Teresa Carles was born in Algerri, Lleida, in a rural environment deeply connected to the land, its crops, and the rhythm of the seasons. Growing up among olive groves, cereals, and vegetable gardens is not just a childhood memory, but the origin of a way of life and understanding cuisine: respectful, deeply rooted, and intimately connected with what the earth provides at every moment.
In the late seventies, her interest in food led her to travel and discover vegetarian cuisine, integrating these learnings with the Catalan tradition she had learned at home.
In 1979, Teresa Carles and her husband, Ramón Barri, opened the Paradís restaurant in Lleida, one of the first vegetarian restaurants in the country. More than just a restaurant, it marked the beginning of a new way of understanding vegetarian cuisine, with its own identity, rooted in Mediterranean flavors, and based on the reinterpretation of Catalan tradition.
In 2011, her children joined the family project, and together they opened the Teresa Carles restaurant in Barcelona. The city embraced a concept that brought over three decades of experience to contemporary, artisanal cooking designed for everyday life, with the aim of making vegetarian cuisine accessible to everyone and demonstrating that healthy eating is not at odds with pleasure. Since then, the restaurant has become a benchmark in the city, a space where tradition and innovation coexist.
In 2018, she published her second book, Recetas y principios de la cocina vegetariana, also edited in English.
Currently, she is the Head of R for the Teresa Carles group, where she continues to explore new products and has led the launch of Flax kombucha. She also collaborates with the TV3 program ‘Tot es mou,’ where she cooks a live recipe every Friday.
Today, Teresa Carles remains faithful to what shaped her: original, Mediterranean cuisine full of life, based on local and seasonal produce, which nurtures and invites enjoyment through simplicity, aimed at all types of audiences, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian.
