We talk to Iurgi Arocena about the new project he is starting on June 1st at Cal Figarot. The stove is ready!

 

  • What is your previous career and how did you get to Vilafranca?

I started working in catering when I was 16 because I asked my mother for a motorbike and she told me to go to work. What was more at hand was the hospitality industry. I also started to study computer science, but computer science mattered a lot to me and I really liked the hospitality industry. I did some cooking courses, I worked in some bars and restaurants, for example, I spent two years at Berasategui... and we opened a cocktail bar and a restaurant. Then I came towards Vilafranca. I worked at the Lizarran, which I have very good memories of, in the Trebbia, and finally I opened the Narrika.

  • Why did you decide to take on Cal Figarot's project?

I had dealings with many of the castellers... I have fed them after the Tarragona Castles Competition or on Saint Felix day, and I had always flirted with this idea. One of the people I know from the group explained to me that the deadline for presenting projects for the restaurant had opened. The opportunity presented itself, I submitted my proposal and I have come this far.

  • At a gastronomic level, what will the restaurant offer?

We don't use the concept of first and second course, except in the menu, which there will be.

It is a gastronomic offer more designed to be shared. Group tables with nibbles, such as steaks, 8-egg cod omelets... It's the line we had at Narrika and we'll keep it here, except for the lunch and weekend menus, which will be different.

  • What model of premises will we find?

Forget the concept of a restaurant... it will be much closer to the idea of a bar. If two people come who want to eat a tapas and drink a couple of beers, let them do so without any problem, let them not be forced to have dinner. Don't feel like you can't sit at a table if you don't want to have a meal. We already did it at the Narrika, where many people gathered and I had a very close relationship with the Greens and other popular culture groups from Vilafranca. In the end it became a kind of home for all of them... like it used to be in bars, in a romantic way. We didn't have cell phones and you went to the reference bar because you knew you were going to meet your friends. This is what I want the Figarot to be, a place of reference.

  • And what day does it start?

June 1 and we are ready. I'm looking forward to the whole gang coming. Let them know that they will find us here and I will treat them, just as well as until now. Head here!