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Actually, the dish wasnt bastardized at all - the name was! Anywhere else in Spain, this is gambas al ajillo, and it's as genuinely a part of traditional Spanish cuisine as anything. And that's exactly how it's eaten. With lots ofd bread and lots of peppery garlicky oil dripping all over the place. Mmmmm..... Why do they drop the 'al ajillo' on the Costa del Sol ('ajillo' meaning, literally, 'little garlic')? I wonder. Perhaps not to make it sound like such a garlicky dish to all those foreign tourists?

Sounds theological. You gotta believe!

That's not exceptionally low. Anything above 0.3% or 0.4% is probably too high. Either technical defects or harvesting overripe fruit. As Marco Mugelli, the great Tuscan olive-oil scientist wrote, "Si potrebbe stabilire, come norma generale, che, se con olive sane, ben conservate e ben lavorate, si ottiene un olio con un'acidità superiore a 0,5 significa che si è raccolto troppo tardi." ("We could establish, as a general rule, that if we obtain - with healthy, well-kept and well elaborated olives - an oil that has over 0.5% acidity, it will mean that they were harvested too late.") Mugelli believes the EU indication 'extra virgin olive oil', should not be given to oils with more than 0.3% acidity, whereas the limit now is 1%. I personally agree. The great, fragrant, 'piquant' oils from Umbria and Tuscany have always 0.1% or 0.2%. And it's in olive oil making that Spain is probably still the most behind the world quality leaders, i.e. basically Italy in this case. Mugelli is working in Spain now, though, and he makes one of the (to me) two best virgin olive oils here, Marqués de Griñón (Toledo); the other one is Dauro de l'Empordà (Girona). These small, quality producers are leading the breakthrough that will change the face of Spanish olive oil over the next five years as wines have changed over the past five to ten. Re pil pil as an emulsion: yes, you're indeed technically right, only you're missing a part of the equation: water. Without it there'll be no emulsion. But without garlic and oil... there'll be no pil pil.

Well, LML has given a good explanation, which I'd amend by saying that, a) high-acidity virgin olive oil should be avoided because said high acidity is always a sign of a defect with the oilmaking process, b) a real codfish 'al pil pil' is possibly one of the three or four best traditional dishes in Spain, for it's immensely subtle and nuanced, not 'bland'. It's just amazing how, with the slow and wise rotation of a human arm, a bit of garlic will so perfectly emulsify with olive oil (or is it the oil that emulsifies with the garlic?) to produce such a great, great culinary wonder. It's a Bilbao, not a San Sebastián dish. Bilbao is the codfish capital of Spain. That said, the way some of these southern restaurants are using 'pil pil' is obviously a deformation of or a confusion with the Portuguese 'piri piri', which refers to the use of hot dried peppers (guindilla in Spanish). It's totally improper to use the expression 'pil pil' for a hot peppery sautéed dish.

Am running out to a wine tasting. More on 'real' pil pil later. Promise.

Interesting. Never heard of gambas being prepared al pil pil. Wouldn't that rather be 'al ajillo'?

They are very seldom found fresh, in season (which is a very short one). Re pimientos de Padrón: a good-humored Madrid chef always refers, in his witty menu, as his 'Padrón peppers from Murcia', which is like 'Chesapeake Bay crab from San Francisco'... Actually, Padrón-type small peppers are planted and sold all over Spain; some better, some worse, some hotter, some mild...

It was probably not a plain mayonnaise, but a home-made 'all i oli', the Catalan cousin of the Provençal 'aïoli'. It's sometimes made, these days, as a garlic-flavored mayonnaise, but the real 'all i oli' is even more overpowering and 'dangerous', so it should be used in homoeopathic portions, with great prudence: it's a pure emulsion of mashed garlic cloves with some olive oil (which is what the name means), with no eggs to soften the blow!

Why are they? Let's don't forget that piquillos, before being canned, are 1) roasted; 2) peeled; 3) preserved in olive oil. So it's a very specific food.

They can be tinned (in cans with a special lining: at the prices they charge, they can afford it!) or put in glass jars, which I personally don't like that much because the sunlight doesn't help the delicate white asparagus, and for some reason they are not using dark glass (AFAIK) as vrigin olive oil producers now do.

Indeed. I'll take your word on decadence.

Absolutely incorrect perception. Asparagus (white, not green) is the only canned vegetable a good restaurant (meaning: not a canteen) in Spain will ever use, and many state quite clearly on their menu: "Canned". When I mention Spain's love for some canned foods I'm naturally referring to L'Escala and Santoña anchovies, Galician mussels and cockles, Basque sardines or tuna belly that are proudly displayed by the very best tapas bars in the country which (I think) invented tapas and made them into an art form. Ah! I forgot. And the famed Almagro pickled eggplant (that's aubergine in your country).

Thank you, Tony. I wouldn't expect any less from you and your profound knowledge of Spain. 'Fresh' white asparagus that's three or four days old becomes wooden. That's the 'fresh' asparagus most people eat. And then of course the season is a very short one. Do buy yourself a tin of ultra-large Navarra white asparagus (of the size that's legally and quite precisely known as 'cojonudos') next time you're in Spain, open it without preconceived notions , and then report on it, please. Don't blast things you haven't tasted yet. That would be my humble piece of advice.

There's an added little twist here. Gagnaire knows current Spanish cuisine rather well and is a close friend of Madrid's Sergi Arola, who considers Adrià and Gagnaire as his two mentors. Indeed, if there's a style in France that has some kinship with Adrià's, it might be Pierre's. So maybe a little bit of jealousy that someone with a similar philosophy to his own is getting more recognition than himself? Just speculating here, of course.

Except when you're eating one-day-old fresh asparagus, the canned, big white asparagus from La Rioja or Navarra is very hard to improve on anywhere in the world. Why is it that you "could never eat" them? Because canned food is a health hazard for you or because of sheer prejudice against canned foods? In Spain we couldn't live without canned foods. As already explained by other posters, the best tapas bars always offer some great (and expensive!) stuff straight out of tins, small or huge...

Indeed 99% of Spain's cooks (amateurs or pros) use canned or jarred piquillos. I've seen a web site where one of the most reliable brands, El Navarrico, is sold in the US. Bux, there's no relationship (except that they're both, botanically, Capsicum annum - like habanero and ají amarillo and páprika and all others!) between Espelette and Lodosa peppers. The piquillos from Lodosa are, a) never hot; b) never dried, just roasted and eaten either alone or in a salad or stuffed.

Mmmmm... To what do you attribute this sudden burst of generous incompetence on the part of Michelin's inspectors? Perhaps to the fact that this is the Spanish guide? Have you been to the starred restaurants on the other side of the French border, which is just a stone's throw away? I'd really be interested in your opinions about, for instance, l'Auberge du Cheval Blanc in Bayonne, Ithurria in Ainhoa and Bakéa at Biriatou (that's exactly on the French-Spanish border). Do you think they are superior to similarly starred restaurants on the Spanish side? Or have they also profited from a burst of generous incompetence?

You're entirely right, Chloe. My mind must have been on grelo season coming up... It's still a very good vegetable soup, the caldo verde!

There's a trick in Portugal: have some soup, by all means. They're hearty, very good and with plenty of vegetables. In the north, around Porto, 'caldo verde', with nice crunchy turnip greens, is the thing; in Alentejo, it might me 'açorda de coentros', i.e. fresh cilantro soup.

That's entirely correct. But to me, it's a classic cop-out. The easy solution.

The classic Portucale is in good form and is one of the best restaurants in Porto these days. In nearby Leça de Palmeira (just four miles to the north, across the Leça river), O Chanquinhas has superlative seafood (including top-notch bacalhau, i.e. cod, dishes). At Gondomar, which is slightly inland in the outskirts of Porto, a good, similarly maritime offer can be found in the Margem Douro restaurant. They also make a very good lamprey, but unfortunately that's not in season in October...

Hiramatsu has just one Michelin star.

It's a debatable wine list, but not uninformed. The basic Alain Graillot can be purchased for 10 euros in Spain.

El Campello is just six miles from Alicante proper, so it doesn't make much of a difference. A good little restaurant nearby: Albatros, at Sant Joan d'Alacant. (Just off the N-332 road as you drive down to Alicante.)

Ferran Adrià never thinks of pairings with wine when creating a dish, as he himself confesses. His cuisine is difficult to match with any wine, and almost impossible with a serious red wine. To me, as a wine lover, this is the weakest point in Ferran's culinary conceptions, and I find similar difficulties with people such as Pierre Gagnaire. It's a well-known contradiction: there's ever better red wines made all over the world, but modern cuisine is almost totally at odds with them.