Casa Victoria, vermouth place with a tapas bar interior design with family tradition.

There are objectives that require considerable implication, in a more personal level. Projects that demand a retrospective, to create and recreate a life experience, memories and customs. We are talking about Casa Victoria. A tribute of Victoria Del Hoyo to her ancestors. A space one hundredth per-cent Francisco Segarra.

The professional bond between both creatives, favours in the design that is contemplated from Victoria Del Hoyo´s nostalgic look. Francisco Segarra; adds its idiosyncrasy.

One story, one inspiration, one project.

“Dressed in the past, they sneak through the remnants of memory, through the door of the grocery store. Only with no space to maneuver, under the watchful eye of the shopkeeper, the the turn is expected, it is time to catch up.

Intense and diverse smells, of a past time flood the commerce. Anything else? The owner reiterates, before finishing the dispatch. Cod, sardines, one per head; bulk and roasted legumes; supplies that are despatched in a close relationship to the clientele.

An allegory that magnifies the past. Wooden shelves, loaded with history, holding decorated cans and packed products. Times of mechanical balances, nineteenth-century registers, cutting machines for hams to satisfy the neighbourhood customs”.

Casa Victoria, grocery shop since 1896.

To design and decorate a tapas bar interior, they were necessary to be charged with emotional involvement and evoke the family history of the owner; Victoria Del Hoyo Herrero, designer, founder and CEO of the Valencian firm of premium shoes myblüchers.

It was the 40’s, the preferred era of the economic peninsula, when establishments had no commercial name and stores had a personal line of credit, Victoria Terradez Palomares (1896), despatched in its grocery store in the Plaza de Santa Catalina in Valencia. A place full of charm, always full of practically everything, in which it sold a taste of each of its neighbour.

It dominated in my memory, “recalls Victoria Del Hoyo,” the penetrating aroma of cumin and pepper, the brown roasted coffee, the tasty bacon, and the cod left hung from the ceiling to dry. The neighbourhood grocers were, above all, a range of smells.

A century later, the history of these grocers continues. Victoria Del Hoyo, a fourth generation with the same name, opens in the Barrio de El Carmen Ultramarinos Casa Victoria. A project materialized by Francisco Segarra. A nod to a Valencian classic: the spirit of the bodega. That aroma of tradition, the soul of well-made trades, which moves to a place of worship where you can take the best preserved and cured meats, cheeses and cold cuts.

The mirrors in which it announces what is being served; wooden blinds that cover the walls; old kerosene lamps that illuminate with scarcity; parts of an interior that can revive vestiges of a memory not so distant. Hand crank ham slicers; the scale, in which the gaze is fixed when weighting, the siphons and all sorts ofgadgets, accessories and props perfect to decorate this tapas bar, the placebo effect of a past to remember.

Colonial groceries, memories of past decades in which products from overseas arrived. Smells and memories that go away, but also come back. Daytime leisure and vermouth are resurrected at Casa Victoria. A drink for a modest sale to come. A meeting place and preamble, all part of the sacred aperitif.