Roger

Your experience at Egaña Oriza seems to reflect the opinions of a number of people that I know who have been there recently. It appears that the restaurant is on a downward trend and is no longer a better option than places such as Salvador Rojo and Poncio. In fact, I ate at Poncio last Saturday and had one of the best meals ever there.

Seeing the photograph outside Casa Robles I was amused to see the bearded gentleman José Antonio Garmendia who is probably known to the Spanish participants on this forum. He knows quite a lot about tapas bars in Seville having written a few books on the subject. He is somewhat of a personality

In Seville for a selection of fine olive oils from Andalucia you should go to a shop called La Delicia del Barrio at Calle Mateos Gagos, 15. Probably the best place to eat tuna in the south of Spain is along the coastline between Cadiz and Tarifa, especially in the spring between April and early June. This is when the blue-fin tuna migrate to their spawning grounds in the Mediterranean and are caught using the ancestral method of the almadraba. A few restaurants that you might wish to try are Restaurante El Campero (Avenida de la Constitución, local 5c) in the town of Barbate and Casa José María (Plaza Marqués de Tamarón) in Zahara de los Atunes.

My pricing was without wine as it´s always difficult to include an inbuilt cost.

I am going to be with a group of people in Bilbao in June and would be happy to receive any recommendations for restaurants around 30-35 euros per person.

What a pity that you didn´t get to sample the tapas at Casablanca. It´s possibly the best tapas bar in Seville. I should have warned you that they have no written list of tapas. What is on offer changes from one day to the next and depends on what they have been able to buy and what they feel like making that day. So through necessity you have to ask what´s available and if your Spanish is not up to scratch the only thing you can do is point at what other people are eating and gesticulate that you want the same!

I´m really glad that you enjoyed yourself in Seville. I ate a Poncio on Saturday and the first dish of the tasting menu we had was the same one as you have mentioned. As I think I said in a previous e-mail the decor in the restaurant is not to everyone's taste

In answer to Jesús concerning our meal in Tragabuches on April 7th, we were all came away pretty content. We started with the tapas tasting menu and then went on to have one of the main dishes followed by dessert. I didn´t take any notes but the tapas included the following:- Gazpacho made in the usual but cherries added to the blend Partridge paté Olive oil 'ice-cream'. This was made with garlic, bread crumbs and olive oil cooled rapidly with liquid nitrogen. The olive oil then melted in your mouth giving a creamy texture. With the appearance of a slice of cake with different layers; foie gras, apple, goat's cheese with a glazed surface. A spicy corn soup with drops of gazpacho mixed with avocado. The drops had received the nitrogen treatment and dissolve in your mouth. I thought this to be a very interesting dish Salted turrón with lime A variant on ajo blanco which was very enjoyable but I cannot recall the exact ingedients that were added For the main course I had lamb with a chestnut based sauce which went very well with the perfectly cooked meat. The people with me had pig´s cheeks (carrillada) and goat which they both seemed to like. I cannot recall the exact preparation for both dishes. For dessert we had pestiños, which are very typical at Easter. They are a sort of fried pancake which is bathed in honey. Our bill came to 254 euros for three people including wine. Just one comment on the bars recommended by Jesús in Seville. I agree with most of the suggestions except for el Kiosko de las Flores. This for me was a decent place a decade ago. They specialise in seafood especially fried fish. The problem that they have is that the oil they used is not changed that frequently and so the food really suffers

Victor, I think has made a little slip with Hacienda La Boticaria. It´s in Alcalá de Guadaira, on the road towards Málaga.

I remember adding a reply to a similar thread asking about Seville around a year ago. In Seville itself I recommended a couple of restaurants that I have liked over the last few years. These were Salvador Rojo and Poncio, both of which I would still recommend. Recently, I also quite liked San Fernando, 27. If I had to go with just one it would be Poncio inspite of the decor! Their tasting menu of 5-6 dishes is well worth it. Their food is a modern interpretation of Andalusian cuisine with some very interesting touches. Seville, as has been pointed out on a number of occassions in this forum, is much more exciting for eating tapas than for more formal sit-down meals. It would be difficult to do justice to every good bar but some of the best places include: Casablanca, El Rinconcillo, Estrella, Paco Gongora, Taberna Las Coloniales, Yebra, Barbiana, Estrella and Infanta Sevilla. I have been in Granada 3 times over the last six months and have not been overly impressed with the bars or restaurants that I visited and would be hard pressed to suggest somewhere that I really liked. I would, however, definitely agree that Ronda is worth a visit both on gronds of being a stunning place and to eat at Tragabuches. In fact, I will be eating there next Wednesday. I also agree with the comments concerning Hacienda La Rosaleja. A trip to one of the coastal towns in the province of Cádiz would be also rewarding. El Puerto de Santamaría and Sanlúcar de Barrameda come to mind. You could combine a visit to one of the sherry wineries with some wonderful seafood. El Bigote in Sanlúcar has been mentioned in this forum on a number of occassions. The food is not elaborate but the freshness and quality is beyond reproach, and washed down with some great manzanilla would I think please the most demanding of gastronomes. Anyway, if you would like more detailed information on places in Seville with addresses, phone nos. etc. and so as not to bore other people on the forum please send me an e-mail directly

The best wine shop in Seville is Tierra Nuestra situated in Calle Constancia, 41, tel: 95442119. If you are looking for manzanillas then my favourites that are readily available in Seville are Solear, San Leon, La Gitana and La Goya. Classic finos include Tio Pepe, Fino Quinta and La Ina. These wines can normally be purchased in decent supermarkets. In the department store El Corte Inglés they have a gourmet part called El Club del Gourmet which has sherry wines of high quality from a number of bodegas (wineries) including Lustau, Gonzalez Byass, Sánchez Romate, Domecq and Osborne. Seville is a good place to buy good Iberian ham and other derivatives from the Iberian pig such as caña de lomo. Also, high-end brandies and vinagers from Jerez are worth checking out as well as good olive oil. There is a shop called la Delicia del Barrio on Calle Mateos Gagos which has good Andalusian olive oil. It´s very close to the cathedral

Living here in Seville and having dined at many local restaurants I would first start out by saying that Seville is a much more rewarding city for tapas then for more conventional sit-down meals. That said, the two restaurants which I have enjoyed eating at most over the last year or so are Salvador Rojo and Poncio. Both are chef-owned restaurants which give a modern interpretation of Andalusian cuisine with some outside influences. La Taberna del Albardero which Bux mentioned is a catering school as well as a restaurant and hotel. At lunchtime during the week there is a 'menu del día', with a choice of around 6 starters, 6 main dishes and 3 or 4 desserts. Everything is prepared and served by students at the catering school. For around 10 euros per person it´s a worthwhile experience. As far as tapas bars are concerned there is an abundance of them to choose from. Where you go depends on what you are looking for. For traditional tapas such as spinach and chick peas, El Rinconillo, Seville´s oldest bar. For good ham there are quite a few places, one of my favourite´s being La Flor de Toranzo. For fish and other seafood, El Espigón or Bodegas Góngora. For great tapas with a bit more sofistication to them Casablanca or Eslava. I could go on and on. If you want some more indepth information, then e-mail me and I´ll get back to you

Deboned ham can be cut using a slicer. However, with the ham on the bone it would be very difficult due to irregular shape, the cutting of fine ham in small pieces etc. Also, if I´m not mistaken Italian ham is cut sideways and not the front and back of the leg. which may make the task of mechanical cutting easier.

It depends on who has drunk the most fino

In Spain during the Christmas period one of the most common reasons that people are taken to accident and emergency departments is for injuries that have been sustained while cutting ham.

I should add to my last comment about ham that it is not just the quality of the product that matters but the skill of the person who cuts the ham. In too many places fine ham is ruined by it being cut too thickly often converting one of the world´s great culinary treasures into something that is rather chewy. Some of the bars I know, where they pride themselves on the quality of their ham, only allow one or two people to do the cutting. For the rest of the staff it is strictly prohibited

I think bars that are part of a chain such as 'El Museo del Jamón' tend to lose out both in character and often what they serve. The joy of tapas bars is diversity. Like most good restaurants having the owner of a bar working there makes a difference. I haven´t eaten in 'El Museo del Jamón' for years but remember eating some absolutely crap ham on one occasion but rather good jamón ibérico de bellota on another. True acorn-fed iberian ham should be good even in the worst of bars.

Cheese is normally eaten in Spain as a starter or appetizer. It will normally be a plate of the same kind of cheese. A lot of bars and restaurants serve cheese boards with maybe 4 or 5 types of cheese. Small circular goat´s cheeses are heated in the oven with a little olive oil and herbs such as oregano sprinkled on them. This cheese is then eaten spread on bread or small pieces of toast. Small cheeses or slices are also sold in jars in olive oil. Fresh cheese is used in a lot of salads and is served as a dessert with quince jelly

Paradors in my experience tend to have much better restaurants than other hotels. The menu tends to be representative of the cuisine found in the area where the parador is situated, so they are often very good places to sample local dishes as well as local wines