vserna

A restaurant wasteland - not to mention on a Sunday evening.

Not a guide - hearsay, as I honestly wrote here! As a matter of fact, it was in one of the meetings of the Spanish Academy of Gastronomy where we rate the restaurants in one of Spain's restaurant guides that I heard some laudatory comments on La Corriquera. When I looked it up in that same guide, there it was located - six miles from Llanes! They have evidently confused one Posada with the other.

Mangetout is the French name, also used in the UK. In Spanish it's 'tirabeque' - a totally traditional vegetable here. The mindboggling wealth of native vegetables is one of the best-kept secrets of Spain's cuisines. (Despite the very wise Ferran Adrià saying you use in your posts ("remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster"), Spain's cutting-edge deconstructive cuisine doesn't place much of a premium on showing off pristine ingredients, and that sort of cuisine is the one monopolizing international fascination with Spain. This is one of the causes for our vegetable array being such a secret, I guess…) Casa José and Blue Hill represent another attitude to modern cuisine – Dan Barber, Juan José Cuevas and Fernando del Cerro are all obsessed with 'ingredients, ingredients, ingredients'. On Sudestada and Diverxo: remember, Rogelio recently gave an excellent (and well-illustrated) report on Diverxo on eGullet. And back in December, 2005 I wrote here: "Remember, you read it first here too (tomorrow in El Mundo's Metrópoli): Sudestada, the outstanding, idiosyncratic South-East Asian restaurant in Buenos Aires, has dispatched co-owner and chef Estanis Carenzo to Madrid to launch their European sister restaurant. It's a terrific, un-self conscious explosion of fresh vegetables, fish, seafood, meats, herbs, spices, and the best new foreign restaurant in this city in quite some time. Looks like a luncheonette - looks can be deceiving! (Modesto Lafuente 64, tel. 91 533 41 54.)" Since then, Estanis and his partners succeeded in getting a Spanish visa for Thien, their revered friend and Vietnamese chef who had had to return to Hanoi during the terrible financial crisis in Argentina back in 2001-02. ("Thien, you're now making even less money in Buenos Aires than in Vietnam – you must unfortunately return home, because there's no future here," Estanis told him then!) With Thien on board in Madrid, they've gone from strength to strength with their mainly Vietnamese and Thai (but also Burmese, Malaysian, Filipino…) offering of simple 'street food'.

Sorry - in the US, snow peas.

Excellemt, delicate menu by Juan José Cuevas, very Blue Hill-ish in his way of presenting the pristine flavors of excellent ingredients - in this case, not from the Hudson but from the Aranjuez orchards on the Tejo river (the first tomatoes, string beans and mangetouts of the season were remarkable), plus Castilian baby lamb and northern Atlantic hake... We had a sensational 'green gazpacho' - a cold purée of mixed Aranjuez vegetables and aromatic herbs, with a dollop of yogurt ice; then a tomato salad 'in textures'; then an al-dente 'menestra' with mangetouts, string beans, beetroot and 'corteza de cerdo' (crispy pork rinds); then a whale of a `potato and onion-blood sausage 'parmentier' topped by a soft free-grange egg; then a fresh hake steak, (barely) cooked in duck fat, with a brunoise vinaigrette of tomatoes and summer vegetables; then a rack of Castilian lamb, served rare with roast zucchini flowrs on an eggplant cream. Finally, a cava mousse with a fresh 'breva' (early summer fig) coulis, and some morello cherries, marinaded in kirsch with a 'fromage blanc' and black pepper ice. (Will report on Sudestada and Diverxo when I have a little time, John.)

I'm going tonight. Hope to report back tomorrow. Fusion is not necessarily a dirty world in the refined world of fine cuisine - at least in Madrid, this least provincial of all Spanish towns, we like to think so. The Blue Hill/Casa José shindig is but one more, brief example of the general trend in Madrid, which is fast becomingthe most cosmopolitan and even exotic of all dining destinations in continental Europe (London still reigns supreme in the world cuisine field, of course). It's interesting that over the past 18 months, the three most noteworthy restaurant openings in Madrid have been radically exotic - Sudestada, Diverxo and Astrid y Gastón...

Casa Marcial is the best restaurant in the area - better than El Corral del Indianu these days, although El Corral retains part of its former glory. La Huertona in Ribadesella may be the second-best place in eastern Asturias nowadays. A terrific combination of tradition and modern cuisine, of seafood and inland fare (best roast lamb in Asturias, fine fabada). For simple fish dishes in a rustic setting, I'd place La Parrilla in Ribadesella in first place. I've heard good things (in a more modern vein) about a small place called La Corriquera in Posadas outside Llanes. And, if you cross the boundary into Cantabria (it's just 15 miles east of Llanes) to visit the pretty towns of San Vicente de la Barquera, Comillas and Santillana del Mar, the simple fish dishes at Hotel Joseín on the Comillas beach are of the utmost freshness. There, I've had the best monkfish steak (simply dipped in egg and fried) I've ever tasted.

Sorry for the ruffled feathers. I am who I am, I write here under my own name - I don't hide under some soccer-inspired alias - and I include a link to our wine web site. (I could include one to El Mundo, the newspaper for which I work, but that could be construed as a bit of overkill, spam-wise.) My experience and my ideas on food and wine, for better or worse, are a matter of public record. I have nothing to hide - and I will not, of course.

Oh! I forgot to comment about this. There is no "El Sahillo" in Vigo. Would you perchance mean Casa Saillo? If so, I am dumbfounded that you would place it on a par with Madrid's top steak places - not to mention above them. You must like tender, unaged beef better than seriously aged top beef. Saillo is an OK place - no more. There is no market in Galicia for seriously aged beef - no local tradition, no local appetite for it.

Goodness. My English must be going down the drain. I am afraid I 'm not coming across clearly. Who ever said that Txistu is the best place for steak in Madrid? Who ever denied you your right to assert that you prefer Julián de Tolosa? Heck - what I wrote was that there were at least two places that are better than Txistu! Please re-read my post, or just read it again here: Txistu is not just a footballers' tavern but does offer some of the best steaks in Madrid, i.e. in Spain, not far from Ansorena's or Imanol's in quality. OK? What I can't put up with, on the other hand, is with perfectly inaccurate, unfair and even preposterous statements such as "Most food in the rest of Spain is better than Madrid's" - which, BTW, was not made by you, so you don't need to feel concerned. (And, by the way, reading now that "it isn't as if I'm asserting it as fact" makes me go back to my early schooling in logical discourse and scratch my head in confusion. If "most food in the rest of Spain is better than Madrid's" doesn't sound like stating a fact, then my own understanding of English is going down the drain, too.) P.S. Your nickname, for some reason, makes any comments you make about Madrid - or about Barcelona, for that matter - look suspiciously biased to me. I wonder why that would be...

Oh, what the heck, butterfly, what do we know? - I'm just the longest-serving restaurant critic on any national newspaper in Spain, so I'd better shut up and concede defeat against superior knowledge...

This is an extremely misinformed and misleading statement. Madrid does not have a bevy of Michelin three-star restaurants like San Sebastián, but it's the undisputed mecca for three types of restaurants in Spain: 1) 'restaurantes de producto', i.e. restaurants based on simple, high-quality foodstuffs like steak houses and seafood places; 2) traditional, regional restaurants (from any and all regions, BTW) and 'tascas' (taverns), 3) foreign cuisines.

La Trainera is not the best saefood choice of locals, US prime beef is different but certainly not better than well-aged Spanish beef, and Txistu is not just a footballers' tavern but does offer some of the best steaks in Madrid, i.e. in Spain, not far from Ansorena's or Imanol's in quality.

The cheese on the toast could be an Extremaduran torta (similar to Portugal's queijo da Serra) - a soft ewes' milk cheese, curdled with a thistle, not with rennet. Similar in texture to a vacherin Mont d'Or.

A strange experience - to say the least. No mash, of course...

This is an oft-repeated (not just by you) generalization which, when contrasted with reality, isn't really true. Yes, kitchen organization in (a few of the) top French restaurants remains an example for the whole world to admire and to try to duplicate, but that said, the rigor of the culinary effort and the final results of what you get on your plate are not automatically derived from that apparently perfect, professional organization. Is there more rigor at Michel Bras' than at Mugaritz? Not really.

I couldn't disagree more with your assessment of Can Roca. As 'de gustibus non est disputandum', so I will just stress here - in order to redress the balance - that to me and many others this is the best restaurant in Spain. Possibly you should go more than once to such places as Can Roca, Ca' Sento or even Ca l'Isidre before making some sweeping generalizations...

A little caveat here: Olot is 37 miles from Girona and 480 miles from Bilbao... and not between the two, either: you have to drive again through Girona from Olot to get to the motorway and to Bilbao. So it's possibly not a very convenient stopover...

Woody's Diner went up in flames a little over a year ago, in January 2006, and never reopened. The place had been sliding for a year or so, and, let's face it, in such circumstances fires always look suspicious. Drove by yesterday - the fence is locked and the scene was a sorry one with seats and tables strewn around the garden. The structure is not damaged beyond rehabilitation, but I wonder if anyone will spend any money on carrying it out... The Home Burger Bar is a Québecois venture. The burgers aren't bad but they can't touch Alfredo's. (Or the ones at Ferran Adrià's Fast Good, which have actually improved since the place opened.) Madrid's rich American scene has actually become richer in the three years since I started this thread with the opening of Karen Bell's Memento. She's San Francisco-trained and she does a very nice rendition of Californian-Spanish fusion cuisine. But also, in addition to the Woody's Diner fire, Alfredo had to close his Brooklyn USA last year - it seems the local kids never took to spaghetti and meatballs with the same alacrity as to bacon cheeseburgers! What a shame - the sausages were terrific!

Another option, just a three-minute walk up the boulevard de Beaumarchais and left into the rue du Pas-de-la-Mule: Chez Rosito is a country inn kind of place, specializing in the (infrequent in Paris!) cuisine and wines of Corsica. Good stuff.

Kaia/Kai-Pe, Elkano, Iribar are great traditional grills for fine fish in Getaria, near San Sebastián. In Rioja there's a great place, the Hostal Echaurren in beautiful Ezcaray, with not one but two restaurants: the superb traditional cooking of Marisa Paniego in one, the modern and brilliant dishes of her son Francis in the other! Don't miss another classic restaurant in Rioja: El Rincón de Emilio, in Santo Domingo de la Calzada.

I believe that kyeblue was asking about Sunday nights ("I will appreciate any recommendations on where to dine on Sunday nights"), not about Friday or Saturday night, Txacoli. Actually, I can think about a great Wednesday lunch recommendation in Valencia, come to think of it... Or a terrific Monday breakfast in Padova.

A few other Madrid options would be one of Cazorla's six locations for very respectable Andalusian food; L'Andecha for its top-notch old-style Spanish cuisine; Mesón Txistu for grilled Basque-style fish and steak. Bilbao is complicated on Sundays - most eveyone closes shop! Serantes I and II, two 'marisquerías' with outstanding seafood, are two good choices. Near the airport at Derio there's a nice old farmhouse with good food, Artebakarra.

Like Pedro I usually eat upstairs too. Juan Mari, whom I've known for a mere 31 years, must have me categorized as a foreigner. And of course he takes a malignant pleasure in sending bottles of wine from the wrong vintage to tables, just to spite the customers.

My vote goes to no wine at all with any sort of gazpacho. It's liquid and cold and refreshing enough on its own.