Juno Kitchen Barcelona puts women producers on the menu
The women's members' club Juno House has opened an executive restaurant in its Aribau headquarters, with a first season built around eleven women from the food trade.
Juno Kitchen Barcelona, the new restaurant inside the women's members' club Juno House, was presented on 14 October at the club's headquarters on the corner of Carrer d'Aribau and Avinguda Diagonal. Its first season, which runs until December, is built around eleven women from the food trade, from a Boqueria fishmonger to a third-generation pastry maker.
The format is an executive one: a daily menu of traditional cooking designed for sharing, private rooms for company lunches and meetings, catering, and a calendar of food events led by women. The Acadèmia Catalana de Gastronomia i Nutrició is taking part and will connect the restaurant with chefs and other figures from the sector, according to Business People. For the rest of the city, see our guide to what to eat in Barcelona.
Juno House has not published a menu price or opening hours, and none of the reports say whether non-members can book.
A club restaurant that puts its suppliers' names on the menu as prominently as its dishes.
Who is behind Juno Kitchen Barcelona
The eleven names chosen for the opening season are mostly producers, artisans and business owners rather than restaurant chefs. They include Lluïsa Ripoll, manager of Peix.cat and vice-president of the Mercat de la Boqueria; Carme Sàbat of Pastisseria Sàbat; Cristina Hu, founder of Café Lisu; Valentina Pizzuti of Valentina e Pasqualina; Fatoumata Sawaneh, founder of Nia; olive grower Carla Gili of Anècdota Rural; ceramicist Núria de Frutos; sommelier Patricia Gómez of Bar del Pla; Julia París of Sobremesas; and the two co-founders of Bastida for Work.
Their work reaches the table directly: olive oil from centuries-old trees, a tiramisu from a grandmother's recipe, magdalenas from a third-generation pastry shop and hand-made ceramic plates, as Consumidor Global reported. The paper described the selection as eleven new "white balls", the old members'-club term for a vote of admission.
The numbers the club wants to change
Beatriz de Vicente, chief executive of Juno House, presented the restaurant as an extension of the club's purpose. "Giving visibility is the first step for opportunities to appear," she told El Nacional, adding that those who sit at the Juno Kitchen table come to create synergies.
The figures the project cites are blunt. Women make up more than half of the hospitality workforce but only 19% of professional chefs, according to Worldchefs. In Spain, about 11% of Michelin-starred restaurants, roughly one in nine, are led by a woman, according to the food site Chef's Pencil. The rural women's federation FADEMUR puts women at 49% of the rural population but 24% of farm holders.
Juno House, at Aribau 226 in Sant Gervasi, describes itself as the first members' club in Spain conceived for women. The restaurant's first season ends in December; the line-up for 2027 has not been announced.
