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El Molín de Mingo is at Peruyes, outside Cangas de Onís. Phone is 985 922 263. But I'd join Rogelio in recommending Casa Gerardo at Prendes. To me, it remains the best restaurant in Asturias by quite a sizable margin.

It's mostly motorway - the M-40 South-East from Madrid airport, then the A-4 motorway south (or the R-4 toll road for 40 miles or so - somewhat faster) down to Bailén, then the A-44 down to Jaén. There, take the regular two-lane road, A-316, southwest to Torredelcampo, for about 25 miles, to the interesection with the larger N-432 road to the right, then A-333, all the way to Iznájar (through Priego de Córdoba). It's 435 kms/270 miles, which you should be able to cover in four and a half hours comfortably. If you want to have lunch on your way down, a good choice would be just south of the Despeñaperros pass which separates Andalusia from La Mancha. Right on the motorway, the classic, 40 year-old La Perdiz Hotel, in the heart of the game- and game bird-rich mountains at La Carolina, offers a traditional, inland Andalusian fare: partridge pâté in an olive "tear", lukewarm partridge salad in a soft 'escabeche', venison stew, 'risotto' of seasonal game... A more adventurous and modern option is Casa Andrés at Bailén, close to the A-4 motorway (Avenida de Sevilla 92, phone 953 67 02 19), a 90 year-old mainstay with some creative touches within an Andalusian theme: marinated sardne in a Bloody Mary and cream with pistachios; lentil, pidgeon and 'foie gras' salad; low-temperature codfish fillet on a bed of almonds and fried tomato sauce... At Granada proper, the FM Bar is a cult place - one of the seafood meccas of Spain, but you have to eat at the bar - no tables!

To complete the record, El Mundo's wine awards for 2007 were also given on the same occasion.

This is the real Martín Berasategui:

Dec. 2003, actually. Time flies... It was again mentioned later in that same thread, revived in 2005.

I must have recommended this a long, long time ago... Not the same level at all now, of course. I like Els Pescadors, but it's somewhat more modern in style.

Less unique and younger meat, but often outstanding, in several Madrid restaurants led IMHO by the Ansorena brothers at Asador Ansorena and Asador Imanol and also by Julián de Tolosa. Madrid is undoubtedly the Spanish steak capital today. I personally have strong doubts about the gender of El Capricho's older animals. I haven't seen any working oxen in Spain for decades! I tend to believe that nowadays all the older "oxen" used by restaurants in Spain are really retired milk cows which are fattened for some months or a year before being taken to the abattoir. Another important development has been the creation of the first Spanish "Nyman Ranch wannabes", led by the Vega Sicilia-owned Valles del Esla, which are providing beef and veal of unprecedented quality (and unprecedented prices, I guess) to top Spanish restaurants and to the homes of beef fanatics.

These are 'pure', i.e. blended olive oils - not extra virgin. A rather forgettable product.

Sorry I couldn't drop in again and see you as I had planned, John. My job as a 'regular' hack fatally interfered - we had a bit of a stock exchange meltdown to cover... What a drag! ;-)

Go to Bar FM. The best stuff in town by a mile.

If the drought continues, forget about it all.

Just the slightest correction: calling grenache a "more international variety" is stretching it a bit. Garnacha is of course a native Spanish grape variety (one of the main three red ones here), and the largest grenache surface of grenache vineyards anywhere in the world is in Spain. Of course, grenache was adopted a long time ago by the French and (as cannonau) the Italians, and later by many others, but it remains a quintessential Spanish variety - and the dominant one in Vinos de Madrid.

Re: "Tender but not in the same league as argentian or wagyu beef." Major cultural chasm here! Why this obsession with 'tenderness'? I wonder. 12-level wagyu in Japan is indeed tender - but it's also white, practically all fat, and absolutely lacking any sort of texture that a Westerner will appreciate. In Spain, we insist on some muscle and texture, plus all the meaty and minerally flavors of well-aged beef, in our steaks. Etxebarri entirely fulfills this premise. That's why I consider their steaks, as those in the top steakhouses in Tolosa and in Madrid, to be vastly superior to any I've had in Japan, to most of those I've had in the US (since the 1977 easing of USDA regulations on prime beef, they've never been the same!), and to a large chunk of those I've had in Argentina, save for those in very exceptio nal restaurants like the reborn La Cabaña in Buenos Aires.

The dining scene is getting better all the time in Almería. In town, go for the mindbogglingly-good tapas at Taberna Torreluz (Plaza de las Flores), Casa Joaquín, Casa Puga or El Quinto Toro. Almería is one of the tapas capitals of Spain - a little-known fact abroad! In the Cabo de Gata area, La Goleta is a good choice. The local waters are surprisingly rich (this being the Mediterranean...) in coastal fish and shellfish, including the regal red shrimp.

Hey, they say we are in the throes of a recession, but for the time being getting a table at Kabuki Wellington, Diverxo, Astrid y Gastón or Zaranda is really hard work... (Not to mention that Sudestada is closed for their holidays and also on the verge of moving to another location - thus diminishing for now the daily availability of interesting dining spots!)

Try the 'salazones' stall at the Mercado de la Paz (calle de Ayala), on the right hand side. Very good stuff.

The English name of 'pez limón' (Seriola lalandei) is yellowtail, Rogelio. Are you sure it was almond oil? We had it last night (we got together with some of the usual Madrid suspects for a brilliant, impromptu dinner and some serious wines), and Ricardo served the yellowtail with two oils: one was Valderrama extra virgin olive oil made with olives of the rare ocal variety in Spain, and the other was Moroccan argan oil, made with the nuts of the argan tree. You might have mistaken this with almond oil. It's rather heavy and interferes with the flavor of the fish. We didn't like it much - it was much better with the ocal oil. This is an argan tree, by the way:

No. El Poblet is not a seafood joint, a.k.a. marisquería. A real marisquería will only have, if any, one kind of Ibérico product - Ibérico ham. And that is definitely not something they will use in the kitchen, but merely slice...

Actually, John, I think cooks at all major seafood joints absoultely disdain Ibérico pork...

Small correction - despite the names' similarity, langostinos are not langoustines. They are shrimps - tiger shrimp from Spain's eastern and southestern coasts.

You'll have to check. A good number of them will be open in August. One that will be closed from today until Aug. 16 (vacations) is my latest discovery, and I think a worthy addition to the list: Kanpai, which is the less-expensive annex to Miyama opened next door to the sushi bar a few months ago by chef Hiroo Miki. Sushi and sashimi are available, but are not the stars in this restaurant that favors cooked dishes, with noodles prominent, and also some fusion winks that come to remind us that Miki is a complete cook who did stages at such places as Zuberoa and considers Hilario Arbelaitz as his Spanish mentor. This is apparent, for instance, in some tasty gyoza filled with Ibérico pork meat. (All Asian cooks in Madrid are enamored with Ibérico pork!) I had a wonderful plate of yakisoda noodles with juicy morsels of chicken and al dente vegetables that was extremely tasty with its curry/soy base and also aromatic with plenty of fresh ginger. Also, light and spectacularly well fried tempura of nice Spanish langostino shrimp, local vegetables (green asparagus, red morrón peppers, zucchini and eggplant) and an unusual ingredient: small, sweet, green Gernika peppers from the Basque country. Miki winking at Arbelaitz again!

I like Tacubaya (their joint venture with Caripen's Daniel Bouté) better than Entre Suspiro y Suspiro, which is a bit too chichi and subdued for a Mexican restaurant - in my book, of course. But I do like Entre Suspiro y Suspiro and quite a few other foreign places, from Café Saigon to Nagoya to El Gaucho - they're just not among my very top favorites!

John Sconzo asked me to elaborate on some new exotic restaurants in Madrid. I've done a little more: here's my personal guide to the best foreign restaurants in the Spanish capital. There's possibly no other European city, not counting London, with such a strong international array. Most tourists, of course, are logically attracted by local cuisine/s when they visit any country. But if you have a moment to spare, you may be surprised in Madrid. American: Alfredo's Barbacoa: Alfredo (Fred Gradus) is from the Bronx and he serves the best grilled burgers in continental Europe – bar none. Gumbo and Gumbo Ya-Ya: Matthew Scott, from New Orleans, does a very serious job with Creole and Cajun dishes. Are there many more American restaurants with such a fine culinary level in Europe? I doubt it. Memento: San Francisco-trained Karen Bell does the modern California cuisine thing very, very nicely. Latin American: Astrid y Gastón: Modern Peruvian, including nikkei dishes. World-class. La Gorda: Traditional Peruvian tavern with refined cooking. Baby Beef Rubaiyat: Top-notch Brazilian steak house – meat is from their own cattle in Argentina and Brazil. Porto Rubaiyat: The finny version of Rubaiyat – or, a Brazilian take on Spain's 'marisquerías'. Brasileirinho: Modest joint specializing in moqueca and other Bahia dishes. Nice musical background! Taquería del Alamillo: Rita Sánchez, from Jalisco, is a wonderful cook.This looks like a tex-mex joint for beer-guzzling kids, but it's a lot more. El Chile Verde: Another young Mexican cook, here Amalia Arévalo, with genuinely delicate dishes. Chilango (basically the great quesadillas) and Tacubaya (the tacos, mainly) are the two only places in Europe where Mexican street food tastes like street food in Mexico. Xáman Ek: Refined southern Mexican cuisine from Chiapas and Yucatán. Palermo Viejo: A café-shop selling Quilmes beer, offering medialunas for breakfast with a copy of the Clarín newspaper, and serving excellent pastas, steaks and 'milanesa' schnitzels in a purely Buenos Aires atmosphere. Good malbec reds too. De María: Serious Argentine steaks at the main restaurant (calle Félix Boix) of this budding chain. North African and Middle Eastern: Sayat Nova: An unexpectedly refined and authentic Armenian restaurant (with the usual Lebanese overtones: there's been a long history of Amenian-Lebanese relations in the 20th century!) Al-Mounia: Outstanding Moroccan fare in a dazzling Moorish room. San Maroun: Dirt-cheap, furiously authentic Lebanese cooking in an anonymous bar (in Aranjuez, 60 kms. from Madrid) Asian and fusion: Sudestada: A modest Vietnamese-Argentinian (!) diner that's become a cult place in Spain. Very fresh, 'street food'-type dishes from southeast Asia. Diverxo. David Muñoz, 27, who schooled at Hakkasan in London, does a terrific if iconoclastic Spanish-Chinese fusion. Don't miss the 'Spanish Toltilla' dim sum… Miyama: Sushi man Hiroo Miki's excellent sushi bar. Oam Thong: Po Hai Chiu's rendition of Thai dishes is fiery and authentic. Himawari: Gou Shiga's perfect Tokyo-style 'izakaya' (pub). Naomi Japonés: A modest eatery, run for 33 years in a Madrid back street by the same family, with a strong core of Japanese customers. Kabuki: Ricardo Sanz was a pupil of revered sushi master Kikuchi, who introduced sushi to Spain in the 1970s. His own version is unorthodox – Spain meets Japan, and the results are spectacular. (Don't miss his raw meats either.) Don Lay: Brilliant Cantonese in a working-class neighboorhood – forget the Castilian looks, the dim sum are memorable. China Crown:Was a dim sum pioneer in Madrid and is ever improving and changing things – a rare feature in a Chinese restaurant. Jinjin: Dirt-cheap but exemplary noodle shop. Circus: Not dirt cheap (it's sophisticated, in the swinging Chueca area of town), but also excellent noodles. Himalaya: One of the many modest Indian-Pakistani restaurants in Madrid, this one is Pakistani and probably the best of the lot. Sulú: Since 1971, Manila-born Myleen Huenefeld has run with care her unusual Filipino restaurant, with a few Indonesian and Japanese offerings. Serious, modern Italians: Più di Prima, Taverna Siciliana, Boccondivino, Ars Vivendi (in Majadahonda, 15 kms from Madrid). Trattorie/pizzerie: Casa Marco, Maruzzella. French: Nothing great, but some good down-home, authentic bistrots (Toulouse-Lautrec, Le Petit Bistrot and, until the wee hours of the morning, Daniel Bouté's Caripen – best skate in 'black butter' in town). Other European: Olsen: modernized Scandiavian cuisine with an Argentinian accent – fun! La Sueca: just as cool as Olsen, a fun bar-restaurant for herring, aquavit and blondes. Tras-ós-Montes and Don Sol: José and María Graça Alves' two establishments are exemplary representatives of Portugal's cuisine. Superb codfish dishes.

Then your best Sunday-night bet, more or less halfway between Las Ventas and Palacio del Retiro, is Casa Rafa - one of Madrid's fine, classic 'marisquerías' or seafood houses. http://www.amerc.es/CASARAFA/index.asp?idasociado=121

Or-Dago, the only good restaurant in a five-block radius, is closed Sundays. Otherwise, of course catching a Metro or driving a car can get you anywhere in the city...