The same family, on the same street, since 1929

Before number 8

The story of Restaurant Santa Anna begins with our great-grandfather, Josep Vila, and his path through Barcelona’s food and restaurant trade. He started out working at Casa Mungrú, on La Rambla, then moved on to Mantequerías Tívoli, on carrer Casp, where he learned what he needed to go out on his own. That’s when he decided to strike out with a partner and start his own business.

Josep Vila opens at number 8: a delicatessen and a bar.

In 1929, Josep Vila and his partner opened a place on Carrer de Santa Anna in Barcelona. It started out as a delicatessen with a bar and, over time, added a grill and a restaurant. From the beginning, what mattered most was the quality of what they sold and the care that went into making it: they sold cold cuts, cured sausage, cheese, butter from the Pyrenees, game and pastries.

Word gets around

One of the specialities that defined those early years was the cold cuts Josep Vila cured himself, which became well known and drew customers to number 8. That’s how Santa Anna began: a venture of his own, built on the experience Josep Vila had gained during his first years working in Barcelona.

Hams on the hooks and the shelves full.

A neighbourhood restaurant in the Gothic Quarter

In time the business passed to the next generation. Our grandfather took over from Josep Vila and carried on the family project, keeping the trade going and keeping it on Carrer de Santa Anna. That is how Santa Anna became a good deal more than a business: a family tradition handed down from one generation to the next.

Every generation has known a different Barcelona and has had to adapt as the city and the trade changed around it. What we have always tried to keep is what was there at the start: respect for good ingredients, for the work, and for the people who sit at our tables.

Since 1929 we have watched Barcelona change around us. The streets, the shops, the habits and the ideas about food have all changed. Generations of Barcelona people, and visitors from all over the world, have eaten at these tables.

Santa Anna is still in the same place: Carrer de Santa Anna, in the Gothic Quarter, in the middle of Barcelona. It is one of the historic restaurants in the Gothic Quarter, still a family restaurant, still on the same pavement.

Restaurant Santa Anna, with two n’s by now.

Traditional Catalan cooking

The restaurant has changed with the decades too. That first delicatessen with its bar, its grill and its dining room is the Santa Anna you walk into today, built on Mediterranean and Catalan cuisine, on good ingredients and on the way things have long been cooked here, with our rice dishes and paellas as one of our specialities.

We have moved with the times, but we have kept part of what Josep Vila started with: working with good ingredients, taking care over the cooking, and making the people who come in feel at home.

We are still at it every day, keeping alive the thing he set out to do: a family business of his own in the middle of Barcelona.