vserna

Actually, in correct Galician octopus is polbo - not nearly as amusing to Castilian speakers as the Portuguese spelling...

Possibly the real client base is not as large as the new vave of restaurant openings would indicate, so that supply is outpacing demand. I see a similar situation developing in Madrid over the next year as well.

I have the impression that to some extent it is.

This is basically a curry = a mix of spices. As with all curries, there's a zillion variations. Here's one recipe for the marinade (for about 2.2 lbs diced fat lamb meat) I've found: two garlic cloves, minced; one tspn finely minced onion; 1 tspn minced fresh cilantro; one sliver fresh ginger, minced; 1/2 tspn ground cumin; 1/2 tspn ground thyme; 1/2 tspn ground oregano; 1/2 tspn ground cayenne pepper; 2 tspns freshly ground black pepper; 1 ground clove; a very small amount of ground nutmeg (no more than the tip of a knife); mix all into some extra virgin olive oil to provid a liquid marinade.

Well, you know the reason for the street works - the next Rubaiyat seafood palace being built underground, next door! It's pretty clear in my mind that Sacha is now even better than 20 years ago. Sacha's mother was a wonderful cook, but he's added the extra dimension of modernity and originality to the dishes. In this category of 'friendly bistros with great, ambitious food' there's only Arce that will compete with Sacha in Madrid. And it's not a category that's chock-full of members in Spain or even in Europe!

My goodness, what's a Pendones, or where's Pendones? In Spanish slang, 'unos pendones' means something like 'several women of loose morals', so the name is obviously interesting...

Goodness, Barcelona has discovered pinchos morunos! Always at the cutting edge...

Mousseron in France.

The current chef is José Gabriel Bascoñana. I think the restaurant has gained in consistency and reliability, not lost since the unpredictable Mr. Martín left.

In March or April.

Neo, unfortunately, has closed.

Well, just perusing threads in eGullet should give you ample information... For instance: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=86171 http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=66245 http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=80320

You wouldn't believe it, so incongruous it seems, but in Fuengirola there's one of the best Asturian restaurants away from Asturias: El Higuerón. Actually, it's modern Spanish, but with the accent on Asturias. One 'sun' in the Campsa guide. Their web site is partly under construction, but it may give you a better idea: http://www.elhigueron.com/ Portofino and Aroma are two other OK restaurants.

Following on the subject of tortilla a la española - quick aperitivo today at Sylkar, the small nondescript coffee shop at the corner of Espronceda and Alonso Cano streets in Madrid: their 'pincho de tortilla', both with and without onion, is mindbogglingly good. I mean, if some visitor wants to settle any doubts on how a Spanish potato omelet should taste and what its texture should be, this is a cheap, quick, tasty way of finding out. Just take a cab directly to Sylkar when arriving in Madrid airport! (They have pestiños and other home-made things that modern-day coffee shops don't carry, too. A very good address for snacks, 'tapas' and meals.)

This shop is a two-minute walk away from the Barceloneta. Follow their advice. It's the best wine shop in Barcelona. http://www.vilaviniteca.es

Nothing recent or comprehensive. There was a history of Lhardy by Juan Altabella that's now out of print, plus there's always the dated (1970) but interesting Libro de la Cocina Española by Néstor Luján and Joan Perucho: http://www.fnac.es/dsp/?servlet=extended.H...5&prodID=428379

Tabernas and tascas were strictly drinking places until the late 19th century - this is precisely why the term 'tasca ilustrada' was coined, to distinguish them from regular 'tascas'. When Botín was opened in 1725 (purportedly by a Frenchman, Jean Bottin), it was as a 'posada', an inn. There is some discussion about the legal situation in the early 18th century - were inns permitted to serve food then, or not? Some say that Botín never was a proper restaurant until the late 19th century, while in earlier times its fabled stone oven was used to bake pastries only. I find little historical proof of the prevalence of Manchegos in the trade. I believe it was people from both Old and New Castile, and also León, who ran the business. The names of old Madrid taverns and inns attest to that: La Zamorana, Mesón del Segoviano, El Maragato. There were of course quite a few Manchegos plying their trade, too - but nowhere near a Manchego monopoly of Madrid's inns. As for Madrid's (quite limited) own cuisine, there's a very obvious fact: its main dish, cocido madrileño, is a boiled dinner that does not particularly resemble any Manchego dish, but is closely related to northern Spanish dishes such as olla podrida or pote. So I think the main influence was Old Castile.

These are sometimes interchangeable, Anya. 'Mesón' (from the Latin 'mansio', but probably through the French 'maison') is almost a synonym for 'posada': it's an inn serving food and offering rooms. In the older times, the name 'mesón' would probably mean that the food was the most important feature of the inn, while 'posada' would stress its character as a boarding place, but the distinction remains very loose. 'Taberna' and 'tasca' are currently synonyms, even though originally 'tasca' referred to a bar of ill repute - let's say, like a honky tonk in the southern United States. But in Madrid, by the middle of the 19th century, the preferred name for a tavern was 'tasca'. Over a century ago, some of these taverns began serving some simple food in addition to coarse La Mancha wine; usually, when the owner's wife or daughter was a good cook and the family found that serving some solid fare was a nice income supplement! These taverns with food received the name, 'tasca ilustrada', 'illustrated tavern' (or 'tavern with a plus'), which has remained a Madrid specialty. Doña María Aroca of Casa Aroca, who began cooking in the 1930s and continued until the 1980s, when she was felled by a stroke, was the most legendary of the 'tasca ilustrada' cooks - a modest, no-frills, Spanish counterpart to the fabled Lyon 'mères'. No one has ever done a fried Dover sole like her in Spain - and no one ever will (among other things, because her 'trick', combining two separate sources of gas in her stove to give her the most powerful fire in Spain, would be strictly outlawed today!)

Some more prominent restaurants: in Fornells, Ses Salines (with a few modern touches), Es Cranc Pelut; in Cala Sant Vicenç, Cavall Bernat also adds some creativity to its seafood.

Mas Pau is a charming hotel/restaurant, and the cooking ain't half bad. In addition, they're running a program of special events for their 30th anniversary (hey, already 30 - we're all really getting old!), called 'Cuiners' (Cooks). One meal a month, cooked by a leading cook or cooking team from all over Spain. On May 25th you have one particularly interesting event - the two assistant chefs at El Bulli between 1994 and 1999, Marc Cuspinera and Eduard Bosch, who are now two of the leaders of El Bulli's culinary 'laboratory' in Barcelona. This is sure to be as much of a cutting-edge dinner as you'll find anywhere in Europe right now, so I think it could be a fine occasion to visit Mas Pau. Other cooks in this anniversary program are Pepa Romans and Sole Ballester (Casa Pepa in Ondara, Alicante), Andoni Luis Aduriz (Mugaritz in Renteria, Guipúzcoa), Rafa Morales (El Bulli-La Alqueria at the Hacienda Benazuza near Seville), Manuel de la Osa (Las Rejas in Las Pedroñeras, Cuenca), Mar Barba and Kristian Lutaud (Alghero in Valencia) and Fermí Puig (Drolma in Barcelona).

They're absolutely reinventing themselves - and the new concept of 'wine bar' has given the tasca a new lease on life. I am just sorry that some of these new guys can't take over some of the beloved, atmospheric old establishments and renew them, instead of these disappearing forever and new bars/restaurants opening elsewhwere instead, with good food and wine but none of that old charm (except in cases such as Asturianos, where the tavern has been going for almost 50 years...). It's the structure of the restaurant market that's so inflexible that it makes for such an absurd juxtaposition of openings/closings... Some other names to add to those you offer, in Madrid (which is the real home of the 'tasca ilustrada' in Spain), and including some I mentioned in my post on new openings, are Casa Vila, La Camarilla, La Castela, Las Tortillas de Gabino, Txirimiri, El Fogón de Trifón, Casa Carola.

I like Hermanos Peña in the Chamartín covered market - they have Joselito and Sánchez Romero Carvajal, and basically that's all I'm interested in! I think they also have other brands: http://mercadodechamartin.com/

Teruel ham is not ibérico - it comes from regular, white European pigs (mostly Duroc). It's the only non-ibérico appellation for hams.

Exactly how I feel. And those of us old enough (like me, unfortunately) to distinctly remember the amazing quality of prime beef in New York steak houses before the USDA relaxed its standards circa 1978, or those of us old enough to have had 'angulas' (baby eels) two or three times a week in Madrid taverns at about twice the price of a dish of sardines (whereas the almost-extinct 'angulas' are now around $300 a pound...) are acutely aware of the dwindling availability of top-notch ingredients. This has been largely masked by a parallel phenomenon - the worldwide availability of products from very exotic locations. (Any Spanish fishmonger now sells Indian ocean prawns and Korean octopus - fresh, air shipped, not frozen.) But, let's face it, greater variety is not always synonymous with greater quality. The obsession with fine natural ingredients, OTOH, may be a southern European oddity (I'm thinking specifically of the attitudes in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain), and possibly this is not felt so acutely in other culinary cultures, where comfort and price and easy availability may be sufficient, and there is not so much anguish about the freshness of fish or the taste of eggs....