Jordi Mitjà

With or Without Pyjamas is the activation of another meal, with echoes of the fashionable menus of the 1970s. The aim is to develop these intuitions while erasing any theatrical convention, so that the audience and its interactions shape the event itself and generate a space conducive to exchange and conversation as a performative format. A kind of spectators liberated from the spotlight and endowed with real agency. Endless, rewarding encounters that, from dinner to dinner, year to year, and activation to activation, become increasingly fruitful.

For years now, almost by chance, I have been cooking for ARBAR, which is like cooking for friends. I have carried out other experiences linking performance and cooking, such as the one I developed in July 2025 at the Ateneu Barcelonès. A performance with a group of women cooks from Lladó—Pantagruel and the Misunderstandings—but it is in the Vall de Santa Creu that I have been able to turn this performative practice into something persistent and coherent.

It is at ARBAR that I have cooked in order to speak about the value of discarded food, about conversations around the table after a meal; where I have recreated a restaurant; where I have explored what it means to eat with one’s hands in our culture and in others.

This year, I am focusing on memory. I want to activate childhood memories and provoke a sense of surprise in younger people who did not experience that culinary explosion and abundance that followed the post-war years. I do so through a simple menu centred above all on dessert: because of its complexity, the naïve meaning of its name, and the versions and reinterpretations that have endured over time.

The fact that the other artist invited to take part in the cycle is Carles Congost played a major role in my choice of this menu, as did the generational connection we share. Looking back over all these performative works, I recognise a similar way of working: a kind of culinary impulse that, once put into practice, ends up taking on a dimension that blurs any initial expectation. The outcome can be surprising and sometimes disappointing, but it has always been conceived and carried out with the conviction that consciously providing audiences with food and drink makes it possible to witness responses that emerge of their own accord and are, in themselves, magical.

The dinner-performance With or Without Pyjamas is inspired by beach bars and, at the same time, by the popular restaurants with large dining rooms of the 1970s, through a selection of dishes that pay tribute to them. A cold and festive menu designed above all to recall our own particular Pijama, a dessert that defined an entire era.

I have decided to wear a batín (1*) as my serving attire. Today, this dessert has almost entirely disappeared from our tables.

The Pijama can, in a sense, be traced back to the equally famous Peach Melba, created by Auguste Escoffier in 1893 at the Savoy Hotel in London in honour of the opera singer Nellie Melba. In 1951, at the 7 Portes restaurant in Barcelona, Paco Parellada recreated the Peach Melba, which, as a result of a linguistic misunderstanding, was renamed Pijama. According to the story, a group of American soldiers asked for Escoffier’s dessert, but the restaurant staff misunderstood what they were saying, altering both the name and, in the process, the recipe.

The dessert rapidly spread throughout Catalonia and became an essential feature of major celebrations—baptisms, First Communions and family gatherings—like those that bring us together every summer in the Vall.

(1) BATÍN* n. A short house robe, traditionally worn by men.

Credits
Opening date: 18 July
Time: 9 pm
Venue: ARBAR Centre

Photography: Aniol Simon / ARBAR
Text: Jordi Mitjà