Barcelona restaurant offers tonic to city’s overtourism problem

Andres Torres is a former war correspondent who has turned his experiences on the battlefield into an acclaimed restaurant. 

Nestled in the Catalan wine region of Penedés, Torres’s Casa Nova, where he is the head chef, serves high-level cuisine to customers while encouraging them to consider where their pricey food is coming from.

Torres scooped the prestigious Basque Culinary World Prize and its €100,000 reward this year. The prize is awarded to a restaurant that displays a wider socio-economic benefit from its endeavors outside the kitchen. 

The former war reporter splits his time between Casa Nova and running the NGO Global Humanitaria, a non-profit organization that mainly works in impoverished and war-torn countries to provide food and clean water sources to locals. 

It might seem incomprehensible that one person can run both a kitchen and an international humanitarian organization, but these ventures have a surprising level of crossover.

Torres’s Michelin Green Star restaurant drives a portion of its profits into Golbal Humanitaria. The food is inspired by places where Torres has reported and carried out humanitarian activities, including Guatemala, Syria, and Ukraine. 

Torres told Fortune through an interpreter that he learned how conflict impacted local food ecosystems while reporting on the ground. As a self-trained chef, he decided the best way to portray this to the public wasn’t through journalism, but by cooking in Casa Nova.

Amid existential questions surrounding the ills of tourism, Torres’ restaurant is an example of a concept that could create more conscious travelers.

Conscious tourism

Barcelona residents have been among the most restless at a resurgence in tourism across Europe, fueled by the “revenge travel” craze in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Besides the weather and architectural wonders of the famed architect Gaudi, food tourism is a big draw for visitors to Catalonia. 

The latter prompted locals to squirt unsuspecting dining tourists with water pistols in July while greeting them with chants of “go home” as they walked down Las Ramblas.

Reducing tourism to levels acceptable to locals is unrealistic for many reasons, not least its employment of millions of people and relatively open borders that invite curious travelers from across the world.

However, the ills of over-tourism persist, affecting locals’ quality of life and disposable income as a growing share of major cities’ accommodation goes towards short-term lets servicing travelers. 

Barcelona plans to ban Airbnb short-term lets from 2029 to free up housing supply for locals, though it’s uncertain what effect that will have on traveler numbers.

But with the dilemma between economic growth and placating frustrated locals, some cities are trying to find a compromise between starry-eyed tourists and frustrated locals.

Where Barcelona residents used the stick approach to reign in over-tourism, the Danish capital of Copenhagen is opting for the carrot. 

In July, Copenhagen introduced a CopenPay program, which rewards willing tourists with free museum trips, lunches, and even kayak tours if they perform community service. Fortune reported that a Surf School would provide free lessons to surfers if they helped clean beaches for 30 minutes. 

Within the complicated autonomous region of Catalonia, Torres’ restaurant is at the heart of that growing demand for conscious capitalism.

Torres has become popular with Gen Z visitors who have caught wind of his gastro-humanitarian activities, he told Fortune, even if they can’t always afford to eat there.

The real target, though, is high-net-worth individuals who are able to put their money where their mouth is. Several traveling foodies will come to Torres’ restaurant thanks to the positive reviews, but will often get caught up in conversation with the chef about the origin of their meals.

Torres says one unnamed wealthy diner made a donation to allow Torres to build a bunker for school children in Ukraine, taking cover from seemingly endless bombardment from Russia’s military operation. 

He says several other philanthropic diners will use the dinner to decide whether to support Torres’s humanitarian ventures.

He also recounted a recent experience where a table of Russian citizens and a separate table of Ukrainians could discuss the fallout of the conflict over dinner.

Torres thinks more restaurants in Europe need to focus on sustainability, explaining where their food is coming from and giving tourists an insight not just into the local ecosystem, but the global one too.

If this became the norm, hungry tourists might leave with more than a full stomach.