Spanish chef Teresa Carles is a pioneer of green gastronomy in Barcelona. With a mission to get Spaniards to eat healthier and take better care of the planet, she runs a number of restaurants in the city.
The flexitarian restaurant Flax & Kale in Barcelona’s colorful Raval district is packed on this late Tuesday morning. And there’s plenty of room in the two-story restaurant with a roof terrace overlooking the herb garden.
Avocado toasts, egg dishes and chia pudding are being served in a steady stream as brunch guests are soon replaced by lunch guests. Salads, veggie burgers, nachos, pizzas, ramen and pad thai will be on the table – some of the dishes with blue fish like salmon. The food is modern and has an international twist, but it’s created from a base of Catalan ingredients.
Green food is all the rage in Barcelona, with new green cafés and restaurants popping up on the city streets all the time. If you ask locals where to eat green, Flax & Kale and Teresa Carles are always among the first to be mentioned.
Well-established green pioneer
At 13 years old, the restaurants are among the most established green restaurants in the city. They have already served healthy, green food to over a million guests. And their popularity has only increased along with the supply of green restaurants in recent years.
Its popularity is due to owner and chef Teresa Carles’ passionate commitment to continuing to develop and serve healthy, green food to the city’s citizens and visitors. Her traditional yet cutting-edge vegetarian cuisine can make even Barcelona’s most die-hard meat eaters forget about the idea of a red steak.
I’m one of Teresa Carles’ regulars, but today I’m not here to eat. I’ve agreed to meet with Teresa Carles because I want to hear her story, the philosophy behind the food and the driving force behind her successful business.
In the 1970s, Spain was a closed country with no outside gastronomic inspiration. In the small town of Lleida, people didn’t understand why they should eat vegetarian, but they gave my little restaurant a chance anyway.
Green concept sprouted in Lleida in the 1970s
– I opened my first vegetarian restaurant, La Paradís, in the Catalan city of Lleida in 1979, with my husband Ramón. (The restaurant in Lleida still exists, but is now called Teresa Carles). At the time, vegetarian food wasn’t trendy in Spain at all, Teresa tells me as we sit overlooking the guests and kitchen on the ground floor of Flax & Kales.
– In the 1970s, Spain was a closed country with no outside gastronomic inspiration. In the small town of Lleida, people didn’t understand why they had to eat vegetarian, but they gave my little restaurant a chance anyway. And they liked the food, so they came back because they wanted to eat healthy even though they weren’t vegetarian,” she explains.
Teresa, a qualified accountant, had to learn how to cook and develop dishes from scratch as she had no professional cooking experience at the time. Slowly, Teresa’s restaurant gained a foothold and she was able to accelerate her mission to make Spaniards aware of the importance of eating healthy and vegetarian.
Teresa had just been to London, where vegetarian food was booming in the late 1970s, and she became convinced that green food was the future. That’s why she became one of the first to bring green cooking to Spain.
It’s too boring to eat just to be healthy. Food should also taste good, be a pleasure to prepare and something that everyone can do.
Eating green since childhood
– I became a vegetarian at the age of 18, not because of faith or a particular attitude towards animals, but because I’ve always loved vegetables. I grew up in the small village of Algerri in the Lledia province and green ingredients have played the main role in my food since I was a child.
My parents were farmers and our family ate lots of vegetables and fruits that we grew ourselves. We ate broad beans, eggplants, tomatoes, artichokes, cabbage, strawberries, pears, melon, quince, pomegranates and walnuts. In addition, we had a couple of chickens that laid eggs for us. We supplemented with some salt cod and trout from the sea as well as snails and meat. So it was very easy for me to become a vegetarian,” says Teresa.
When Teresa opened her first restaurant, she found that many were practicing vegetarianism like a religion, focusing more on health than taste. There were too many rules and restrictions, and Teresa didn’t like them. She was far more inclusive than the majority of vegetarians at the time.
– It’s too boring to eat just to be healthy. Food should also taste good, be a pleasure to prepare and something that everyone can do.
International inspiration and growing pains
Teresa’s philosophy is the three S’s: Saludable, sabroso y sostenible (healthy, tasty and sustainable). At La Paradís, Teresa served what are now known as “market dishes”, based on the good, local Mediterranean ingredients she knew from her childhood. Spices such as oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary and bay leaves also played a major role. It was simply the way people cooked back then.
In 2010, Teresa’s business underwent a significant shift that set off an avalanche of innovation and grew her business at record speed. Her son, Jordí, discovered on a trip to the US that the philosophy and much of the food he knew from his mother’s restaurant was trendy in the US.
Jordí also spotted a number of products in the superfood category that his mother was not yet using. He also sensed a growing interest in flexitarian food. This gave Jordí ideas on how they could integrate the trend and the ingredients of Spain and Teresa’s concept. He also suggested that the Teresa Carles of the future should be both vegetarian and flexitarian.
Teresa was on board with her son’s ideas and in 2012 opened the vegetarian restaurant Teresa Carles in Barcelona. In 2014, the first branch of the flexitarian restaurant Flax & Kale opened, which is where we are today. Today, Flax & Kale also has a branch in the Pasaje de las Manufacturas arcade.
Integrated products brought from Asia and the US
Before opening Flax & Kale, Teresa had traveled around Asia, the US and Australia, visiting markets and restaurants for inspiration.
– I brought home new products from Asia, such as tofu, quinoa, seaweed and coriander. Kale has also become a very important ingredient in my dishes. It wasn’t available in Spain, so I brought seeds from the US and now I grow it myself. In Flax & Kale, fish was also added to the menu. I don’t use meat, only blue fish from decent suppliers,” says Teresa.
Her son Jordí is now the director of the Teresa Carles company, and her daughter is responsible for future-proofing the sustainable part of the business. However, Teresa herself still has her hands on the ingredients and pots when developing dishes. But she credits her children for making the company super modern, trendy and constantly evolving.
Specializing in cold pressed juices and kombucha
Teresas specializes in making cold-pressed juices, which are being served in her restaurants at a rapid pace. They are also available to take home from her restaurants and in her webshop. Teresa created Spain’s largest juice brand in 2014 when Flax & Kale opened. She also drew inspiration for the juices from the USA.
– I also made juices on a regular juicer at my first restaurant and they were predominantly kiwi, strawberry and orange. Today, I use fruits, vegetables, almonds, grains, spices, macha and spirulina, which adds health and allows for lots of flavor variations,” she says.
Teresa’s innovative juicer is available in both cleansing and refreshing versions, with inventive names like “The Vegan Vampire”, “Forever Young” and “Green Love”.
– Would you like to try a kombucha? asks Teresa, who of course has also developed variants of this liquid health trend for her menu.
A few seconds later, a blue kombucha is in front of me, the color of a synthetic soda from the 1980s. It consists of yuzu, mint and spirulina and it tastes amazing.
– It’s our first kombucha with spirulina, so it’s very healthy for you, she laughs and continues: “You can get juices and kombucha everywhere, so it’s important to me that we have our own unique flavors.
The juices are developed in a gigantic development center that Teresa and her family opened outside Lledia.
I make gluten-free cakes, both baked, raw and desserts, and I’m very keen to explore how they can be sweetened in a healthy way.
Sweets the healthy way
The center in Lledia also serves as a gastronomic laboratory as Teresa pursues another of her many gastronomic passions – baking healthy cakes.
– I make gluten-free cakes, both baked, raw and desserts, and I’m very keen to explore how to sweeten them in a healthy way. I don’t use refined sugar or cane sugar. I’m interested in sweetening the cakes with flavors that are healthier. That’s why I mainly use coconut sugar and beetroot and apple syrup, which are lower in calories and have a low glycemic index.
The healthy sweets include homemade ice cream, protein balls, chocolate cakes and croissant, which took a really long time to develop.
– The croissant contains no gluten, sugar or butter, so it was a big challenge to create one that tastes the way it should and has just the right texture. But I’m proud of the result. In general, I spend a lot of time developing my recipes,” says Teresa.
There are plenty of vegetarians who don’t live healthily. In principle, you can live on French fries as a vegetarian.
Sustainability in focus
You can get juices, gluten-free brownies and avocado toast everywhere, but according to Teresa, very little of it is healthy, tasty, good quality and, most importantly, sustainable. All things that are important to her.
The menus at Teresa’s restaurants are fully labeled with ingredients and allergen symbols for each dish, so all guests from vegans to nut allergy sufferers are safe when choosing dishes. Her mantra, which is also her life mission for herself and others, can be read at the restaurants: Eat better, be happier, live longer.
– There are plenty of vegetarians who don’t live healthily. In principle, you can live on French fries as a vegetarian. Numerous studies show that we need green food. It’s important for our bodies, our minds and our planet. We need to take care of our animals, our nature and ourselves. That’s why I want my dishes to be healthy, tasty and sustainable. These three elements are always present in my dishes,” says Teresa.
Teresa doesn’t use animal fats, lactose or sugar in her food. None of her food is deep-fried either. Her nachos are made from leftover vegetables from the juices, which she dehydrates.
– All the ingredients in my dishes are organic and there are very few that don’t come from Spain. I ask for documentation on everything I buy, including the wild salmon, which I know EVERYTHING about. It’s very important to me. We grow lots of vegetables ourselves and I create the dishes according to the season. Everything is predominantly Mediterranean-inspired, but I also take inspiration from other cultures and make dumplings, for example.
In 2019, Teresa Carles received a B Corp Certification as the first food company and restaurant chain in Spain. This is recognition for meeting high standards in social and environmental sustainability.
Cookbooks for busy women
Teresa has published a couple of cookbooks filled with recipes for some of her most popular dishes.
– Spanish women are busy these days and they don’t cook much at home anymore. They especially lack inspiration for healthy, green food that they can make at home. My cookbooks are meant to help them in their everyday lives.
I want people to eat healthier and there are so many lies in the convenience food industry that busy, modern people are increasingly buying.
Wider spread of healthy concept
Although Teresa feels she’s at the peak of her green adventure right now, she’s not stopping here. She has plenty of development plans for the future and more inspirational journeys ahead. A Flax & Kale branch has opened at Madrid Airport and her juices and kombucha have found their way to several specialty stores and supermarkets. She is also working on products such as granolas and porridge.
– I want people to eat healthier and there are so many lies in the convenience food industry that busy modern people are increasingly buying. This also applies to juices. A lot of it is filled with bad ingredients, sugar and additives. We want to deliver clean raw materials without sugar and gluten. It must be transparent and sustainable,” she says.
Despite the growing number of Spaniards and tourists falling in love with Teresa’s food, she still feels she has a lot of work to do to improve the health of Spaniards and the environment. And Teresa herself is probably the most convincing marketing for the healthy lifestyle she wants to promote. She’s beautiful and full of energy. And she looks at least 10 years younger than her 66 years.
Read more about the restaurants Teresa Carles and Flax & Kale. Follow Teresa Carles on Instagram
Make Teresa Carles’ vegetarian dishes at home in your own kitchen
Here are a few of the recipes from Teresa Carles’ latest cookbook.
