La Vanguardia has published a feature on L’Aliança d’Anglès, in which food journalist Cristina Jolonch highlights the restaurant’s current success, the century-old history of the building, and the joint work of Cristina Feliu and Àlex Carrera.
Entitled “The Great Moment of L’Aliança d’Anglès”, the article explores the most emblematic spaces of the restaurant and explains how the current project continues to write a story that began more than a century ago.
The feature also highlights L’Aliança’s ability to preserve the memory of the former family café while developing a contemporary fine dining proposal deeply connected to Anglès and the Girona region.
A building with an authentic history
L’Aliança is housed in a building constructed in 1919 to serve as the headquarters of the Agricultural Cooperative and the Mutual Credit and Insurance Society of Anglès.
Since then, the building has served many different purposes and has witnessed numerous chapters in the town’s social life. It has been a café, a meeting place, a venue for social gatherings, a billiard hall, a nightclub and, eventually, a fine dining restaurant.
The Feliu family took over the café-bar in 1953. Even today, many elements of the building recall those early years: the billiard table, the bar where Cristina’s grandparents served their first dishes, and the mezzanine that housed a nightclub during the 1970s.
Rather than artificially recreating a historic atmosphere, L’Aliança preserves a genuine history that can still be seen in every corner of the building. This authenticity forms part of the dining experience and makes the restaurant much more than simply the place where the menu is served.
Cristina Feliu: memory and continuity
Cristina Feliu knows the history of L’Aliança better than anyone. She grew up surrounded by the stories of the family café and later joined the restaurant run by her father, Lluís Feliu, and her uncle, Josep Maria.
A self-taught chef, Lluís Feliu gradually transformed the family business into a restaurant that earned a Michelin Star in 2008.
His unexpected passing on Christmas Eve in 2013 marked an especially difficult moment for both the family and the future of the restaurant.
Together with her uncle Josep Maria and her sister Marina, Cristina decided to reopen L’Aliança with a more informal small-plates concept. As she explains in La Vanguardia, adapting the business after each stage was not easy, particularly on an emotional level.
That decision, however, allowed the restaurant to remain alive and laid the foundations for a new chapter.
Today, Cristina leads both the dining room and the wine cellar, pairing every tasting menu with a carefully selected range of Catalan wines and labels from across the Iberian Peninsula. Her work combines expertise, hospitality and a deeply personal connection with every part of the restaurant.
Àlex Carrera joins the project
In 2019, Àlex Carrera took over the kitchen at L’Aliança, launching a new gastronomic chapter alongside Cristina Feliu.
Having trained at renowned restaurants such as Drolma, Neichel and Mugaritz, Carrera also spent an important part of his professional career at El Celler de Can Roca.
That experience is reflected in a cuisine that is precise, technically accomplished and respectful of the product, while remaining deeply personal. Àlex draws inspiration from the heritage of L’Aliança and Catalan culinary tradition without simply reproducing them.
Instead, he interprets them through a contemporary perspective, transforming them into the starting point for new dishes, textures and flavour combinations.
His arrival restored the restaurant’s gastronomic ambition. In 2020, L’Aliança once again received a Michelin Star, opening a new chapter in its history.
A wine cellar in the former nightclub
One of the spaces highlighted by Cristina Jolonch is L’Aliança’s wine cellar.
It is located on the mezzanine above the dining room, in the same space that served as the venue’s nightclub during the 1970s. Today it has become a visible, accessible wine cellar managed by Cristina Feliu.
This transformation perfectly illustrates the evolution of the restaurant: each new stage embraces and reinterprets the previous one without erasing its history.
The wine selection forms part of the restaurant’s narrative, complementing the cuisine with wines from Catalonia and across the Iberian Peninsula. The cellar is not simply a storage area, but an essential part of the dining experience and of L’Aliança’s identity.
Vermouth hour: a tribute to Cristina’s grandparents
The tasting menu begins with a succession of delicate and flavourful appetisers that pay tribute to the vermouth tradition so deeply rooted in the history of L’Aliança.
This opening sequence recalls the spirit of Cristina’s grandparents’ café, where simple dishes were prepared in a small kitchen that gradually evolved as new needs arose.
Àlex Carrera transforms these memories into a contemporary culinary experience presented in several stages, featuring small creations that combine technique, intensity and instantly recognisable flavours.
In this way, the menu not only showcases the restaurant’s current cuisine but also allows guests to discover its history through taste.
Local produce, technique and a sense of place
Cristina Jolonch highlights several dishes from L’Aliança’s tasting menus, where ingredients from the Girona region are combined with contemporary techniques and references to traditional Catalan cuisine.
Among them is a refined reinterpretation of empedrat made with cuttlefish, tomato water and Santa Pau beans.
She also highlights the red prawns from Blanes served with consommé, edible flowers and different corn preparations, as well as the vegetable mille-feuille with cava sauce.
The Figueres onion, which has become one of Àlex Carrera’s signature dishes, also occupies a prominent place. It is presented in a delicate and indulgent preparation that places an apparently humble ingredient centre stage.
The menu continues with dishes such as the chef’s interpretation of duck with pears, turbot with pil-pil sauce and crispy skin, and a surf-and-turf pairing of boneless pork tail with sea cucumber.
Also featured is lamb loin with herb emulsion, Swiss chard and neck terrine, demonstrating the restaurant’s commitment to making full use of every part of the ingredient.
The experience concludes with desserts inspired by familiar flavours, including green apple, caramel custard and cocoa with toasted bread and olive oil.
The cuisine of yesterday, today and tomorrow
La Vanguardia‘s feature highlights L’Aliança’s ability to preserve its identity while continuing to evolve.
The current culinary proposal does not abandon its family history, its origins as a village café or the dishes and traditions that have shaped the restaurant. Instead, it transforms that heritage into a constant source of inspiration.
Cristina Feliu and Àlex Carrera continue writing the story of L’Aliança from two complementary perspectives: she leads the dining room and wine cellar, while he heads a kitchen that combines outstanding ingredients, local identity, technique and sensitivity.
This balance between continuity and evolution explains the exceptional moment the restaurant is currently experiencing: a century-old house looking confidently towards the future without forgetting any of the lives that have shaped it.
You can read Cristina Jolonch’s full feature in La Vanguardia.
