So we concluded our third round of hiring, and found two great candidates.....or so we thought. One of our picks was Alfonso, an Italian guy who had studied tourism and moved here from London. He works his first shift today. The second was Frank, a German guy studying tourism here in Barcelona. Frank was going away this weekend, so he agreed to come on Wednesday afternoon to do his training and start work next week. Or so we thought. He never showed up for training and hasn't responded to numerous phone calls and emails. Bizarre! Who does that? Especially in a place with 18% unemployment!

Fortunately, we had a lot of great candidates, so filling his spot should not be too difficult.

Happy Birthday to Lee!!

We're celebrating the day with some good eating (Lunch TBD and dinner at Tapac24). The big show is tomorrow's brunch though, followed by the opening festivities of Festa Major de Gracia! We've got a few other reasons to celebrate: My friend from Georgetown Ellie is in town, and it's Monica's last night in Barcelona (we're not celebrating that fact, but we've got to send her off in style).

Yep. This guy's staying at our hostel. I think he's Somnio's first ever Olympian.

http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/swimming/story/2008/08/16/olympics-men-day-nine.html

We're beginning Hiring Round Three and based on the fast and furious responses to our loquo.com ads, it's clear that unemployment is a continuing issue here in Spain. Our Intrax summer intern, Matt, has left us, and combined with the fact that our faithful team has some well deserved vacations coming up, we find ourselves in need of good people. I'm happy to report that we have a dozen interviews lined up for the next two days with seemingly professional and [over?]qualified people. We'll report back with any mis-fires and hopefully an introduction to our newest team member.

And now, I'll leave you a sampling of gems from our FIRST hiring round:

Tuesday night was one of those great eating experiences that I'll likely remember forever. Lee and I were out with two friends in town, Peter and Alex. We were leaving our favorite wine bar, presumably to head home, when we ran into Pep Manubens, the owner and chef at Cal Pep. Cal Pep is one of those restaurants that's in all the guide books and has people lining up outside the door before they open. I've eaten there once, and been relegated to the bar area with the rest of the tourists. The idea is that they bring you dish after dish until you say stop. The food was excellent, but you could tell that they hold back the more exciting dishes for locals in the know that will appreciate their excellence. More on this later.

We probably wouldn't have recognized Chef Pep if it hadn't been for his chef's jacket with his name on it. So Lee basically grabbed him and said "Ahh Chef Pep from Cal Pep?" to which his responded affirmatively and kept walking into the bar. Excited by all things celebrity and food, we decided to go back into the bar. Pep and his companion were drinking a bottle of champagne, which we decided we should buy for them. So I paid for their champagne and bought a bottle for ourselves. They went to leave, were told we had paid, and came over to say hello and Thank You. Turns out that Pep's friend owns another place we've never been to Xampanet.

After talking to Pep, we decided we should probably capitalize on our smooth moves and go to Cal Pep for dinner immediately. We walked over there and it was completely packed. Lee, Alex and Peter stood at the back of the line while I shoved through to find our new friend. He immediately whisked us past the line (I feigned some protest) and into the elusive back room. Cava began flowing, and dishes began arriving. We had amazing tortilla with chorizo, tender razor clams, melt in your mouth jamon, croquettas of onion and cod, garbanzos, clams with garlic and spicy sauce, baby cigalas. It certainly wasn't the ham croquettas, patatas bravas and mixed fried fish they serve up front. It just kept coming until we had to finally say no more. Well, okay, four desserts? Sure. We had their crema catalana, the four foams that they're famous for, some puff pastry dessert, and an awesome tart lemon custard. Fortunately, the price wasn't too ridiculous, which is always a concern at no menu places. I think we happily would've paid more for the experience.

Now I'm just wondering how we can permanently secure a table in the back room? Was our one bottle of champagne only good for one trip to Cal Pep? We'll see!