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If you're after the food, Rías de Galicia is the place to go. You can have a very nice meal sampling lots of things in the 100€ per person area. Of course, you'll easily blow this out if you ask for angulas --in season--, spiny lobster and the like. But if you keep your head cold you can have a great dinner at a reasonable price when speaking of top notch seafood. And if you're lucky, you may find Ferrán Adrià having dinner there.

I had dinner at elBulli yesterday. Long after dinner chat at the terrace with Ferrán and some exchanges with Luis and Juli before and during dinner: as it's been said in here, they're going to close a few more days during the week --the final decision of which days has not been made yet-- but the number of open days in the season won't change, that is, the season will be longer. Raurich's place at BCN will be called Dos Palitos and it'll have elBulli's full support. Which is a tremendous advantage, if you ask me.

Marisquerías are one of the most popular genres in Madrid, varying in quality of their seafood and price accordingly.

Sacha? I believe they close the restaurant the whole month of August.

I haven't been there, but this is what José Carlos Capel, critic from El País, wrote about it: Azurmendi - Eneko Atxa

← Good try, but it was a listing of several places what I was after, Luiz.

What about Ordago? I think they're pretty much in the same shape they've always been. Good traditional Basque cuisine. There aren't many restaurants in the area, I agree, but you can do pretty well tapas wise, and if you walk a little --or take the tub--, hit L'Andecha or Cafetería Bruselas for some upscale raciones, wouldn't you say so? I've been trying --unsuccessfully- to find something Álvaro Lerena --I think-- wrote for Metrópoli about eating in the area during the last San Isidro.

For a couple of days, yesterday and today, Juan Cuevas from Blue Hill NYC and Fernando del Cerro, the young chef of Casa José in Aranjuez (Madrid), will be cooking at Casa José. Later in August, the del Cerro family will go to NY where Fernando will cook both at Blue Hill NYC and Stone Barn with Juan Cuevas and Dan Barber. Yesterday night, a tuesday in July in Aranjuez, the dining room was packed with people who came from Madrid, Juan and Fernando were excited and happy as two children and the menu was balanced and well conceived, with an exceptional carré of lamb over purée of aubergines trademark of Juan. The beginning of all this goes back to 2006, when Bux introduced Juan Cuevas to vserna and gave him notice of his attending to Madrid Fusión and Víctor took Juan for dinner at Casa José. Good for all of them!

Left to Roca, Alberto Chictote, from Madrid's Nodo and Pandelujo. Some say he's one of the best chefs in Madrid... when he feels like cooking. Right to Roca, Dani García from Calima. According to my meal there a couple of months ago, probably one of the top 5 chefs in the country. Edit: Oh, and of course, between Chicote and Roncero, Quique Dacosta from El Poblet.

That's correct, Chris, there's a small but well equipped kitchen in the stall where all the production will be done.

I'd start with champagne --or cava, if you must-- and then some white from Rias Baixas, if you want to go the Spanish way. I wouldn't have a red wine.

Although there have been several times when we seriously doubted that we would make it, after a year of comings and goings we can finally write: we’ve got a stall at La Boquería market in Barcelona!! Let me write it again: we’ve got a stall at La Boqueria!! ‘We’ consists of 4 partners, including Silly Disciple, Oriol –blogger from buenoparacomer—and Juan, an experienced cook. A year ago, an opportunity presented itself to get ahold of a stall selling fruits and vegetables and break into the quite closed circle of Boquería owners. Our project, transforming it to a fresh, seasonal, artisanal made pasta. Looking at it with some perspective, it’s probably safe to say that installing a nuclear power plant in the Sagrada Familia it’s easier than changing what you can sell in a stall in the market, but with some luck and some help, we made it. We’ve worked during these months to develop some recipes and fillings and we’re eager to see how people react. We plan to document our progress in this thread, so more on fillings, ingredientes, sauces and pasta later. In the meanwhile, here are some photos: The Boquería Market The stall before chaos in form of construction began Chaos and destruction We'll keep this thread updated. Questions, ideas, suggestions are welcome.

Santi is becoming the Ducasse of Spain. He doesn't cook anymore --not even in his base, Can Fabes--, yet his three restaurants maintain an excellent level all over the board, with a total of six stars. That said, to me, Can Roca is right now the best restaurant in Spain if we look at their performance in the last three years. I'd keep an eye on Calima and, yes, Mugaritz.

I'd leave any place to visit Can Roca.

I'd say no, it's not. Try to locate something more reasonable.

Just for the record, I wrote about third way in this forum back in 2003: Berasategui and the third way Again Berasategui was doing this in the late 90s, as Daniel García, Pepe Rey, and to some extent, de la Osa, were or are doing.

Nothing but the Ciutat is within walking distance from elBulli. Take a look at Google Maps The arrow points to the Ciutat, elBulli is a small building to the left --actually, the last one--, follow the road to the left of your screen and you'll find Roses. Notice the nothingness surrounding the road.

Bryan, I've been following the 'Z' threads with interest. Based on those, I strongly suggest taking a train to Girona and pay a visit to Can Roca. I'm not CincSentits biggest fan: it's a good place with good but not outstanding dishes and I believe that the main reason for its success among people in this forum is because they speak perfect English and are used to how service works in the States.

Agreed. Did they have the vintage you asked for? Unfortunately, not having an updated wine list regarding vintages --or stock-- is a common issue in Spanish restaurants even at the highest levels.

I guess that Pedro Espinosa is classified as non-Spanish since I've been 'banished' to the theoretically non-Spanish section upstairs far more times than I've dined downstairs, even when the reservation was made by a close friend of Juan Mari. A different explanation would be that such distinction doesn't actually exist.

Could perhaps the googling results explain the difference?

Take a look at: North African goods Madrid -- Food shops

It's difficult for me to use the past tense to write about Bux. These days, I've been reading his posts --read them here-- which also give you the sense that he's still around. In a way, he is, since his observations of food recorded in this site are an important part of its content and probably, always be. He enjoyed every aspect of food and had one of the most discernible palates I know of. I will cherish the memories of meals and conversations we had, often through IM for hours, and regret not having had more of both. Bux, you're truly, truly missed.

It's a tough call to make choosing between lechazo, roasted baby lamb and cochinillo, roasted suckling pork. But why do you have to choose when you can sample fine renditions of both at Las Cubas, in the village of Arévalo? So, given that culinista was around, a raid to Las Cubas was promptly arranged yesterday morning. We started with a well executed revuelto de morcilla, scrambled eggs with blood sausage and pine nuts and some Emilio Moro to drink with. Arévalo is still in the domain of rice morcilla, rice which contributed in a determinant way to the texture of the dish. When there's good lamb, there's good offal. Imagine what you could do with the offal of those baby lambs... we ordered the simplest sweetbreads that can be imagined, grilled and salted with some chopped garlic. Simple but outstanding. Then, the cochinillo, called tostón in this area, arrived to our table with a green salad --never forget to order a good green salad with you asado. This cochinillo can compare with anyone I've ever had. I'm sure that the oven you see upon entering, packed with pieces, is managed with precision. The lechazo was good, very good actually, though Mannix's still has an edge over it, I'd say. The stellar dish of the day was yet to arrive. Following his intuition, because it wasn't listed on the menu, Rogelio asked before dessert about riñones or lamb kidneys. Yes, we have riñones. So, we order them and it came a plate of small kidneys, surrounded by their own fat, which were grilled for us. They only could have been better if they would have been cooked in wood. But I'll happily have another round any day. Desserts were good: cheese flan, traditional flan and ponche segoviano. I have to say that Emilio Moro was a better companion for these dishes than the Alión which we ordered as a second bottle. Too bad vmilor wasn't around!

The old argument comes up again. Adrià's latest work can be criticized on many accounts. The use of poor quality ingredients is not one of them. Not even the lacking of luxury ingredients, if the barnacles and caviar dish we had last summer serves as an evidence --admittedly, I'm not the world greatest expert in caviar. An intrinsic component of avant-garde movements in any field is precisely the dynamics we see with avant-garde cuisine: people mainly divide in two groups that consider the avant-garde practitioners either a joke or complete geniuses 100% of the time no matter what they do. I fancy myself of pertaining to a small third group which analyzes matters with some more detachment. But I may be wrong. Another issue that also tends to come up again and again is that the whole avant-garde movement, if we group under that label people like Aduriz and Roca to name just two examples, suddenly gets subject to the same arguments that are applied to Adrià by some sort of inference process that eludes me. Even if as a working hypothesis we conclude that Adrià is a total joke --which is not, EMHO--, I don't see why this should also invalidate what other chefs are doing. Of course, if what you're saying is that only a small group of experts are in possession of the ability to discern good from evil and that you, vmilor and degusto, are members of that select group and the rest of us are not, well, that's a different story altogether.