Gastronomic Cádiz for beginners
who just elected Cadiz as the Spanish province that you have to visit in 2019 according to The New York Times, we already knew it; boy did we know. We knew of its cramp, its impossible beaches and its immense emotional heritage (I can't imagine a more valuable heritage) : It is impossible not happy here.
We knew every inch of the Vineyard neighborhood , the sunsets in front of La Caleta and the oldest neighborhood in Europe; the white villages, the timeless beauty of ** Vejer, La Erizada Popular, the flow of Caños** and the run run of the flower market any spring morning to come; it's always spring here.
They say in the selection of 52 Places to Go what Cai has “an atmosphere more similar to that of Havana than that of Madrid” but it is the other way around: it is Havana that looks like Cadiz . Because Cádiz only looks like itself and has no measures other than love. Let's eat Cádiz.
This is Cadiz
THE BEST FRYING IN CADIZ
** Bodeguita El Adobo **, the open secret in full rosary street which is no longer a secret because, let's say it clearly, it is one of the best taverns in Andalusia, with all the letters.
I tell you an anecdote to understand his elf; It happened three or four years ago, after publishing a photograph of Paquito in Vogue, “What is that about Vogue, Jesú?”. My goodness what art , because today that page presides over the only free wall in the bodeguita.
More frying, because one cannot come to Cai and not eat even fried fish papo , is the ** Bar Navarro in Sanlúcar ** where they embroider the marinated dogfish, the fried prawns and the acedías; wave Peña Bética "Doñana" by Carlos Juez in Callejón de Guía, a trench against boredom.
OF SHERRY WINES
It is not a wine office or even a bar a vins , because the ** Taberna Der Guerrita in the Barrio Bajo ** (which by the way has just turned 40 years old as a bar and 10 years old as a back room) has long since ceased to be a physical space to become a symbol, a way of count the Marco de Jerez and that “flower power” that drives so many of us crazy; It's the fault of arming war and the mythical summer tastings of it, and the fact is that the best viticulturists and wines on the planet come here, without exaggeration.
In the port of Santa María, a historic winery to taste a good Sherry
Two historic wineries complete the route, Tabanco (what a nice word, huh) **El Pasaje in Jerez** and Bodegas Obregón in Puerto de Santa María.
LONG LIVE THE TUNA!
It is not possible to understand the gastronomy of Cadiz without paying homage to the almadraba bluefin tuna, it is not possible; no way Temples of the thunnus? The ** Antonio Restaurant , which covers one of the best tartars I've ever tasted, ** La Sorpresa de Juan Carlos Borrell (and family) in the small alley of the tree street next to the flower market and ** Atunante ** in Royal Hideway Sancti Petri, which does not hide its beautiful tribute to the presence of the silver fish in literature.
For example, as in the pages of Martin Sarmiento : “Tuna do not have a homeland or a constant domicile; the whole sea is Homeland for them. They are wandering fish and vagrant rogues, who are sometimes here and sometimes are there.”
Almadraba bluefin tuna is our religion
BEACH BARS
Difficult, very difficult to choose the best beach bar of a homeland so dedicated to saltpeter (the west wind caressed you / took you to the sand bathed in saltpeter) and to hedonism without so many Instagram filters or so much nonsense.
Because the summer is salt on the skin or it is not; summer in Cadiz must be synonymous with letting go, The smell of grilling, fresh tuna, the touch of freshly washed cotton and the sound of wood creaking on a deck.
Summer is the aroma of the skin of an orange, the boulders, the finger on the drop that falls from the glass and the possible dreams — It is the moment of life that explodes in the chest , from so many love stories that are born (mine, without going any further) and from the pulse of the inevitable: this present that so many times leaves us without hardly noticing it.
That's why you have to roll up your sleeves again, leave your shoes in the trunk and get lost in El Refugio in Zahara de los Atunes (“little fish and a view of the sea”), Los Corrales in Chipiona and El Castillito in El Puerto.
Zahara of the Tuna
BARS, HOW WE LIKE A BAR
Andalusia is its tapas and its bars ; what the hell, Spain as a whole are its bars and this living so ours glued to the bravas and the penultimate glass of wine, because otherwise there is no way to figure out why we (precisely we, so punished by the most vulgar pleasures) will live a handful of years more than Marie Kondo, with all her rice bowls and her sulky kitchen : because we are alive , fuck. But, really.
And things are clear: there is no bar in the world like that of The lighthouse —which, by the way, they have just made quite beautiful—, the lineage of shrimp at Casa Bigote (Bajo de Guía) or the fried trembling from Pedro Hidalgo Angelín at Casa Perico.
"Keep only what makes you happy," says Kondo. How clear we have it in Cádiz, dear.
Cod loin on corn cream and red pepper jam
SHRIMP OMELETTE
And since we are going with bars and things that make us happy, can you think of a better symbol of happiness to a shrimp omelette ? why not? In addition to El Faro (where they embroider them) the mythical Ventorrillo del Chato tortillas, Las Rejas on Bolonia beach and that icon that is already a cathedral of Cadiz feeling in the bustle of Plaza Cabildo: Casa Balbino.
Shrimp omelette from Casa Balbino
FOR INSIDERS
There is something for everyone in Cádiz, but there is one that hides from the radar of the tourist and the Sunday-lover spending a few “di-i-tas” in the South; I speak of the telluric, gypsy and incontestable Cádiz , the one that drives me crazy.
I understood it when I met Don Alejandro Cortés and his 'Alfonsito' in Bajo de Guía , the best critters brought by their own hand from the Sanlúcar barges, the aliñás potatoes, the concerts on the sand, the neighbors having a Bingo and the sunset over Doñana beyond the Guadalquivir, so pretty it hurts.
This is Cadiz. This is the old and pure Cai, like that of the Sharecroppers in the Barrio Alto of Sanlúcar, the Thrushes of Blanca Buzón for Sale Las Marismas and the French fries from El Corralón de la Viña.
GASTRONOMIC
Who was going to tell us not so long ago that the legitimate heiress of San Sebastián and the Catalonia of the Adrià, Santamaría and Roca families would be Andalusia, that the most dazzling chef on the gastronomy planet would come from Jerez de la Frontera and that he would conquer the world from an ancient Tide Mill from the 19th century in Puerto de Santa María.
Aponiente, it's your time
Who was going to tell us not so long ago that "those Andalusians" (those with the caps) would plant a pike in the pages of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times; or that this salty madman would put the Harvard auditorium on its feet by making the light of the sea edible.
Angel Leon and his crew on aponiente they are no longer ours, they are universal and their cuisine seems to have no end; What a pleasure it will be to accompany you on this journey.
But there is more, such as the proposals of his former head chef Juanlu Fernández at LÚ Cocina y Alma (Jerez) or the small homeland of Aponiente in Sancti Petri: Alevante.
THE BAR
Because there is only one and it is in mourning, and it is that the immense Don Miguel Garcia; grand master of the chamomile order of Sanlúcar.
He leaves us his calm smile and his being so calm and so warm: that's a bartender.
La Manzanilla, at Feduchy 19 , will continue to welcome Pepe's infinite gatherings, small moments (which are the greatest) and all the flower in each chamomile cane. Thank you for so much, Don Miguel; because by your side (you didn't know it, you just accompanied me with your readings and our beautiful shared silences) I was able to get out of the well that year so sad and so gray. There, in your house, I learned that life is walking , and that the path of the heart is the only one that is never wrong.
Go back to Cadiz? How not to return (always) to this homeland of civility that lights up its streets with all the colors of the world.