pedro

Nope. These are percebes:

There are 3 or 4 weeks in the end of the summer --all this depending on the region-- when the closed is opened: the media veda. The tórtola is one of the species that can be hunted.

Summer vacation is over and Arce has opened its doors. The meal I had yesterday is a perfect example of why I keep returning to pay visit to Iñaki Camba at least once a month. Right at the beginning, he just announced that he had some amanita cesarea, one of the wonders in the mushroom kingdom, which he would like us to sample. You'd have to be completely out of your mind to refuse an offer like that! It was the second time in a short period that I found amanita cesarea since Abraham García (Viridiana) had a few of them a couple of weeks ago and prepared a risotto. This time, I was going to have them in one of the simplest ways that Iñaki uses: briefly cooked in the oven with some olive oil and some grain of salt. In that way, nothing really interferes with the flavors and taste of the mushroom. After that remarkable mushroom, which I'd like to interpret as a hint of a good mushroom season (I know, I know I'm fooling myself: not with the weather we've had), a master piece was served. Pochas with roasted tórtola. The pochas are nothing more (and nothing less!) than white beans, while the tórtola is a small bird, streptopelia turtur or turtle dove. The bird was cooked rare and had a quite deep flavor which I thought it was reserved to birds like becada or certeta. And the broth of the pochas was rich, creamy almost like an extension of the silky and tender pochas (no hollejo, of course). The dish was round, I mean, it wasn't like you had pochas served with tórtola, both ingredients were part of a whole. Intrigued to know how Iñaki had achieved that result, I asked him about it. Another question was the answer: Have you seen the carcasses of the tórtolas? Enough said.

Fluffy, not creamy.

Just for the record, I don't think Hispania is more expensive than Cinc Sentits if you behave with the wine. Regarding reservations, Can Roca is getting difficult in the weekends. This is the thread ChowAlf is referring to: Barcelona Good Value Eating

On that we agree. Joan Roca is sensible enough that no matter how much technology he uses, it always plays a supporting role, it rarely (if ever) becomes the point of a dish.

Gaig, Hispania and Can Roca (plan a one-day visit to Girona for this, you won't regret). Hispania is simply traditional Catalonian cuisine of the highest caliber, Gaig is what a chef with his technique and contribution can do with that traditional cuisine that is clearly recognizable and Can Roca, to me, probably is the best restaurant in the country nowadays. And yes, it's a hypermodern one.

I haven't been to it, but it gets some good reports not only here: Aligue in Manresa

To make things more complicated, the distinction between churro and porra seems to exist only in Madrid and surrounding areas. In other parts of the country (i.e. Catalonia) just porras are made and they are called churros. At least, in the churrerías I visited.

Regarding the festival, it probably won't have much impact in terms of driving but you better start booking if you intend to go to the starred restaurants in the are.

Janice, in my opinion, based on a few visits I've made to Zaragoza before the summer, this city is not a gastronomic destination. Good thing about it is that you'd be relatively close to several gastro-poles, i.e., Madrid, Barcelona/Girona, and the Basque Country. If you go to the Basque Country, you could also follow the route which goes through the Rioja, where there are interesting places to visit in terms of food and, naturally, of wine. Echaurren is a place which immediately comes to my mind. Alameda, in the town of Fuenmanyor, was described to me by Manuel de la Osa as the place where he had the best steak (chuletón) of his life. Coming from Manuel (Las Rejas in Las Pedroñeras), this is a restaurant I'd certainly visit. Let us know if you need some more recs.

My mistake then. I had the burrata spherica with fir honey and I assumed you had the same dish.

That the chef wouldn't want that to be the case is something that I'm also sure of. That this could be, to certain extent, the case, is a different matter. We know for sure that the service improves as the season advances, until it reaches its cruiser speed.

Actually, I think you're referring to burrata, not mozzarella.

As it's been the case in my three visits to elBulli, I had a lot of fun and received many interesting dishes coming out of the kitchen. I had the unexpected pleasure of dining in the kitchen table, which added a whole new dimension to the dining. That said, if I compare my dinner in late July 2004 with the one I had this year in early June, I'd say that the former offered a weak start of the meal (weak by elBulli standards (elBulli and standards in the same sentence read quite weird)) where several of the snacks were more about the game than about the food, but once you got to the middle of the menu there were a series of dishes that would rank 10/10 on any scale. This year, the snacks were much better conceived (or so I think): the now famous olive, the ibérico arlette, the pumpkin oil caramel. But the 10 out of 10 dishes weren't there in the second part of the menu. Don't get me wrong, there were very good dishes, some excellent (oyster and pearl, noisette), but I believe that those were an inch behind those we had last year. That and some comments from people I trust make me wonder if elBulli gains 'momentum' as the season moves on. I'm really curious to hear from Rogelio who will be dining there in a couple of weeks. After meeting Ferrán for the eG Q&A we had in December and the quite long talk we had after dining at elBulli in June, I have a clear view of what he values when presenting a dish. Please notice that clear doesn't necessarily mean accurate . He seems to care only about creativity, that is, doing something that hasn't been made before, and about the number of paths that the dish, technique or concept opens to them (i.e. the lyophilized gazpacho, about which he said that opened a new way for them). Those criteria aren't probably that new to you, but you have to take them to the max: he starts from the premise that everything served at elBulli is 'good', that is, the quality of the ingredients is superb and there's nothing that will harm them in the cooking processes. Then, he says, you may like or not. Basically, they don't care about it because that is way too subjective and depending upon too many variables. Therefore, they fall back to the aforementioned criteria. So far, they've served them extremely well, though I see the risk of becoming a chef's chef in the same way that some musicians compose music for musicians. The amount of knowledge which you have to have as a pre-requisite to appreciate the work at hand is so vast that only a professional in the field (or almost) is up to the task. On the other hand, going to elBulli gives you a preview of some techniques, concepts and dishes that you're very likely to find some time later in restaurants all over the world. Adrià believes that having a fine dinner is no longer enough. Not, at least, to attract people to gastronomic restaurants far away from the city. He achieves that goal with his total focus on creativity. But he anticipated the risk of dining becoming entertainment rather than about the food, mentioning a couple of restaurants over the States that he senses are crossing that thin line. At elBulli, he said, the ultimate judge is the palate. Let's hope it always be.

This is strange. Other than calling on Sunday and Monday, when they're closed, they've always answered promptly my calls. But it's worth the effort, so insist.

Moby, the scenario you've described, where waves of the same dishes reach the majority of the tables of the restaurant spaced by the difference in the arrival times, is becoming more and more common among top tier restaurants. I agree that this approach has many downs -- some chefs I know in Spain are against it -- but it would be unfair to single out Bras.

Probably there aren't many reasons to visit Campaspero, the small village near Valladolid. But we just need a reason to go there: it's the hometown of Mannix, one of the best places (some would say the best) to have lechazo. Lechazo is the name that baby lamb receives in some areas of Castilla y León around the Duero river. It's simply a suckling baby lamb (no gender distinctions) which are slaughtered before they're 35 days old, when they weight around 10kg. The most usual breed is the churra, though there are at least a couple of places where merina is used, which is remarkable given that this breed comes from other places than Castilla y León. But let's go back to Mannix, where they care so much about lechazo that they even have their own cattle and a butcher's shop. Mannix is located in a big building in the middle of the town, with a large dining room with decor beyond description. No smaller is the kitchen, a spacious room with two big ovens where the lechazo is cooked. Don't worry too much about what your options for the meal are. A few starters that you can count with some of the fingers of your hand, which barely serve the purpose of distract you while you're waiting the (you guess?) lechazo. It's important to make reservations since lechazos need a long cooking time of some hours, and when you make reservations you'll be asked how many quarters do you like to have. A quarter typically will be enough for two people but I asked three quarters since we were going to be a party of five. Better safe than sorry. At Mannix, they've really mastered the art of roasting lechazo after 25 years of doing the same. Simply put in the oven in a plate with water, they achieve a tenderness which is hard to beat. The last part of the cooking when the lamb is turned gives a nice crunchy touch to its skin. When they serve it, just a couple of spoons are used to cut the quarters. No knives are required for this operation. Yes, after that, you can get some desserts which aren't bad and coffee. But who cares about them! PS: There are at least two other great threads dealing with the roasts in Spain: Unfashionable Mecca Madrid and Segovia in Semana Santa

Hmmm. I don't think I totally agree with you on this, Robert. To me, a menu surprise is no different than when the waiter tells me in the States "tonight, the chef would like to cook for you." In Spain, at least two of the best restaurants in the country, Can Roca and Can Fabes, have that kind of offering.

Oops. My mistake. It seems I ran into a false friend when I translated the original ilusión to illusion. Thrill is what Santi meant. Perhaps context is all, but what intelligent public is Chef Santi referring to in the second place, when he referred to the popularity of McDonalds in the first place? I don't think he would consider McDonalds to be a quality establishment where there's cooking with character. Yes, context is all. The latter question referred to the preeminence that avant-garde or hypermodern cooking has achieved in media. So really, we were referring to public which visit gastronomic restaurants. Very interesting. Pasta hadn't reached Catalonia during the period of the Caliphates or earlier? Is the issue how the word "pasta" is defined? I don't think pasta had reached Spain at all during that period, neither I believe there's an issue with the definition of pasta. I think there's widespread agreement that a single Spanish cuisine as such doesn't exist, rather there're several Spanish cuisines, or as Santi says, Spain's cuisines. That said, you're right about the presence of pork being a legacy which goes back to those days, when after Muslims and Jewish inhabitants were forced to either leave or convert from their religion to Catholicism, eating pork was a way to show how true the conversion was.

Take a look at: Madrid -- Food Shops There used to be a market in Madrid's main mosque, near the M-30 in eastern Madrid, but I believe is not active any more.

In Spain, I don't think so.

Perhaps not for dessert, but the combination of honey with sobrasada is not that unconventional in Spain. Regarding Mr. Blumenthal's creations, let me quote his Good Food Guide, which I recommend everybody to read:

Does the law impose a minimum tip?

Can any of you remind me why we tip at all? Would service be better if I spend 100 bucks on wine than 50? Would it be better if I order caviar than chicken salad? Why is 15% or 20% the figure no matter which restaurant or city? This list could go on and on, but a tip which is not truly discretionary is not a tip to me.