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No, man, I need a better paella than that concoction of yours. I don't know if this was written by a Spaniard. There are Spaniards who wouldn't know the difference between a paella and a puddle. Americans, too.

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It's indeed interesting that some people believe that either Catalonia or alternatively an imaginary Barcelona/San Sebastián axis monopolize what's happening in Spanish cuisine these days. It was fortunate that Bux could stop over at Las Rejas to get a glimpse at the rest of the action. Here's a further list of places (be they innovative or terroir-driven, great restaurants or taverns with a sizzling kitchen) that qualify as 'musts' in my book: Echaurren, in Ezcaray (La Rioja) Coque, in Humanes (Madrid) Ars Vivendi, in Moralzarzal (Madrid) Ca Sento, in Valencia Pincelín, in Almansa (Albacete) El Bohío, in Illescas (Toledo) Molino Blanco, in Alcalá de Guadaira (Seville) Viavélez, in Tapia de Casariego (Asturias) Gamíniz, in Zamudio (Bizkaia) In Madrid - and in addition to the more publicized places: Viridiana, Dantxari, Tété, Ventorrillo Murciano, Kabuki, Cuenllas Wine Bar y Restaurante, Taquería del Alamillo. I'll add to that another Catalan place that never seems to get its due on this board - the absolute best traditional cuisine in the region: Hispania, at Arenys de Mar.

RE: O noble symphony of all the colors! O illustrious Paella! O polychromatic dish eaten by eyes before touching the tongue! Array of glories where all is blended. Divine compromise between chicken and clam. O contradictory dish Intriguing ditty. Contradictory indeed. This is a description of what we call 'una paella para turistas'. Chicken and clams? Pliiiizzzz.......... What have we done to deserve having such concoctions described as 'paellas'?

Must've been a long time ago... These days, people have dinner much earlier than that in Madrid.

Re: "The humor and technique were arresting and unforgettable, even if the flavor was less than perfect." That's a good summary of the experience at Adrià, which can be so fascinating for some and so infuriating for others. Basically, it's important to have those long, long Adrià menus because the tongue-in-cheek carousel will always be fun, and you're sure to find three-four of the dishes that'll be unforgettable experiences. On the other hand, I've always found three-four others that were true failures, and a few rather indifferent ones. That's the price one pays for this type of whimsical genius. What I cannot accept (and I've seen it on this board) are total disqualifications: "Everything was disappointing." Anyone saying that has, IMHO, more prejudice than taste buds in his/her mouth.

A friend tried six times in three days to get a table last week. Thoroughly impossible.

I tried to eat there May 5, but it turns out they were (finally!) opening to the public on May 7, a week ago. No reservations taken. First come, first served. There's a large communal table facing the open kitchen - convenient for single diners, I guess. Average price per person, only 50 euros! (But wine can make this jump up...) There's even a dirt-cheap children's menu, I'm told. Grilled crawfish (langoustines) will be great, Joël promises. French readers may find it interesting to see this Libération interview published May 10th: http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=109478

French will get you by. They'll work you to death. Be ready for it. It will be very instructive but harsh. That's the consensus amongst young cooks I know who've done stints at Martín's place - tougher than most any other place in Spain.

In Bilbao, there's now a serious competitor to the Guggenheim museum restaurant - Aitor Basabe's Arbola Gaña restaurant on the top floor of the Museo de Bellas Artes (just a two-minute walk from the Guggenheim). His 38-euro 'menú degustación' is worth a visit. Also, a slightly modern version of the 'sidrería' (cider brewery cum kitchen) is Kiskia, calle Pérez Galdós 51: fine for your codfish omelet and grilled steak or monkfish... For a seafood fest, the place is Serantes II, Alameda de Urquijo 51 - very good shellfish, no great shakes if you go for elaborate dishes.

Les Armures is the absolute choice for fondue in Geneva's old town. Or (even better, to my taste) for raclette preceded by a healthy portion of 'viande séchée des Grisons', Switzerland's version of bresaola. The drink is a good chasselas white from Vaud or Valais. Look it up... http://www.hotel-les-armures.ch/

Actually, Bux, Malden and Guérande are almost even in the salt preference sweepstakes among modern Spanish restaurants. In butter, I'd say it's also a near-dead heat between Echiré and Isigny. And, as you saw, our legendary nationalism is so watered down these days (at least in Madrid) that Tuscan and Umbrian extra virgin oils compete with their Andalusian and Catalan counterparts on restaurant tables...

A 20th-century author described Spain's food as "a mix of garlic and religious prejudice", which I think is a more accurate, if less joyous, description of my country's cooking history than the "humorous" tag lissome so kindly offered. Sorry, lissome: the humor is only a product of Ferran Adrià's pervasive influence over the past five or six years, and Ferran is fortunately a funny guy with a quirky irreverent outlook on food and life. But a few years isn't much yet when compared with many centuries of deprivations - because much of Spain is by nature a poor, arid country, and it grew increasingly impoverished between the 17th century and the middle of the 20th century - and of an overwhelming presence of the Catholic church in daily life. So obviously we had pork (after the Muslims and Jews were expelled from nascent imperial Spain five centuries ago, eating pork was the way to show that one followed the 'right' faith...), we had Lent, and all those things. We had olives and bread because that's what the land would give, and the meager basis of sustenance for at least the southernmost two-thirds of the country. We didn't have much culinary sophistication because for so long Spain was strictly on a survival diet. Probably, the exhuberance and playfulness of modern Spanish cuisine and/or Adrià's sweeping success and influence do reflect a healthy reaction to such a long history of poverty, boredom and religious diktats. In that sense, the lissome theory would imply that a sweeping change is now occurring in Spain's national character. Thinking it over, and even though it's only been such a short number of years, maybe she is onto something here...

In Castilian Spanish, it's 'papada de cerdo'.

Well, there's not that much stress involved when eating at the Racó de Can Fabes, because despite the pyrotechnics there's a basic interest in delivering the raw materials in pristine condition - a broadbean cream with codfish, a marvelous breast of duck, roasted rare, with a cocoa sauce... they all say what they are, basically. El Bulli can be a bit more stressful intellectually, of course, but lots of fun too. Gaig is only a little more inventive than Hispania, but just as solid in that it shares the same deep bonds with the Catalan traditions: if you will, these two and Santi Santamaria are on the same wavelength, with increasing elements of modernity incorporated. Carles Gaig is now 55, he's been the chef for 30 years in a family business (a modest tavern: Taverna d'en Gaig, rebuilt in 1989) that has been going since 1869 - which is just the moment when the Barcelona bourgeoisie began to have it good and modern Catalan home cooking started to take shape, with a number of French and Italian elements becoming intertwined with Catalan country cooking. So we're not talking high fashion or young wild chefs here, but rather deep roots. However, Carles is just a fine pro who's not been content with repeating the house standards for 30 years - instead, he's been growing all the time. The result is very impressive IMHO. A 'caldereta' (stew) of lobster, rock fish and clams sounds like one of those fishermen's pots, but the guy transforms it into a delicate, technically dashing dish. He'll roast a pig's chin (sounds strange, but a particularly delectable cut of meat!) and serve it with thyme-flavored potatoes. A red scorpion fish (rascasse) will come with a rice vinaigrette. He'll even get into the eternal steak tartare to flavor it with Calvados and serve it with a 'granité' of green apples to counteract the spicy raw beef. The menu changes four times a year, but of course he'll usually include a few 'classics' of the house, notably the paella of pigeon and cèpe mushrooms, the pig's trotters and the hyper-traditional Barcelona-style cannelloni the Gaig family has been making forever. But then he also has the deboned pig's trotters stuffed with duck confit... All in all, it's a very genuine experience. No masterpieces here, agreed - but a sort of sublimation of comfort food.

They're not, but they're fun. Also, one tidbit: even though there are many recipes (as with any tradicional dish in the world), and although I personally love tortilla de patatas made with onions, make a note that a purist's tortilla de patatas will never have anything but eggs and potatoes - no onions.

All these exchanges are fun, and I do love the Reixach sisters' recipes at Hispania as much as anyone, but comparing them with Carles Gaig's cuisine is approximately like comparing the Union Square Cafe to Daniel - both are good, but not really in the same league.

What the heck is the relationship between Asturias and the Pyrenees? It makes little sense to me to include it in this book.

Book at Gaig instead. Very hard to be disappointed by Carles' cooking.

About one half of Catalonia's six million population can't speak Catalan, so restaurants make sure they have a Spanish-language menu always available. Even very nationalistic places. Business is business... PS Whatever, Catalan has the same roots as Spanish and it takes Spanish speakers about two minutes to learn the basics and read a menu correctly (except for 'truita'!) It's a lot more complicated with Basque, and a much smaller percentage of the Basque Country's population does speak the vernacular, so that it can be safely said that 100% of Basque Country restaurants have menus in Castilian.

No problem for Spanish tourists, Robert: when they see a Catalan menu with the word 'truita' in it, they can turn to the Castilian side of it, which will either say 'trucha' or 'tortilla', so dispelling any ambiguities. Then again, Mexican tourists would be in trouble if they didn't know beforehand what kind of 'tortilla' to expect in Spain.

More about it in the Spain section...

You've not traveled and eaten in Spain, I gather. On a more serious note, why do you say that? Mysterious indeed. Some addresses Cabrales and Plotnicki would have to check up on before deciding where the Spanish restaurant scene is at: Echaurren, at Ezcaray (La Rioja). Hispania, at Arenys de Mar (Catalonia). Las Rejas, at Las Pedroñeras (Castilla-La Mancha). Zuberoa, at Oiartzun (Basque Country). Atrio, at Cáceres (Extremadura). Ca Sento, at Valencia. Rotilio, at Sanxenxo (Galicia). Regional influence simply oozes out of most modern Spanish restaurants. Yes, Ferran Adrià's influence goes deep. But roots run deeper still...

That's actually a slightly weak point of the Catalan language: they have one single word, 'truita', for both 'trout' and 'omelet', thus creating a few anxieties en restaurant clients who read a menu...

Let's see...... There are far more Michelin three-starred and two-starred restaurants in France than anywhere else because, a) France is the foremost culinary nation in the world, 2) Michelin is a French guide. It's obvious, I know, but both factors play a role. I would never dream of saying Spain or Italy have overtaken France. It's just that the trend in some countries (Spain is an obvious case, and I think the UK, the United States or Australia also are) is clearly positive as far as restaurant quality goes, whereas in others it's negative. France is indeed in this second group. I think there are sveeral reasons: 1) a creative exhaustion and apathy which after 1990 followed the great outbursts of the 1970s and 1980s; 2) indeed, the terrible crisis of rural France and the disappearance or real 'home cooking' and local tradition after the last 'mères' retired in the early 1980s and the newer generations were strictly formed in cooking schools and professional kitchens; 3) the financial crisis of 'haute cuisine', which makes it difficult for anyone but powerful hotel chains to keep it up. Top products are available to most every cook in Europe (Spanish products are thoroughly commonplace in France now - from Guijuelo ham to piquillo peppers), but thta's not the crux of the problem. BTW, Cabrales - El Bulli is not French or Spanish, it's Adrià, take it or leave it. (Most of us take it.) And his derring-do is a key, key, key factor in the overall thrust to greater creativity and no ptrejudice in newly-affluent Spain. But Martín Berasategui has strong Basque roots in addition to his great creative talents.