The secret of Gambrinus: the legendary tavern has not closed its doors for 135 years

A classic does not impose itself, earns his place . Without bombastic advertisements or marketing campaigns . It's built over time, like an invisible furrow left in the soul of a city. The place you return to becomes classic The one you knew as a child, where your parents used to take you, and where you now take your children. The one that preserves its scent, its waiters, its times. Where you don't need to look at the menu because they already know what you're going to order . Where you don't sit alone: ​​you sit with all your past selves.

Gambrinus is that for Bahía Blanca.

It opened its doors on May 2, 1890 and never closed them again . It changed, of course. It changed hands, its menu, its clientele. But it maintained its essence. Today, almost a century and a half later, with a few changes of location, it remains standing at Arribeños 174—since the 1930s—like a discreet beacon in the midst of the vertigo. Inside, it flows slowly.

Javier Ortega knows it. Not only does he know it: you feel it in your skin He's the third generation of his family to run the bar. His Galician grandfather, Silvano Ortega , arrived at the bar when there were still German remnants in the business. He was a baker by trade and sold churros in bullrings across Spain. In the 1950s, he was one of those men who didn't talk much but knew exactly what to do. He got into the business and never left. Literally: he died without leaving Gambrinus for a single day, until he was 90, after having spent every morning of his life there.

—He was a big fan of bowling , says Javier, with a mixture of tenderness and respect.

There's something poignant about the way Javier remembers. He doesn't boast. He doesn't need to embellish . The stories emerge on their own, like someone who has barely scraped the bark of a tree and found sap.

He remembers, for example, the day an old man showed up at the bar around 11 a.m. Javier was dealing with suppliers and saw him arrive, but forgot. Two hours later, he remembered and went looking for him. The man was still there, sitting at a table in the back, as if nothing had happened .

"Are you okay?" he asked.

His grandfather asked him to sit down and began to talk. It had been forty years since he'd last been in Bahía Blanca. When he was a boy, his father took him to Gambrinus . They always sat at the same table. They ordered a " par con papas "—a portion of boiled and seasoned potatoes, accompanied by a couple of German-style sausages. He drank an orange, his father drank beer. And at some point during lunch, his father looked at him knowingly and said, " Blackie, we're not going to tell Mom anything ." Then he'd pour a splash of beer on the orange .

"Everything was the same," Grandpa told him, through tears. "The tables, the chairs, the smell."

Javier didn't hesitate: he ordered sausages, an orange, and a beer. And in the middle of lunch, as if all time had been wrapped up in that gesture, Grandpa repeated the phrase again.

“ Little black boy, we’re not going to tell Mom anything .”

There's something about Gambrinus that resists. Not just time, but oblivion. And it's no coincidence. It's will. It's work. It's conviction.

Javier started working here at age 15. He'd dropped out of high school, and his old man didn't give him much of a choice: he told him he'd start at the bar on Monday. He thought they'd put him on the register. "Balls," his father replied, and sent him to tidy up the basement . It took him a year to get things in order. Then came flans, puddings, vinaigrettes, and cold cuts. In 1981, they let him manage the register. And five years later, he was in charge .

He knew the business inside out.

"I was always cautious," he says. "When the corralito came, I couldn't stop paying salaries. I stopped paying taxes. It took me four years to catch up, but Gambrinus was still standing. Always the bar first ."

Everyone sat at their tables. Cacho Castaña , for example, would arrive after a theater performance around midnight and order whiskey. By 1:30, he was already singing a cappella, sitting on some lady's knee, while the crowd applauded and refused to leave.

"It was a show," Javier says. "No one left until four in the morning."

Soda Stereo also came by, with a horde of fans who nearly turned the club upside down. Mirtha Legrand . And hundreds of anonymous people who, out of habit, became part of the emotional backdrop of the place.

There are waiters with more than fifty years of service. Javier has a special memory of one of them, Miliqueo: when he was a boy, he used to stick to his side. He was sparing, barely saying "good morning" or "good night," but he knew every dish and every customer by heart. Those who no longer need to ask what they want, because the waiter already brings it .

There's also an unyielding loyalty to this tavern. It's been selling the same beer for 120 years: Quilmes . Never another. When the brand celebrated its 130th anniversary, the entire company leadership traveled there to celebrate. Otto Bemberg—founder of the brewery—was a regular there.

And Gambrinus didn't budge an inch from his essence. Javier repeats it, revealing something of the formula for survival:

— I never wanted to change its imprint. We've survived all the ups and downs of this country. If it worked like this, it has to stay that way. .

Sometimes, we think of a bar as just a bar. A hot plate, a check, a tip. But there are places that, unwittingly, end up being custodians of something more important . They hold stories that aren't recorded in books. Minimal. Profound. Human stories. And they preserve them as a living archive, made up of conversations, rituals, laughter, and a few tears. There aren't many places like that left.

Gambrinus is one of those places.

And that's perhaps why it became a classic. Because it didn't want to be one.

Because it just was.

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