Bux

We've been puzzling over the relative disappointment of manzanilla here in NY. The crispness of the manzanillas and finos in Spain reinforced that opinion. I've heard others say that all of the wines of Jerez, including manzanilla from next door Sanlucar de Barrameda are stale when sold in the US. As they're all fortified wines with high alcohol and the product of a solera, as well as non-vintage, I just don't see how they could go stale so quickly.I've had some second thoughts on this issue. It seems that freshness is essential. Looking at a Spanish guide to Spanish wines, the comments I find under Consumo prefererente: for finos and manzanillas range from "at this moment," through "at this moment" and all the way to "right away."

Admittedly, we sort of fell into Ca L'Isidre looking for another place and our expectations were of a restaurant serving good updated traditional food. It may have been easy to please us, but we were pleased enough to recommend it to others and at least two people who I've found are not that easy to please, seemed happy to recommend it here after I did. As for how to share what you have about food and restaurants, each of us will have his, or her, own style. I favor posting all you care to share when you return from a trip and things are fresh in your mind. Some people favor posting their complete menus at major gastronomic restaurants, while others prefer to offer a more subjective sense of their meals. Think of us as friends with an appetite to talking about food as well as eating it. As for the backlog, if it strikes you, start a thread or just wait until some piece of your history is pertinent to someone else's new thread. Most of all, I just hope you enjoy the site and explore its many parts. Sumac -- when you say classical seafood, it might be useful for those who haven't been to Barcelona to know what you had or recommend. I've tended to avoid paella on my recent trips. Partially it's because it just seems to have gotten so touristy and partially because it has gotten so touristy that restaurants carry prepared "sous vide" preparations just to serve to tourists who demand paella. However it's the other rice dishes I crave and with which I'm rarely disappointed at honest moderately priced restaurants. This is true not only in Catalonia, but in other parts of Spain as well.

As I recall the gist of what was said, it was that if you push that through a tammis three times you'd have haute cuisine, or was it baby food. I forget. I'd add chorizos. I'd add chorizos to almost any dish in Spain if I had the chance. They're just so much better than what you get here. It's the pork.

Interesting turn of this thread. First I believe Victor suggested Can Gaig in lieu of Ca L'Isidre, not Hispania. All of this is interesting because I believe I first came to Ca L'Isidre on Victor's recommendation. Can Gaig was on the same list, but in another category, or so I thought, and I haven't been there yet. Ca L'Isidre is somewhat traditional although hardly hidebound and I see the daughter, Nuria Gironés, who is pastry chef at the restaurant, just got a nice mention in a Spanish high fashion magazine with a recipe for an infusion of red fruit with coconut foam. Don't know fashion magazines, our Fat Guy is now writing for Elle. For someone looking for honest Catalan cooking, willing to restrict the menu to fresh seafood as well as willing to partake of it in the presence of tourists and a view of the beach and its distractions, I'll suggest Can Majo in the corner of the Barcelonetta section. It's in Barcelona and is but a short and pleasant walk from the bottom of the Ramblas. I'm not sure I don't overrate this in my mind, but it was, for us, the counterpoint to our first meal at El Bulli and both restaurants came out the better in our memory for the proximity of the meals to each other. Perhaps Victor has some late word on this spot. Is it as good as ever. Have tourists ruined it, or was it never as good as I thought it was. Simple fresh seafood and seafood rice dishes are what I suggest there along with a nice local rose or white, or better yet a good Albariño from Galicia. Then again, we really enjoyed Hispania but weren't as wowed as Robert and Susan were by it. I first "met" Victor many years ago on the Internet and he's had my undivided attention ever since, even after a bum steer or two. There's been barely a trip to Spain since where his recommendations have not been my primary influence. A comment he made in another thread before we left, made us change our plans for getting to Andalusia from Madrid and the detour resulted in the best meal of the trip at an underrated one star restaurant.

I'm sorry you feel that way. There's a lot of fast paced posting here and sometimes a new member may feel it's hard to break into the conversation. I assure you that most of us are interested in what you have to say. It's often easier to reply to older members because their tone and style is known and we can read much into each post. I recall when you posted the departures.com link on restaurants in Barcelona and at the time, as an affiliate of the site, my greatest concern was to be sure you hadn't compromised your ID and password on what appears to be a site reserved for AmEx Platinum members. Although that home page for that site asks for ID and password, it also seems to welcome directory spiders and bots and leave the side door open for all to read what's on the site. Once I was assured the URL didn't abuse a private account, I should have come back to the thread and noted the value of the URL. I can only say that I have been very busy since I returned from my recent trip to the south of Spain and much of my time has been spent on administrative issues here at eGullet. I'm way behind schedule in posting the details of my trip and if you want to see posts that are ignored, see what kind of reaction my comments are getting on the Madrid - Al Andalus thread. I've followed your posts and value your contribution here. Please continue to post as well as read.

The taxi company sounds like a good idea, assuming there is a taxi company and you can get the phone number. The restaurant would know how to call a taxi. As I recall, there was no one at the restaurant who spoke English. If there's a concierge at your hotel in Barcelona, he might be your best bet, but it you're calling or faxing the restaurant from here for a reservation, you might let them know you intend to come by taxi and enquire about getting a cab at the same time. You're going to need a cab to get back to the train station anyway. I'm full of smart ass answers this evening, but I just Googled "Arenys de Mar" and got a link to Come to Arenys! where I learned Arenys has a (1) hotel and a school for chicken farming (more in Spanish at http://www.avicultura.com/) but couldn't find any mention of a taxi company. There was however an invitation to "ask for any further information you might wish to obtain concerning Arenys," by e-mailing <arenys@partal.com> That's my final answer. As a side note for those with a pedantic interest in languages, this site is available not only in English, the local Catalan, Spanish, Basque and Gallego, but in a number of other languages. Off hand I can't think of another European country that supports four official languages, although three of them are official in different semi autonomous regions. I'm not surprised to see pages in all three of these languages, but I am suprised to see pages in "asturià-bable," "aragonès," and "occità-aranès" although I don't know if the last is a form of Occitan spoken north of the Pyrenees or if aranès refers to something local. Esperanto is there too.

I've always thought the secret to a great tortilla as well as an authentic one, was thinly sliced potatoes (although I favor the waxier kind, rather than baking potatoes.) On our recent trip, I don't think we ate or saw a single tortilla that wasn't made with chunks or cubes of potatoes. Do I have memory failure, a creative memory that recalls what it wants or have things changed? As for eggs, my son-in-law, a Frenchman who has cooked in Michelin three star restaurants in France and NY Times four star restaurants in NY, is a nut about sanitation and food freshness (we get that "how long has that been in your refrigerator" kind of stuff.) but he doesn't understand why Americans keep eggs refrigerated.

These are good questions. There are frequent and quiet (I believe they are all electric) trains running along the coast north from Barcelona. The easiest restaurant to access from Barcelona must be the two star Sant Pau in Sant Pol de Mar. The restaurant backs on to the train platform. On the other side of the platform is the beach. There's no direct entrance to the restaurant from the platform, you have to walk around the block, but it's a short walk. I don't know where the train station is in Arenys de Mar and Hispania is a bit isolated, so there's little chance you could walk there. My guess is that there are taxis in Arenys, but it might be wise to call ahead. It's hard to remember exactly in which ot these three towns -- Arenys de Mar, Sant Pol de Mar or San Andreu de Llavaneres -- we got the most lost, retraced our tracks, or spent the most time looking for the restaurant of our choice, but Hispania stands out for eventually coming so close and then missing a turn that was just meters away and winding up on unpaved roads in an abandoned industrial sector before finding our way back via a nude beach. I'll bet the local taxis all know where it is. As one travels abroad, some things seem very expensive by comparison to home and others seem very cheap. Taxis in Spain seemed to be a bargain. For all that I enjoyed Hispania, I don't think of it as a destination restaurant, although because it's exactly the sort of place that doesn't cater to tourists, probably gets very few and serves traditional food, it may be worth seeking out. The problem I have is not in deciding where I want to eat, but in eliminating too many choices.

Can Roca in Girona, is perhaps the one you might miss the most, but perhaps it's a little out of the way. All in all, it is hard to recommend restaurants on the basis of one visit, but our meal here was a surprisingly compelling meal that was both tasty and very creative. It's hardly undiscovered. We heard English being spoken and there was a large party of rather too splendidly suntanned (that sort of perennial suntan) French men and women. I also thought Girona was a most interesting place to spend a day sightseeing.

I'm not a pro, but I've always thought of "custard" as a rather generic term for all the non starched egg and milk products be they pourable, such as creme anglaise, or set such as creme caramel or flan. Stone's "pudding" which has slipped by undefined, is custard with flour or a starch of some sort. Even a little bit of corn starch in a custard mixture can make it much easier to cook, although to my way of thinking it most often cheapens the final texture and taste of a pure custard. The exception is crème patissiere which is normally used in connection with pastry, but I'd less like to eat a bowl of creme patissiere than a bucket of creme anglaise or creme caramel. For what it's worth, "pudding" in England has become a generic term for dessert, as I understand the way it's used there. Most puddings in the US are made from a packaged mix. Then again there's rice pudding which qualifies in my book as pudding with the rice being the starch. If one is not hung up on having the experience of breaking into the custard and depending on how set the "custard" is in the glasses, one could use disks or even shards of caramel set upright into the custard for effect, of spinkle crushed caramel either dust or crunchy broken pieces and have an effective presentation.

I assume northern Portugal has weather much like Galicia and I'm told that one of the reasons Madrileños like to vacation in Galicia is to escape the eternal sun of Madrid. I may not be convinced, especially as it rained while we were in Madrid, but it may well be the reason the beaches in northwestern Spain will never be overrun by Germans, Dutch, Danes and Brits. Once again I have little reason to enter the Portuguese threads except to learn. I wasn't aware that Portugal was "the country of soupy rice dishes." In Spain, we've run across all sorts of rice dishes from the dry paellas to the more creamy rice with lobster, but only once did we find a version that was almost as wet as asopao -- Puerto Rico's national dish -- which is really a soup with rice, more than just a wet rice.

I'm almost embarrassed to mention it here, but one of the worst embarrassments I've suffered in connection with a dining experience was connected with an eGullet event and it was members of our "community" who were responsible. My wife and I heard a member spit out an abusively vulgar comment that amounted to unsubstantiated character assasination behind the back of the victim, but loudly enough (I was further away from the offensive member) to be sure he heard it. The coven surrounding the speaker seemed to offer support and that included someone who had earlier defended the member whose comment I found offensive, as a giving person. My wife asked that we no longer attend eGullet functions and questioned the hours I spend administrating on this site. Sometimes I've seen the word "community" as hypocritical when used here by some members, but I remind my wife that we've made some wonderful friends both among the members and the affiliates.

Assuming for the moment that we allow a wide lattitude as to where the boundaries of the extremes lie, we may still have to define reward. I have had very rewarding meals at moderately priced restaurants, but yes, I agree that bang for the buck most often seems to occur at the extremes. It may be that at the bottom, so little is spent and so little of what is spent goes towards decor and all of the things peripehral to the food, that the food makes a great impression for the price. At the top end, those of us who choose to eat at those restaurants, where the preparations are so extrememly labor intensive, understand that it would be absurd not to continue the intensity of effort in regard to service and all that we expect to surround a fine meal. Some of us, of course, just suspend all considerations of price when in the company of the highest and most intensive cuisine. As a result it's the moderately priced meal that is compared with the cheap cantina, trattoria or counter in Chinatown in terms of price and then with the temples of haute cuisine in terms of quality and finese without regard to price. It's not fair, but understandable why even the value loaded moderate restaurant gets no respect.

I just want to remind all of you interested in the food of Roussillon, the Languedoc the Midi Pyrenees, Aquitaine and the Basque region, that we have a Q&A with Maria Chang author of Tastes of the Pyrenees, Classic and Modern. This is a cookbook with recipes from both sides of the Pyrenees, but it's more than a cookbook as well. I'd like to invite you all to ask whatever questions you have about the food in the region to Ms. Chang whose work is the product of good research and a love of the food. Pertinent questions about cookbooks in general are also welcome as are questions about how one the author came to write a first cookbook. If you haven't got any questions, you might want to read the excepted text from the book that's posted in the Q&A forum as well as look at the three French recipes and one Spanish recipe Marina has shared with us. Let me also remind you that the publishers will be giving away copies of the book to five lucky participants in the Q&A.

Robert -- I really enjoyed that post for many reasons. It made me want to be there sharing your meals and discoveries, even at the disappointing meals. It seems you are excited about the region and its food and that the learning experience is almost as valuable as the reward of finding the right meals. I suppose we share a background of having our palates honed in France and that eating in Catalonia is having similar effects on both our palates. Your post also causes some reflection on recommending restaurants to others based on personal experience. We enjoyed Hispania, we loved Ca L'Isidre. It's clear your experience varied in the reverse. I can't say if our tastes vary from each other's or if it's just been a matter of luck and how each of us ordered that particular day, but I stress the unreasonablity of anyone expecting someone else's one dinner experiences of providing a surefire set of recommendations for dining on a trip. I appreciate it that you provide enough information based on impersonal factors and that you include places and dishes that left you unsatisfied. I think that helps us all evaluate your tastes and provides the kind of information about a region that helps us deal with restaurants we see that have not been mentioned or listed anywhere. Regarding La Boqueria market, I have a few things to say. If you haven't seen it during hunting season you have a treat to experience. The butcher shops are festooned with furred game and wild birds with colorful plummage. I have never experienced such a show in France. I know the outdoor market in Cannes and the indoor one in Lyon. The one in Lyon is a favorite of ours, but the markets that best compare with La Boqueria may be the other two markets we've explored within Barcelona. There was one other market in northeastern Spain that was memorable. Esilda and I have a clear picture of the market, but cannot place it in a particular city at the moment. Thanks again for that evocative post. I look forward to your El Bulli feature with renewed interest.

3rd installment Sergi Arola's La Broche, with two Michelin stars was our restaurant for dinner on our third night in Madrid. This is another place that deserves a full critical in depth post, but I am probably not the one to do it, at least not from this first visit. Regrettably, Mrs. B. was feeling under the weather and we didn't take the tasting menu. My own prejudice is that creative food of this kind is best experienced by a tasting menu of small plates and that I enjoy tasting menus when they are taken by others at the table, regardless of whether or not that's a requirement. Arola is a disciple of Ferran Adria, but he's not a copy cat. His food is inventive on his terms. There's a spirit, and in some sense there are directions shared among the young avant garde chefs of Spain. They tend to borrow each other's ideas rather than each other's dishes. It also seems a movement that's much more intellectual than the last waves to hit haute cuisine and it focuses on the potential for food as creative art rather than just craft. There are inherent dangers to all this. The food may become too intellectual and stop appealing to our palates and the focus on finding one's own distinct expression may lead even further down the road of cult chefdom. It's an exciting time to be eating out and in no country more so than Spain and I have more to gain by eating the food, than by predicting where it will go in the long run, a decade, or even next year. Physically, the cool minimalist design of La Broche should put the nail in the coffin of my apprehension that a Spanish restaurant will look like the stage set for El Cid or Don Quixote. If I look in the window of a new restaurant in New York and I spot a smashingly crisp modern decor, I'm going to suspect it's a Spanish restaurant that's opening there after my recent experiences of eating in Spain. I started with a Carpaccio of Boletus -- a fine layer of marinated cepes with several smaller than thumbnail sized squid, some diced mango and apple and a thin line of peanut sauce. It was nice enough, but very subtle or a bit lackluster, depending on your view. I think it would have come off better in a smaller portion. For a main course I had Rable de Liebre (saddle of hare). . I found the accompanying sauce overwhelmed the hare. The sauce was thick without being rich. It was also sweet in the way that much new cooking, particularly in Spain, is sweet with a acid edge that I find too strong and lacking in subtlety. Bitter chocolate was a component of the sauce according to the menu, but I didn't find that flavor. All I could think of was the bitter chocolate sauce on my superb hare last fall at the Lion d'Or in Romorantin. For dessert I ordered the Tocinillo de Azafran. Tocino is lard or fat back, but tocino, or the diminutive tocinillo, de cielo -- lard of heaven -- is the name of a rich custardy dessert. here it was a play on the traditional dessert with saffron, ice cream cream and toasted bread cubes dusted with cinnamon. I found the dry bread a distraction. Some spice cake cubes, rather than the bread are what I though would have really raised this above its roots. We had a Mauro Syrah from near Toledo. An initial bouquet of strawberry didn't last long and the wine didn't seem to develop at the table. I wondered if it would be softer with more age, but I didn't note the vintage. It wasn't a two star dinner for me. I recall the amuses as being very interesting, but the rest of the meal didn't live up to the promise. I'd like go back to try the tasting menu. At this point, I'm more intrigued by the food than convinced. Too much smoke and not enough ventilation didn't help me, but I doubt anyone else noted. I didn't know they had a restaurant in Miami until my credit card came back in a tyvek card case with the two restaurants' imprint. One on each side. It's good advertising. We always carry spare cards on different accounts for back up, but it's smart to protect the magnetic strip on your cards, especially when traveling and everytime I use that card in a restaurant, someone will see where I've dined. --------------------------------------- mas

I'd dispute WS and their choice of a factory that sells "acrylique" handled knives as the genuine article, but of course there are many makers in town. Some of them import parts from which they assemble the knife. I'll stick with Forge de Laguiole as the one used by most of the better restaurants in France. Their hallmark is the one I see when I'm given a Laguiole in France. Michel Bras uses his own design and sells them at the inn, but they are also made at la Forge de Laguiole and bear the Forge de Laguiole company marking.

In a very new restaurant, the butter arrived at the table before the bread and way before the knives. In fact, the knives and forks arrived quite some time after the appetizers. It wasn't the first time I've had a waiter working his first restaurant job, but this time I was trying to figure out if he had never eaten in a restaurant himself, or if he had just never eaten at a table with a knife and fork. I suspect there are generations of Americans who think of a meal as something on a bun that can be held in your hand.

I don't know, but if he was referring to you, let me welcome you to eGullet.

Because it beats untoasted Wonderbread, as evidenced by the fact that you'd never make a grilled cheese sandwich in a microwave.

I think it's the heat thing. I just llike playing with fire and the way it browns things. I watched a woman scramble eggs in a microwave once in a diner in upstate NY. I think it killed the microwave as a tool for me. She had those eggs in and out of the oven, if a microwave oven can be called an oven, a dozen times, scrambling them each time before putting them back in. I never saw someone work so hard on a couple of scrambled eggs. I'm not sure if I've ever had scrambled eggs as badly done either.

I don't know the restaurant, but have trouble believing any restaurant would knowingly serve a moldy lemon. My suspicion would be that they bought the lemons pre-wrapped or that they wrapped a week's supply at one time and the lemon went moldy under cover. That doesn't get them off the hook and still leaves them taking shortcuts in the wrong time and place.

I'm not sure if the discounts are good, but check them out. We paid around 33 euros a knife for black horn handled table knives with two brass "mitres" at the downtown store. As I recall that model was being featured and discounted at the downtown store. When we later visited the factory I believe they had discounts on seconds of other models, but I didn't check the price to see how much of a discount there was, nor did we look at the knifes to see if the imprefections were noticable. There was a wide variety of knives and if I'm not mistaken, even the "simple" table knives we bought were available in several sizes, or lengths. The table knives came in wood boxes of two, four or six. We wanted eight and bought two boxes of four. I liked the wood handled ones, but wanted to get six different ones. My wife thought that was tacky and ugly, so we compromised on horn. The only thing I can add is that the dollar has dropped in value more than 15% since then. There are many other companies that make Laguoile knives, although I understand that some of them do not carry out the operation from start to finish within the area. I don't know if that matters or why it might matter. There are stores in town that carry many brands of Laguiole knives.

Someone will probably ask you why you don't have photographs in the book, but I won't be that one. One of the things that appeals very much to me about the book is that it's a reader's book as much as a cook's book. It should have an appeal to travelers who will, or have dined in the area. The culinary, cultural or historical information preceeding each dish may help inspire a cook to replicate the dish, but it's also invaluable to those who have the chance to sample these dishes in the Pyrenees and who never pick up a pot or pan. Headnotes to a recipe are rarely so interesting apart from the recipe to follow. I can think of a few other cookbooks like this as well as books that offer this sort of look at a culture through its food without recipes, but what inspired you to write this kind of a book and was it written for an audience you know exists or to satisfy your own ideal?

I don't know much about Portugal, but rapidly learning that it may be my loss. In Spain however, a lot of our eating was done "between meals." As a long time francophile and avid snacker, I've learned to curtail my habits and eat square meals at the proper time. The abundance of tapas bars and the chance to grab a bite at odd hours adds immeasureably to the joys of being a tourist in the Iberian peninsula. (The closing of major tourist attractions for two, three or four hours at lunch is a drag, on the other hand.) In some area of Spain though, it seems that tapas, or the best tapas bars and the ones with the best selections, operate on a schedule as well.