch") over the bar's original sign, a name borrowed, at a customer's suggestion, from a song by the Catalan folk-punk band Fetus. The bar served a menu of its traditional dishes that day and repeated it for La Mercè, following a similar Diada spread of pig's trotters, capipota, meatballs and omelettes paired with local craft beer on 11 September.

Clara Fanlo, who runs the floor and communications at Bar Haití, said: "Queremos reivindicar que somos un negocio pequeño y estamos en el barrio más gentrificado de toda la ciudad, donde cada vez se abren más cadenas de brunch. Intentamos resistir al máximo y estamos en un momento en el que la situación es muy delicada" ("We want to make the point that we're a small business in the most gentrified neighbourhood in the whole city, where more and more brunch chains keep opening. We're trying to resist as much as we can, and it's a delicate moment"). She points to a new brunch spot that opened directly across the street, and to Bar Brusi, another traditional Gòtic bar that closed around two and a half years ago.

On the menu against the neighbourhood's lattes and avocado toast: capipota, meatballs with cuttlefish, hake a la vasca and lentils with squid. Cook Oriol says capipota and a spring-greens tortilla, a recipe from owner Josep Servitja's grandmother, are the best sellers, and the bar sources its bread from Forn Vilamala, a wood-fired bakery in El Clot.