Las Rejas

[vserna]

You had bad luck. I've never eaten in more than two hours at Las Rejas - and it's a frequent stop for me between Madrid and my 'agribusiness'!

[pedro]

Today was a good day to put some miles between you and downtown Madrid. Heavy rain, many streets closed to traffic, thousands of people in the streets. Well, I suppose that royal weddings are like this. So, we had two excuses to bridge a major gap by going to Las Rejas: Mar’s birthday and “The” wedding. Only after lunch we realized how major the gap was.

After slightly more than a hundred miles of smooth driving, we reach Las Pedroñeras, a small town southeast Madrid, in the province of Cuenca. This is the odd place chosen by Manuel de la Osa to establish his restaurant, Las Rejas. Perhaps he did so because he was born there. The appearance of Las Rejas’ façade couldn’t be less promising. But once you cross the door, everything changes. A nice setup, with more than well spaced tables, a quite and warm atmosphere. Good. Bring on the tasting menu!:

A very good Iberic lomo was presented to us to begin with. A shadow of doubt passes by your mind. Hmm, we didn’t travel this far to have lomo, no matter how good is. But soon enough, a cold soup of tomato, basil and garlic with a tasty raw clam is offered, and now you start the real travel. The dish was a display of total balance. The acidity and sweetness of the tomato, the saltiness and iodized flavours of the clam, the basil and garlic in the background, without interfering with the rest of the ingredients, but enhancing them. An oyster over a cream of pumpkin and citrus fruits with saffron, took me back to January and NY, where I found odd the combination of seafood and citrus fruits that I had in places like Blue Hill. Nothing wrong about reviewing you own ideas.

Manuel de la Osa seems to be present directing everything, and displaying quite a character on his way to the kitchen.

Now, a set of three snacks is presented to us. A cockle and trout eggs in a cauliflower cream with green tomatoes foam. Smoked salmon over a light bread stick with yoghourt and curry. Caramelized foie with spiced bread. All of them very good, but not moving.

A friend of mine who’s recently been there complained about the number of seafood offered in a Cuenca village. Well, he could have a point, but why a chef should restrain himself of using what considers the best to display his style? Also, I believe that there are enough links between Manuel de la Osa’s cooking and his region. Las Rejas is not an impersonal restaurant that could be found in a major city. Not without Manolo, at least.

We were about to being served the best three dishes of the meal. Three great dishes. No matter what you compared them to. A cream of cheese, with summer truffle (tuber aestivium), dried fruits and compoted tomato. Cold soup of purple Las Pedroñeras’ garlic. Ravioli of partridge on its juice with perretxicos. What can be said about them? The cream of cheese is a reviewed version of a traditional way of having cheese. Some dried fruits, and some compote (usually quince jelly). The truffle expanded all the flavours. The cold soup was something else. It had small crumbs of breads (migas), an egg’s yolk, and a couple of thin slices of iberic fried ham (I suspect that it was “punished” in the microwave). Great combination of textures and long and deep flavours (egg’s yolk and garlic).

Two more dishes were the prelude to the desserts. A Saint Peter’s fish over pisto manchego and saffron cream, and a roasted pidgeon with spring onion. The two of them were very good, but not as great as the three previous ones.

And now the desserts. Well, to tell the truth and much to the embarrassment of Mar, I ask the young waiter if I could have another cold soup. He checked this with Manuel, who just replied “Order it” and came to our table. I stated that it was sheer gluttony, while Mar made a point stating that it was just me who was ordering. I was just mumbling how great the cheese cream and the cold soup were, when Manuel smiles and says “Ok, why don’t you have the two dishes?” And so he brought them. He was kind enough of not including them in the bill.

The desserts were very refreshing, specially the first one with fruits (including sweetened zucchini) and coconut ice cream. The second one was a coffee gelée with some foamed cream.

Back to Madrid, with the certainty of having visited one of the greatest restaurants in Spain.

[Bux]

The appearance of Las Rejas’ façade couldn’t be less promising.

An understatement if there ever was one. Oddly enough, I found the interior much more pleasing the second time we were there. I've tried to figure out why and I think it was because there was a large table serving what looked like a company meeting. That sort of thing never lends a graceful air to the dining room. We made our second visit just a few weeks ago on our way in to Madrid and now that Las Rejas had three soles from Campsa, the room was full of what appeared to be gourmet diners, at least on a Saturday at lunch. A provincial Manhattanite such as myself finds it hard to grasp the concept of driving out of the city center to dine, let alone 100 miles for lunch, but Las Rejas is that kind of destination restaurant. France has its share of excellent restaurants in out of the way places and small towns, but nothing to compare with dreary Las Pendroñeras. It's an amazing site for such a restaurant.

Your tasting menu sounds much like ours with a few variations. I'll agree that the white cheese soup was a solid success and rather a surprise. We had a similar soup on the menu last year and it too made a big impression on us. At the tine we wondered about its relationship with traditional Spanish food. It seemed highly original to the restaurant, but it also seemed a preparation we'd be even more surprised to see in France or the US. Still it was hard to say it was Spanish in feeling as it was nothing like what we've had in the Pais Vasco, Catalunya, Madrid, or elsewhere. I think I'd also say Manolo is not only highly talented and creative, but that his food is very much his and not part of some group. At the same time, we found it very accessible in terms of flavor. One didn't have to think about the food to get it, but there was the sense at times that as an outsider not very familiar with traditional Spanish food, we didn't get some deconstructive references.

After our first visit last year, the element of surprise was not there and that may have contributed to the fact that we felt last year's meal may have been even more successful than this year's visit. There were a few dishes that were repeated, some with variations and some that I would really have loved to have had in even larger portions. Many tasting portions won't work as full portions, but a lot of what Manolo does seems to be both intense and creative enough to work impressively as a small portion, but still convey the kind of solid down home satisfaction that would enable one to finish a large bowl and want more. Overall, the balance and orchestration of our meals was a key to their success, but I felt I could also be satisfied with three or four larger courses and keep the same balance.

I think I'd like to come back to this discussion when I have some more time.

[Bux]

I think I'd like to come back to this discussion when I have some more time.

For years, Mrs. B. and I have taken notes during our most interesting meals, especially when we travel. Lately, we've been relying on an unobtrusive digital camera to quickly record the dishes. It's easier and less distracting to us while we're dining, but I find that I can look at our notes years later and remember the dish and the way it tasted, but that when I look at the photograph, I can't always indentify all the ingredients.

We've also arrived at the point where we've not only had so many fabulous dishes, but that we can afford to have them in rapid succession. Another oddly vexing factor came into play on this trip. We're used to dining alone together. After a few days on the road, the meal at hand may be all we have that's new to talk about. At Las Rejas this year, we were joined by Victor and while the stimulating conversation made our lunch much more enjoyable, the individual dishes often passed without the same focused attention. Pedro's meal was soon after ours and we had some of the same dishes.

So bear with me if I don't offer as much detail about each course. Our first course was a refreshing deconstructed gazpacho with a tomato sorbet. That crisp rising like a whiff of smoke is nothing more than a variation on melba toast--a paper thin slice of dry toasted bread. It was a common garnish in many good restaurants. Here it's an effective part of the decomposition as bread, either incorporated into the soup or as croutons, is often a part of gazpacho.

A poached plump oyster on some gently spiced calabasa sauce with candied lemon peel was a repeat from last year's menu for us. Pedro's comment about being reminded of Blue Hill is interesting to me because this combination of seafood and fruit, with a touch of sweetness was a taste to which I took slowly. I credit Daniel Boulud for sending out comps of this sort of thing and when I wouldn't order it voluntarily. That's one of the things I like most about tasting menus, it confronts me with things I might not otherwise order. The other thing about a well composed tasting menu is that courses follow in such a progression as to support successive courses.

The three snacks plate was next for us as well, but with a variation in the soup from Pedro's lunch. I rather liked the foie gras tea sandwich with spice bread that's over on the right.

More seafood came next. It was a take on pulpo a la feria, octopus, potatoes, paprika and olive oil. Both the octopus and original recipe are from Galicia. Here Manolo deconstructs and reconstructs making a sauce with the red pepper, rather than dusting the slices of octopus tentacles, and adding a few snails. After our paella of rabbit and snails in Casa Paco, I connect snails with Alicante in the opposite corner of Spain from Galicia and it strikes me that at a table in Las Pedroneras in the center of Spain, it's a perfect gastronomic and geographic balance.

Seared rare tuna has been somewhat of a cliché in New York. I don't see it that much in France and have no idea how common it is in Spain, but Manolo breathes life into what appears as sliced steak with lentils, baby greens and a savory sorbet whose flavor we can't quite put our finger on. Other factors contributing to our inability to recount details are the fact that we were given an old menu as a souvenir, rather than a current one as an aide-memoir and the fact that our menu seemed to have grown in size from last year when we only had two courses added to the seven on the regular tasting menu. Victor is a local and regular diner here at what's obviously the best restaurant anywhere near his vineyards as well as being on the way back to Madrid. There are numerous threads in the NY forum about how to obtain VIP treatment at any restaurant and the simplest method is showing appreciation for the food. Becoming a regular patron is the sure fire way.

Here's where my memory really flags. I recall a cold cheese soup being poured into the bowl before Mrs. B had the chance to photograph it. I suspect we may be missing a soup, but this photograph appears to be of the cheese dish Pedro describes as "cream of cheese, with summer truffle (tuber aestivium), dried fruits and compoted tomato" and the one I raved about last year.

Last year, we had the sopa de ajo 2002 caliente which may have been on the menu for a year, but was still new to us. This year we got the sopa de ajo 2004 frio and we felt like collectors of limited editions. Beginning with our dinner at El Bulli during the year of their 20th anniversary, we became aware of the practice of dating dishes. It's a sign of the times, or at least of the style of contemporary haute cuisine in Spain where there's a emphasis on creativity of the sort that can be documented and cataloged the way Adria is doing with his works. It's also about having a body of work like a painter or a sculptor. The dating and photographing of these culinary creations remind me of the way visual artists assemble a portfolio--the one they carry around to introduce themselves to gallery owners. At some point that portfolio takes on a life and importance of it's own in a bizarre way. An artist I knew once told me about his experience at being a visiting critic at a college with a respectable art department. He was in a student's studio surrounded by finished work and work in progress and the student pulled out his portfolio of slides to show. How different these stills of a career in progress are than the familiar signature dishes of not so distant time. Those dishes were sometimes repeated for a generation, but often they evolved and slowly changed forms. It's just an observation. I have no personal preference.

On a subjective level, I think I liked the 2002 hot soup better than this year's cold model, but it was a cold rainy day for May and had the weather been nearly what it should have been that day, I might well have appreciated the cold version. At any rate the dish has been further deconstructed from last year's soup. The tomatoes are in the form of tomatoes not broth and the egg yolk is uncooked. I think the raw egg yolk may at the heart of my preference for the warm version. I don't know if we've captured that in the photograph, but the slice of ham is as I think it was last year--a crisp and brittle crumpled sheet, not unlike a dry baked sheet of phyllo dough. I'm not sure how they do that. Pedro, do you think they can do that in a microwave? I'm a Luddite in the kitchen. Fire is all I know.

Our next course was a single raviolo of partridge with a rather delicate pasta shell, a rich stuffing that that seemed particularly Spanish for reasons I cannot quite put into words and a couple of slices of truffle.

We thought perhaps the savory courses concluded with the unctuous boned pig's food, morels and asparagus that followed. We were wrong. Last year we finished with a boned lamb's foot. Served with a potato and red pepper garnish it seemed essentially Spanish. Perhaps the pig's foot was no less so, but the combination of morel and asparagus was a familiar one from France and the U.S. at this time of year. The sea bream that followed the meat seemed a little out of progression almost as if Manolo noticed that none of us were falling asleep and decided to slip in another savory dish or two. The herb infused oil outlining the Asian touch of the scored seared squid was quite effective. The last few dishes while effective in the tasting menu, would be equally successful as a larger portion in a traditional three course menu.

The savory finale, as it was at three restaurants this trip, was a taste of excellent suckling pig with three fruit purees. I don't know if Spanish chefs are tied to their roots, or if it's just that Spanish diners won't believe they really know how to cook in the kitchen if they can't produce a perfectly juicy piece of lechon with a perfectly crisp skin.

Desserts were blessedly simple, refreshing, satisfying and the kind of stuff that slips in between whatever else you've eaten thus far. That is to say that each of the three or four desserts, depending on how you count, was at least one of those things in turn.

Oranges, fennel soup, blood orange foam and sorbet of red fruits.

Some strawberries and creams.

Coffee jelly with cream and what we recall as a delicate saffron custard with chocolate sorbet. Let's call that pair one dessert.

[Rogelio]

Thanks Bux, great notes and wonderful pictures.

I've always wondered how do foreign people aproximate to the deconstruction of traditional dishes if they haven't had the originals (well, I bet that you have had pulpo a feira before). Because it seems like a game where you play with the rememberings of the guest, and this doesn't exist in the visitor's case.

[vserna]

One note on that savory sorbet with the tuna tataki whose taste you couldn't exactly figure out, Bux: it was bitter almonds.

[Bux]

I've always wondered how do foreign people aproximate to the deconstruction of traditional dishes if they haven't had the originals (well, I bet that you have had pulpo a feira before). Because it seems like a game where you play with the rememberings of the guest, and this doesn't exist in the visitor's case.

Much of the humor and intellectual wit of nueva cocina is lost on the tourist. We often don't get to play the game and it's a loss I sense at times.

For us, the ability to appreciate many dishes beyond their immediate taste appeal is limited. Fortunately, we have had some good visits to various parts of the country in recent years and there was an extended visit to Spain a long time before El Bulli was around. It may not help when the food is on the table, but a little research after the fact can be rewarding and helpful when posting. There was a fairly recent time when "a little research" would mark one as has having a strong interest, if not actually as a scholar. Today it's just a matter of searching Google for a minute or two.

We've had pulpo a feira several times in Galica and once in New York where is was surprisingly good. The NY Spanish restaurant was quite interesting, but short lived. In spite of having had the dish four or five times however, I didn't remember it having potatoes. That's where the web search payed off. That, and in checking my spelling--the dish doesn't appear on the menu given to us at the restaurant. I should have double checked the spelling. I see you've spelled it "feira," while I wrote "feria." There are over five thousand Google entries for "feira" and only three thousand for "feria." I picked up our Spanish dictionary (that's research--picking up a book ) and found "feria," but not the more common "feira." Is that perhaps Galician or should I buy a better dictionary?

[Rogelio]

"feira." Is that perhaps Galician or should I buy a better dictionary?

That's the galician speling, but also the name of the dish that is usually sold by the pulpeiras(the women who cook it in big barrels) at the ferias in Galicia interior.

[Bux]

One note on that savory sorbet with the tuna tataki whose taste you couldn't exactly figure out, Bux: it was bitter almonds.

Thanks. Tataki? Your term or Manolo's? I believe that was balsamic vinegar not soy sauce in any case. In regard to Rogelio's post, I didn't find any references to Spanish dishes in this and perhaps more homage to rare tuna in New York than to tataki, except for the slicing and presentation. The bitter almond sorbet was a Spanish touch more than a reference to any dish for me. Overall this seemed an original creation with international references--a synthesized dish. Does that make it sound synthetic? That's not the connotation I want, but "fusion" already connotes a certain world style and Manolo is not part of that school in my mind.

[pedro]

Rare tuna with ajoblanco (cold soup made with almonds, bread, water and some garlic, oil, salt and vinegar as basic ingredients) has been around in spanish restaurants for some years now. Juan Pablo Felipe (El Chaflán), Abraham García (Viridiana) are examples of chefs whom have being serving dishes around that theme. The description of Manolo's dish sounds to me as another variation on this.

PS: Looking to your soup picture, it occurs to me that the liquid you thought was poured over the cheese was actually poured over the garlic soup. The picture certainly seems without the liquid itself.

[pedro]

More seafood came next. It was a take on pulpo a la feria, octopus, potatoes, paprika and olive oil. Both the octopus and original recipe are from Galicia. Here Manolo deconstructs and reconstructs making a sauce with the red pepper, rather than dusting the slices of octopus tentacles, and adding a few snails. After our paella of rabbit and snails in Casa Paco, I connect snails with Alicante in the opposite corner of Spain from Galicia and it strikes me that at a table in Las Pedroneras in the center of Spain, it's a perfect gastronomic and geographic balance.

Maybe vserna / Rogelio could add more information, but from what I understand, gallegos are not particularly fond of caracoles (snails). In fact, they would eat almost anything, i.e. oysters, before eating such strange creatures.

Last week, while having lunch at Sacha, in front of a remarkable dish consisting of a fried egg with clams in a green sauce, Sacha himself told us that he cooked that green sauce in the hypertraditional way. That is, adding some meat stock to the sauce. Since seafood was literally at hand to anyone who would take the burden of going to the coast and grab some, meat was consider a luxury product not that many years ago. So, just by adding some meat stock to the green sauce and the clams, the dish would get a higher status than without it.

I don't know if we've captured that in the photograph, but the slice of ham is as I think it was last year--a crisp and brittle crumpled sheet, not unlike a dry baked sheet of phyllo dough. I'm not sure how they do that. Pedro, do you think they can do that in a microwave? I'm a Luddite in the kitchen. Fire is all I know.

I think so, Bux. I've read some Abraham Garcia's recipes where he suggests the use of microwave ("punishing the ham in the microwave") to achieve that texture. That wouldn't be a surprise to someone who's tried to prepare some habas (broad beans) sauted with ham. Or peas, for that matter. The ham gets easily dry, crunchy and salty if you don't properly control the process. According to Abraham, it looks like the microwave works perfectly to get the texture used by Manolo in the garlic soups, either cold or hot.

[Eduardo]

Rare tuna with ajoblanco (cold soup made with almonds, bread, water and some garlic, oil, salt and vinegar as basic ingredients) has been around in spanish restaurants for some years now. Juan Pablo Felipe (El Chaflán), Abraham García (Viridiana) are examples of chefs whom have being serving dishes around that theme. The description of Manolo's dish sounds to me as another variation on this.

There come to my mine some more examples: Alberto Chicote serves at his "Nodo" a sort of a tataki with ajoblanco. An one of the dishes that is on Sacha's menu from several years ago is a salad made basically with almost rare tuna, ajoblanco, and a pedro ximenez sauce.