It would be something like the miracle of the loaves and fishes: a bread with codfish that makes a family that has nothing to do with the hotel business stop everything for a week to set up a 200 square meter mobile kitchen where they sell 1,200 kilos of codfish in a sandwich that has been, for 40 years, an emblem of their city.
We are talking about the Barbena family, who have been selling their cod sandwich at the Mataró fair since 1985. Only ten days a year they sell 6,000 sandwiches of their recipe of fried cod sandwich with a secret tomato sauce invented by their grandfather and that today the Barbena family still cooks the same way.
Or almost. The sauce recipe was perfected by Teresa Barbena, mother of Robert, one of the brothers who now runs the business, and a retired psychologist. Thirty-one years ago she perfected a sauce that is reduced for 5 hours and has a spicy touch, and which makes this sandwich an institution in Mataró.
The sandwich that all Mataronins have tasted.
It must be the dream of any hotelier: to create a signature dish that is a “must” to try in a city. This is what the Barbena’s sandwiches have become. The story begins in 1985. Jaume Barbena, Robert’s grandfather, had a codfish stand in the Plaça de Cuba market. When the City Council proposed a gastronomic fair for the city, he suggested selling battered codfish sandwiches.
And although it seemed like a crazy idea, the idea worked and today, almost four decades later, thousands of people still make a pilgrimage to the Mataró fair, the largest in Catalonia, to pay homage to that madness that has become a gastronomic icon.
There, in a 200-square-meter tent, a fried codfish is floured and fried in sunflower oil, served inside a crusty homemade bread and topped with that mythical tomato sauce.
Where to try the legendary Mataró cod sandwich?
Since it is served, the Barbena family interrupts their whole life for 10 days every May to keep this legacy alive. Robert is a fireman in Barcelona, his brother a sound technician, and Teresa a retired psychologist. But every year, in spring, they become a perfectly synchronized orchestra serving up to 800 sandwiches a day. Sandwich and olives, 15 euros.
The tent, open from 6:30 pm to 11:00 pm, is a real field kitchen that needs 20 workers and logistics that are prepared for months, stored in the old grandfather’s warehouse, closed the rest of the year. There is no Barbena restaurant. There is no delivery version. There is only this fleeting moment where the Barbena family stops the time to make, justly, travel in time to all the mataronins who come back, year after year, to taste the same sandwich they have tasted, only 10 years a year, for 40 years.