vserna

So it's 116 euros at Gordon Ramsay for a seven-course dinner; it's 126 euros (118 + 8 VAT) at Can Fabes for an eight-course (plus petits fours) tasting menu which I would not, personally, call "ordinary" as estufarian does. So they're both very cheap by three-star standards, right? By the way: wines are so much more expensive at GR than at CF that they will unfailingly make the final tab much higher...

You can check it out on the Can Fabes web site. The latest tasting menu they include is 118 euros plus 7% VAT. Dirt cheap for a Michelin three-star restaurant, if you ask me. Compare with the others in Europe...

Those from Extremadura (where the Vera valley is) do. But, as discussed elwewhere, the availability of Spanish ham and sausages in the US remains extremely limited.

Yes it is. I, for one, always prefer dried pimentón. That may be why I (sorry not to be very nationalistic there) almost always prefer a fine 'különleges' paprika from Hungary to a Spanish pimentón.

Sorry, I do admit the correction: indeed in La Vera they hot-smoke the peppers over holm oak fires. But La Vera is not the only style or source of pimentón in Spain. In Murcia, with a drier climate, pimentón is always sun-dried.

Just my two late Eurocents: I got more out of Tim's article than out of the New York Times Magazine's much-celebrated, but ponderous, belated, repetitive piece. By the way - I have been fortunate to eat Ferran Adrià's food a number of times. I still liked Tim's ironic column. Why not?

Actually it isn't smoked, just dried. But it does lend a somewhat smoky flavor.

It was probably Yolanda Vega, Amy. She is supposedly the 'sous-chef', but actually she forms a perfect team with JA Campoviejo and they are both equally important in the kitchen there.

O well, never right... So it's just too much food at Casa Gerardo, and too little at Corral del Indianu. These Spanish restaurants certainly are devilish, and there's always something wrong to be found in them... I'd say I'm most comfortable with a ten-course tasting menu if it comes in tiny portions. But then again, there are appetites, and there are appetites... But you do leave the wrong impression that José Antonio Campoviejo (he's a he) only serves gelées and ice creams. He does serve some very substantial fish and meat. There's a good alternative in Spain to tasting menus: composing one yourself, with two firsts, two seconds and two desserts and perhaps one extra, intriguing starter, and ordering them in half-portions. That'll be a seven-course menu with enough substance to satisfy those with an apetite for more than just foams.

I see lots of misconceptions based on a few experiences in a very specific region... Turning isolated cases into a nationwide verdict is an exercise that's most often condemned to fail. English is as frequently (or infrequently - take your pick) spoken in Spain as it is in France or Italy. Practically all Spaniards under the age of 35 have had English as their first foreign language in school; older ones usually had French. And some old fogies even manage to speak and write a passable English. By the way: a huge number of Americans and northern Europeans are fluent in Spanish these days, so it's a two-way street and usually there's one way or another of understanding each other. But trying to get the local staff to explain "non-standard techniques" in English seems to me far-fetched. Go to Paris and have them explain blanquette de veau, or go to Tokyo and try to get the distinction between toro and maguro... Confusing the fabada - Spain's greatest dish, to some - at Casa Gerardo with any other fabada in Asturias is like confusing steaks in some schmuck Manhattan steakhouse with steaks at Peter Luger. Casa Gerardo makes the best fabada in the world, and quality variations in this dish can be extremely marked ones. The comparison with PL is not coincidental, but particularly apt, I think: regional cooking has some ingrained invariability which is part of its attractiveness, just like steaks. But at Casa Gerardo you have a whole array of other, very 'un-samey' things, which is not the case in Brooklyn... This is not being 'conservative and relentlessly monocultural'; it's called having one of the richest traditions in regional cuisine anywhere in the world and keeping it alive by going out and eating fabada, or paella, or escudella. And of course all this about why they go out to eat those "boring" things is balderdash. Why do Americans go out to eat blackened catfish, New England clam chowder or cioppino? Why don't they all cook those things at home so that all restaurants can become creative 'foodie' joints? Balderdash, too, this "for everyday eating the Spanish are still way behind the French in every way". There isn't a single covered market in France like the Boquería; the best wine shop in Paris, Lavinia, is a branch of a Spanish company that earlier opened in Madrid and Barcelona; some of the greatest pastry and chocolate shops in the world are to be found in out-of-the-way Spanish towns; the quality of $25-and-under restaurants in Spain is, in 2003, three cuts above the same type of places in France. By the way, to me the best restaurant in Asturias today is the certainly non-monocultural Taberna Viavélez-Puerto. I would expect you ate there, didn't you? And that you didn't think it boring, conservative and 'samey'.

You divide Spain into two pretty narrow strips, with a huge lot left in the middle... As it turns out, for art lovers, central Spain (Madrid, El Escorial, Toledo, Avila, Segovia, Salamanca, Valladolid) has the greatest concentration of great monuments and amazing museums within relatively short distances. (Never more than 120 miles around the capital.) Any well-organized foodie will be able to eat very well anywhere in the country these days, even on the small, faraway, moon-like island of Lanzarote where I am right now. The north does have a greater concentration of fine restaurants for purely socio-economic reasons: until rather recently, southern Spain was extremely poor and lived on a subsistence diet of olives and bread, not on caramelized foie gras. There are basically no stuffy places in today's Spain, and single diners can feel perfectly at home, and they'll receive very good service.

There are no more than a dozen Michelin-starred restaurants with bedrooms outside of big cities in Spain, plus perhaps another dozen with no stars but serious foodie interest (as I've mentioned here, Michelin is stingy and unfair in many parts of Spain). Still too few. There should be more.

Very possibly Drolma is ahead of La Broche right now, whatever Michelin says. Then again, it's hard for me to consider La Broche a 'hotel resrtaurant', as it's more like a 'restaurant against the hotel', with its back to the Miguel Angel in more senses than one - an uncomfortable situation if I ever saw one.

Old colleague, uh? Culinarily speaking, with friends like that, who needs enemies? Your comment on hotel restaurants hardly applies to Spain. Very few of this country's interesting restaurants are attached to a hotel, unless it's in the country and the restaurant itself offers a bunch of rooms (that's the case now for Can Fabes, formerly the Racò de Can Fabes). But in large city hotels - very, very little. Drolma, in Barcelona's Majestic Hotel, is certainly the best in that category.

¡De nada!

The lack of any stars for the great Isidre is one of the many blatant injustices in the sorry Michelin guide to Spain, which consistently underrates restaurants or indeed whole regions of the country. Viridiana in Madrid, Rafael in Castellón de la Plana, Echaurren in Ezcaray are names that immediately come to mind. And how is it possible that Las Rejas still sports just one star? There is irrefutable proof of what I'm saying: the number of starred restaurants in Spain in 2003 is the same as in 1990, before this country's amazing culinary push! Headquarters in France deny this, but Michelin sources in Spain privately assert that there are standing instructions not to increase the number of stars in this country, particularly at a tgime when the roll call in France itself has been pared down to reflect slippñing standards. Interesting, isn't it?

Mrs. B. is entirely right.

??? I've never seen any shrimp, big or small, in Spain with their heads off. We use fresh shellfish here... One of the reasons why the food's good.

Indeed, Bux. That's one of the main points in my comments in the Media forum about this weekend's NYT magazine piece. No, obviously not - everything of culinary interest in Europe is not happening in Catalonia, even though, let's face it, with a half-dozen mind-boggling, state-of-the-art, world-class restaurants, Catalonia is probably leading the European culinary scene at present. But modern Spain not being by any stretch of the imagination a closed country, the movement has soon become generalized and reaches from Asturias to the Canary Islands, from Valencia to Extremadura. (For instance, Ca Sento in Valencia has become one of Europe's best restaurants with barely anyone outside Spain having found out about it yet.)

Nice area to visit, and one where Americans don't go much; OTOH, to northern Europeans Alicante is like Florida or possibly Arizona, so you'll find a huge bunch of Germans, Swiss, Dutchmen or Britons who have vacation homes there and often live in them permanently after retirement. The coastal region is somewhat stark and semi-desert-like, but this has a counterpart – that it’s almost always sunny, of course, and also the very balmy winters. Look at a map: Alicante is closer to Algiers than to Madrid! But don't let the barren, often grandiose landscapes fool you into believing you’re in the middle of some gastronomic Kalahari: there's much of culinary interest here, plus some very interesting wines. (And some unexpected greenery inland and also in places like Elche, which has Europe's largest palm grove.) Of the three Valencian provinces which cover a large swathe of eastern Spain’s Mediterranean coast, Alicante is the southernmost and also – IMHO – the one where the great regional dish, paella, is done best in a larger number of restaurants. There are somewhere below in this part of eGullet some rather peculiar threads in which all sorts of patronizing opinions were cast about that supposedly technique-less dish, paella. Well, some people have no idea. Paella is pretty devilish as traditional dishes go, and indeed it’s usually dreadfully done in most restaurants, not just outside Spain, but also here. Alicante will give you a few chances to taste the real thing. There are indeed legendary paella cooks in Spain (contrary to what was stated in the aforementioned threads...), headed by Paco Gandía and his wife Josefa of Pinoso, which is inland from Alicante. Casa Paco is revered by paella lovers for delivering the goods. This means short.grain Calasparra rice, extended over a very wide iron paella (which simply means ‘skillet’) in which chunks of rabbit and small snails called ‘vaquetes’ (which feed on thyme and impart a tangy herby taste) have been sautéed in olive oil. The rice is spread extremely thin: the layer will be no more than a third of an inch thick when the dish is cooked (and it must be cooked over an open fire of vine cuttings, which impart a decisive part of the flavor). So a correct paella for two, done in the basic inland style which reigns in Pinoso,l demands a very large skillet (something like 18 inches across) and takes up a lot of space in the kitchen, more so when they’re cooking 20 paellas simultaneously! Paella is a fried rice dish, not a soupy rice dish like risotto, and therefore is absolutely different in that the grain must be dry and firm, somewhat al dente – the exact ‘punto’, as we say in Spain, is achieved off the fire and determined with an eagle’s eye by the truly good paella chefs. Segismundo Amorós is No. 2 among paella stars in Spain. He’s had the good idea to open branches in several towns and cities (including Madrid), and there’s one of them, Mi Casa, near Alicante’s San Juan beach. But there are many other good addresses for the many styles of Alicante paella, including (in the capital) Nou Manolín and Piripi (their signature paella: ‘verduras y magro’, i.e. vegetables and pork loin). Of the several seafood paellas, Alicante is most proud of ‘arròs a banda’, in which the fish- and shellfish-infused rice is eaten alone, with just a few tiny bits of calamari and tiny shrimp; in the old times, the fish was eaten separately, with some ‘all i oli’, but this is infrequent now. It’s very good at La Sirena (Petrer/Elda), and paella with shrimp is also a strong point of Estanquet (Elche). The inventive, highly personal cooking styles that have now flourished around Spain are also well represented in the area. Make a note of these names: El Poblet (Denia), Casa Pepa (Ondara), Monastrell and Mastral (Alicante), and the foursome in Moraira, a pinetree-shaded resort that is one of the most pleasurable places on this coast because it lacks the oppressive high-rise development of such places as Benidorm: Girasol, La Seu, La Sort and the French-managed Le Dauphin. Girasol, with two Michelin stars, is the most celebrated restaurant in southeastern Spain, and it’s very fine indeed, but I tend to find a bit of academic predictability in Joachim Koerper’s cooking – a relatively frequent trait of modern German chefs. By the way, all of them save perhaps Girasol serve their own, excellent albeit sometimes quite modern, versions of paella. Valencianos need rice like Italians need pasta. You’ll see many coast-side vineyards in the Marina Alta area near Jávea and Moraira. This is the land of muscat (moscatel), and Gutiérrez de la Vega makes some of the world’s best sweet versions (Casta Diva Cosecha Miel and Casta Diva La Diva). The Bocopa co-op makes an inexpensive, very tasty dry version, Marina Alta – very good with a seafood paella! The best area for red wines in Alicante, instead, is in the harsher, more continental climate of Villena, on the Castilian plateau. That’s where the excellent Enrique Mendoza reds are harvested.

Actually - no. (Despite what can be found on the Internet!) Garnata was an outlying area (what is now known as the Albaicín hill) of the city of Elibyrge (its ancient Iberian name) or Iliberis (its Visigothic name), which became Ilbira after the early Muslim (Arab-Berber) occupation of the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century. In 1010 Ilbira was destroyed and the population took refuge in what was then called Gharnatah-al-Yahud (Garnata of the Jews, since this was mostly a Jewish quarter) - hence the modern name of Granada. It was to be the last bastion of Muslim power in Spain - it was 'reconquered' in 1492, shortly before Christopher Columbus landed on Hispaniola. (Busy year, this 1492, for the Spanish royal couple, Ferdinand and Isabella...) Granada does also mean pomegranate, but in this case it's from the past participle of the verb "granar", which means "to ripen", so a granada is a "fully ripened fruit". The coincidence is quite obvious, and indeed Christian Granada took the pomegranate as its symbol.

As Jan and Dean used to belt out, back in '63, "Help me Rhonda!" The name is... Ronda. Also, Granada, not Grenada - this is not in the Caribbean. Tragabuches in Ronda is a must, La Ruta del Veleta outside Granada is a decent choice in a not-enthralling culinary area.

Ruth: Mario Sandoval's restaurant is called Coque, in the town of Humanes, south of Madrid. El Bohío, run by two brothers, Diego and Pepe Rodríguez, is in Illescas... slightly to the southeast of Illescas. Coque is much less well-known, not having gained any Michelin stars yet. But it's at least as good as El Bohío. My advice: don't use e-mail to book a table in smaller, country restaurants in Spain. Many of them check their e-mail once in a blue moon. Phone ahead. They'll make an effort with their English and you can work again on your high school Spanish. I'm 100% sure you would have had a table at El Bohío. They're successful, but not wildly so - far too modern for local tastes, unfortunately.

I think that Tony has very vividly depicted, not just what one eats in Roses - the pristine raw materials at Rafa's, the wild recreations of these same gustatory experiences at Ferran's place - but particularly the sense of excitement, fun and camaraderie that one finds these days around Spain's kitchens. It's particularly striking, how Juan Mari Arzak and Ferran Adrià have hit it off despite the 20-year age difference between them. I think Juan Mari doesn't always understand every Adrià dish, but he recognized from day one that this was the guy who would do for Spanish cuisine after 2000 what Arzak did for it in the 1970s and 1980s - make it grow by leaps and bounds. In a way, Adrià might be considered as Arzak's spiritual heir, were it not because there's already a real family heir, Elena Arzak! I discovered the other day what one 26 year-old, Mario Sandoval, who's of course worked under both great chefs and with every other meaningful cook in Spain, is up to in an improbable location - a semi-rural, semi-industrial, bleak little town just south of Madrid. Dazzling and daring, but he never misses a beat. Pretty exciting time for a food lover to be in (or visit) Spain. I find much of the same pumped-up buzz and creative fever that one could sense back when I was a youngster 35 years ago and my father used to take me around France to discover what a bunch of young chefs called Troisgros, Bocuse and Laporte were doing. A couple of young reporters called Henri Gault and Christian Millau were singing paeans to them and inventing the expression, 'nouvelle cuisine'. I hadn't felt something like this in Europe since then. ... By the way, a late addition (for Spanish speakers): Ferran Adrià on what's interesting in and around Roses: http://www.elmundo.es/mundoverano/2003/gps.html

Oh. Extremely gastronomic and to the point.