vserna

This sentence contains a contradiction in terms... (BTW, in English 'en vrac' is 'in bulk'.)

Alfredo is from the Bronx, although he would have liked to hail from Texas or perhaps Nashville. As an off-and-on New Yorker for the past 41 years myself, I can tell you that it's very difficult to get a better burger in NYC than Alfredo makes in Madrid. Good Danish beef, well grilled. Best one I've tasted in continental Europe (and the UK - but I must guess that there are very good burgers in the UK I haven't tasted yet.) And when you are in Madrid and crave a good burger, it's sort of faster and cheaper to go to Alfredo's than to fly to the US, wouldn't you say?

Repeat: burgers are disappointing. Other sandwiches can be OK. Go to Alfredo's and have a bacon cheeseburger; forget about arugula and niceties.

Same here!

They're not land snails, Katie, but the small periwinkle (Littorina neritoides) which we call bígaro and the French call bigorneau. Very popular, BTW, in Galicia - where they do feel this (I think) very Celtic aversion for land snails (same for wild mushrooms).

Casa Jorge (calle Cartagena 104) is certainly the best bet for traditional Catalan cuisine in Madrid, and they have some nice cargols a la llauna.

Great report! One of the problems with snails is their unusual appearance, which (like kidneys, sweetbreads, goose barnacles, elvers and such other foods) places them in the 'unwanted' category for many squeamish eaters, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world. Heck, I was all of 29 years old before I could muster enough courage (in a little central French town) to taste one!

It's true. Spain and Portugal are (still) rich in convents where the nuns specialize in some traditional sweets - which in turn provide them with much-needed funds.

This list may be useful to you.

Certainly any of the Penelope Casas or Marimar Torres books are very good on fish. BTW, one of these days I'll have to stop at the Japan board to give some details of my culinary experiences during my recent (wine-selling) trip there. What I can already point out since you live in Japan is that two of our meals there were at very good Spanish restaurants, Japanese-run but quite in line with current trends in Spain's cuisine: El Poniente in Osaka and Sol Poniente in Ube City near Yamaguchi. El Poniente has an 'asador'-type branch (i.e., they specialize in grilled meats), El Poniente Carbón. Nice places!

We have found an excellent culinary level, although usually much more traditional than at Pepe Vieira during our stay in Galicia. The raw materials they work with are often mindboggling. We did go to Rotilio, of course. This is the one place you have to check out to finally understand why Spaniards have this atavistic and rather incomprehensible fixation with what seems like such a bland fish - hake, or merluza. Way back when 25-pound hakes caught with a hook (not netted) in coastal waters were frequent and not the exception as they are now in this overfished world, those huge adult fish had a wonderfully consistent meat that was, at the same time, flaky, nuttily tasty and very fine-grained. The much smaller and younger hakes we find today, often from subtropical waters off Africa or South America, are a lot more insipid. Well, at Rotilio the (woman) chef, Manicha Bermúdez, still manages to get the real thing from the Sanxenxo fishing harbor, then quickly boils a couple of large steaks of it and serves it with the wonderful Galician boiled potatoes and the classic ajada sauce made with virgin olive oil, pimentón and fried garlic. What a difference! We oldsters feel transported back to the 60s. It's an amazing treat. One of the great fish experiences around. More in the same vein, this time at Casa Bóveda in the lovely fishing port of Carril, deep at the bottom of the Arousa ría. The owner, Ramón Bóveda, is the brother of Lola Bóveda whose eponymous Loliña - exactly next door, on the pier - has been locally famous for more than three decades. Casa Bóveda is at least as good as Loliña, but Loliña (here we go again!) gets the Michelin star. Caldoso rice dishes (the one with lobster - of course the native blue one - is the star) are a mainstay at Casa Bóveda, but the other day we were tempted by a guiso de rodaballo, a stew of (wild) turbot chunks with potatoes, made in a large metal pot with potatoes, fresh green peas, fish stock, some parsley and the turbot's own gelatin as the only 'thickening' agent. Wow! Sensational traditional stuff, simultaneously silky and chunky as good turbot will be, after a first course of big local goose barnacles and (for me) a huge scallop, covered (still in its shell) with a little tomato sauce and some bread crumbs, then gratinéed - the traditional Galician way. BTW, my youngest daughter, as ever the fish hater, got (for a song) a great dish: two fried free-range eggs, sunny side up, made with good olive oil, and served with a heaping mound of hot home-made (in the same olive oil, naturally) thick french fries. (Fried eggs, often with a couple of slices of sautéed serrano ham, are a traditional Spanish lunch, not breakfast, dish.) I'll report on western Cantabria later. A couple of family-style, no-frills restaurants are the best there right now. On our way over from Galicia we stopped for lunch at possibly the most 'creative' restaurant of the booming Asturias scene, one which got its first Michelin star this year. Mixed results, as I'll explain...

Don't wear Madras shorts. Otherwise, jackets are required almost nowhere in Spain.

Can Majó's arroz caldoso is nice. Casa Paco's arroz con conejo is otherworldly.

That's less than 3.30 euros per course per person. Even if it's small portions, that's pretty cheap in my book...

"The Catalans know nothing about dry rice," Valencians like to grumble. "They always like their rice 'caldoso'."

One more note: there is increasingly a distinction made, mostly in the more modern restaurants, between 'meloso' rice (tender, soft, similar to risotto 'all'onda' in texture) and 'caldoso' rice, which is traditionally more soupy - indeed, I often prefer using a spoon instead of a fork to eat it.

You're asking for a complete refresher course on seafood in Galicia, and I'm on vacation! (Plus, I'm not much of a specialist.) BTW: sorry to miss Santi, but tomorrow it's on to Cantabria. Another decent fish and shellfish place. Just a few notes. The western Galician rías are huge, natural, well-protected sea farms. Most species have been 'planted' (i.e., millions of juveniles are bred and then released) for many years (some for two centuries), some of them are practically only available if farmed (oysters), some of them are often caught in the wild then kept in aquariums or cages in the sea (most large shellfish - lobsters, spiny lobsters, spider crabs, and the smaller shellfish some of you will know as langoustines, some as Dublin Bay prawns and some as crayfish). The exceptional plancton contents, cool but not cold temperature of the water and lack of pollution (unless a Russian tanker has recently gone under... ) allow for the mollusks and crustaceans to grow fast and spectacularly in the rías. Re oysters: both in Brittany and Galicia, at the beginning probably to respond to some shortage or some illness in the European (flat) oyster population (Ostrea edulis), the Japanese oyster known in the U.S. as Pacific king oyster (Crassostrea gigans), quite different because it's crumpled, not flat, was introduced and still is bred today. It remains a minority product. In Galicia it's seldom found because it's sold elsewhere since it doesn't have a great local reputation. The main products of the rías are mollusks, crustaceans and a number of larger or smaller members of the octopus family (squid, calamari, cuttlefish - you name it, it's here), which thrive on crustaceans. Mollusks: vieira (large scallop, or 'sea' scallop), zamburiña (the tiny 'bay' scallop called 'pétoncle' by the French), ostra (oyster), mejillón (mussel), almeja (European fine clam, Tapes decussatus), berberecho (cockle), navaja (razor clam, and its cousin the longueirón, the grooved razor clam), centolla (spider crab), buey de mar (the large round sea crab, Cancer pagurus), nécora (velvet swimmer crab), santiaguiño ('slipper lobster', a small long sea crab with a curious cross design on its back). Crustaceans: lubrigante (lobster; in Castilian Spanish, this is 'bogavante'), langosta (spiny lobster), cigala (crayfish), a few camarones (the small Atlantic shrimp called 'bouquets' by the French; mostly they come from outside the rías). I don't exactly know in which category to place the percebe (goose barnacle), one of the treasures of Galicia... They all have their 'best' seasons, but this is of course relative and variable... Spring: Cigala, almeja, ostra. Summer: Mejillón, almeja, lubrigante, langosta, percebe. Fall:Berberecho, lubrigante, langosta, vieira, zamburiña, santiaguiño, camarón. Winter: Centolla, buey, nécoras, camarón, vieira, almeja, santiaguiño. That said, Spain wolfs down shellfish in huge amounts - we import 140,000 tons per year. But these days the European Union demands pretty clear identification, so you should be able to know when it's from the rías and when it comes from some Scottish isle. (Very good stuff, usually!)

It was just a leisurely drive - you know, holidays and such...

Torrijos (the restaurant formerly known as Oscar Torrijos) and Ca' Sento both have Michelin stars. Unfortunately, Torrijos, Riff (Bernd Knöller's new place, after El Angel Azul) and Seu Xerea are all closed in August, as are most of Valencia's interesting restaurants. This city does shut down for good this month...

Well, you have your own nice worlds, mostly full of bacalhau. I just sampled some, and several excellent alvarinhos to boot, during a rainy day at Valença do Minho...

A few days of rest in the balmy Galician rías - southern Europe's response to the Norwegian fjords, these are long, deep estuaries of rivers along an abrupt, indented, mountainous stretch of Atlantic coast just north of Portugal. The rías are Europe's greatest shellfish refuge, and also the land of the ubiquitous albariño grape, grown on 6-foot-7-high granite pergolas (to protect them from humidity), which provide both lush grapes for making white wine and nice shades for people and even cars (there are wonderful, improvised car parks under those arbors near beaches - 2 euros for the whole day.) We didn't know, last Saturday, if we'd have bad traffic jams out of Madrid as Spaniards hit the road for the August vacations, that revered European institution. But, lo and behold, all's clear at 9 AM on the A-6 motorway to northwest Spain and it takes us just five hours to cover the 400 miles to Sanxenxo, on the northern coast of the Pontevedra ría, and at 2 PM we are there - still on time for lunch. We try booking at Rotilio, with its Michelin star, but it's full. So the second choice is Pepe Vieira. No Michelin star here, and just three tables are taken in the small, minimalist, pale green/yellow/orange dining room with the wide bays on the ría with its sailboats and its mussel-laden platforms. Well, this experience will teach us that those who've preferred the well-established Rotilio are missing something special. A more adventurous, more creative approach than anything we've tasted near here, and proof of just what deep inroads modern cuisine is making in Galicia - Spain's most conservative region, culinarily and perhaps otherwise too. Xosé Torres Cannas AKA Pepe Vieira is a young cook with a lot of ideas and (thank goodness) fine technique and a feel for combinations of taste and texture that work. His brother Xoan, the sommelier, just won Spain's coveted 'golden nose' award for 2004 - a difficult wine tasting contest in which the tasters are blindfolded and can only smell the wines they have to identify. Xoan has an interesting wine list which includes all of Galicia's best wines; we choose a hard-to-find Do Ferreiro Cepas Vellas 2002 albariño, made by local grower Gerardo Méndez, an old friend: total production, 250 cases, from pre-phylloxeric, 200-year-old vines that sport tree-sized trunks. After an appetizer of 'summer salad' with smoked San Simón cheese and white grapes, we had a dish of creamy seafood rice with 'metedura de gamba' (a play on the Spanish expression meaning 'acting clumsily', the 'gamba' was a perfectly cooked 'camarón' shrimp); the innocuous-sounding poached egg with codfish, green peas and parmentier-style potato purée (actually a beautifully presented dish, with the poached free range egg shaped so it can stand on its own, and the tiny peas, the lightly hot-smoked cod and the thick dollop of parmentier providing visual, textural and taste contrasts); a firm and juicy monkfish steak with a powerful version of 'ajada', the Galician garlic-pimentón-and-olive oil sauce that traditionally accompanies many types of boiled fish, in this case enhanced with tiny morsels of crisp panceta (our style of bacon/pancetta) and with tiny white kidney beans; and a delicate, rod-caught (not netted - this is a coastal fish) hake with an emulsion of olives, potatoes (Xosé loves the soft Galician potato, the 'cachelo'!) and carrots. The contrast between the powerful monkfish and the subtle hake perfectly illustrates the wide-ranging variety that is feasible when cooking seafood. My fish-hating youngest daughter, who's with us, has two perfectly grilled morsels of Galician beef sirloin, cooked very rare, with three, count'em, three (huge) french fries that are crisp and golden outside, redolent of virgin olive oil, and (of course) creamy inside. Just a reminder that the cook doesn't ignore foods from terra firma and doesn't treat a 13 year-old's very basic tastes boringly. As another reminder, this one to those who doubt the new-found quality of modern Spanish desserts, two terrific ones:a roast red plum with 'lemon' thyme, an apricot 'coulis' and mango ice cream, and a creamy Galician hazelnut 'praliné' with cinnamon 'crackling' and cinnamon ice. Why no Michelin stars (yet)? Well, it's par for the course for the intrepid Spanish inspectors of the French guide. The next day, change of scenery. There's thick fog over the ría, and going to the beach doesn't seem too appetizing. But we decide on lunch at Lapamán beach anyway, on the south side of the ría opposite Sanxenxo, after meeting our local friends in Pontevedra, the small, beautiful provincial capital at the end of the fjord. Lapamán is just 300 yards of fine white sand on the ría's calm waters, framed in a steep hill covered with lush vegetation: the pine and poplar trees, even the small corn fields, go down to the very edge of the sand, and also right at the edge there are a few villas and a ramshackle white building with no name - the nameless Lapamán bar and grill, with its vine-covered terrace on the sea. We sit down for lunch on hard plastic-covered chairs, paper napkins in hand, on a paper-covered metal table. It's Sunday and there isn't much fish and shellfish left on the black board at the bar, but still enough for a feast of steamed mussels, tiny fried Padrón peppers ('unos pican y outros non': some are hot and some are not), golden rings of very fresh, deep-fried calamari rings (which my daughter wolfs down - first time in her life), perfect tomato-lettuce-and-onion salad from the orchards right next to the beach (they're bringing in the romaine lettuces in a basket as we sit down) and grilled 'rapantes', the ría's small elongated plaice-type fish, that is tastier than even a Dover sole - with, of course, french fries (using very decent olive oil). Add the best albariño I can muster and some industrial ice cream (from Frigo, the Spanish company, which makes commendable things), it adds up to a perfect 15-euro lunch. Not to mention that during our first course the fog finally lifts, a golden sun appears and in the ideal conditions (78º F, and the water at 76º F...) we follow coffee with a dip in the ría and a prudent bit of sunbathing. What was best, Pepe Vieira or the nameless Lapamán bar? I won't choose. As long as Galicia continues to offer its basic primitive charms next to modern sophistication, it will remain one of Spain's greatest gastronomic destinations.

Xixo Castaño's Malena (Avda. Josep Tarradelles, 45-47, phone 973211541) is the area's up-and-coming modern restaurant. Unfortunately, you'll have to drive all the way down to Lleida, the provincial capital, to eat there.

Rafa is that mainstay of many Spanish seaside towns and fishing ports - the little unassuming bar-restaurant that has a direct pipeline to the best of the best fish and seafood that comes through the harbor entrance. Since Rafa is in Roses and Ferran is an enthusiastic customer, he's now much more famous internationally than are a Rafael in Castellón or a Felipe in Aguilas. That's called 'being in the right place at the right time'. Or, as merchants like to proclaim: "Location, location, location!"

A small point - 'boquerón' simply means 'anchovy' in Spanish. We use the term 'anchoa' only when they are cured in salt or oil (except in the Basque Country, where 'antxoa' is applied to all anchovies - fresh, cured or cooked.) So the 'boquerones en vinagre' are pickled anchovies, while 'boquerones fritos' are fresh anchovies that are rolled in coarse flour and deep-fried in olive oil, Andalusian style: they are a mainstay of a good platter of 'fritura', varied fried fish and squid. Over in Cantabria, on the northern Atlantic coast, the 'boquerón' is called 'bocarte', and the great Santander restaurateur Víctor Merino made the 'bocartada', a skillet-full of lightly braised anchovies with a little olive oil, parsley and lemon juice, one of his signature dishes.

Actually, NYT superstar Elaine Sciolino misspells the restaurant's name and that of Alfredo's wife, and asserts that they use American beef when (for many years) it's always been Danish beef. Way to go, 'grey lady'! The Jayson Blair legacy seems to live on! The El Mundo review says that Adrià had the bad luck to set up shop just 150 yards from the place where they serve "perhaps the best burgers in continental Europe." So the comparisons are hurting him... Actually, his other sandwiches, cold or hot, are much better.