Everything is easier in front of the sea
It is true: everything is easier facing the sea and every day I have more clear that truly transcendent gastronomy (the one that will be fixed in memory) has to do with what happens on the plate but has especially to do with life.
What am I going to tell you: we will only take from here the experience and the beauty and what E.E. had so clear. Cummings (what a great movie Hannah and her sisters): "No matter what you've lost, it's always yourself you find at sea." The opposite of disease is not health, it is the sea.
Why did it take so long to get back?
That is why this tour of the peninsula, and beyond, in search of those spaces fused with saltpeter and the wind, restaurants where the experience is sublimated with the environment: with the best possible environment.
That is why every time one returns to Miramar by Paco Pérez in Llançà it is easy to wonder why it took so long to return to this honest, family cuisine deeply rooted in its past but with a high creative voltage: “Express the emotion of the marine aromas of an early morning; unveil the magic of a raging storm; extract the soul from the earth, from the sea; discover the essence of flavors and textures... cook with soul and project dreams to new vanguards”.
In Daimuz, following the curly line of the Mediterranean, we reach the first gastronomic chiringo in Spain : House Manolo of Manuel Alonso, a restless chef who has grown and grown to become the mature and thoughtful chef he is today; more mature, more balanced and more reflective. Acidity, product, flavor, balance and territory in a house that only he has known grow up being faithful to its sailor and family character I hope they never lose it.
At Casa Manolo his thing is to book to eat and let the afternoon fall by reserving one of its wooden loungers with a bottle of champagne, a couple of books and all the time in the world until “that cursed hour when the bars are about to close, when the soul needs a body to caress”.
Almost to the confines of the Mediterranean it is pertinent to dock in Marbella and in the chiringuito-gourmet that has turned upside down what until now we understood by 'picnic area' and that, unfortunately, continues to overpopulate a large part of our coastline, so prone to surrendering to the highest bidder, what am I going to tell you: low culinary stuff, plastic chairs and napkins of that hostile touch.
But there is hope, and it cannot be by chance that the first picnic area in Spain was born in Malaga in 1882, Miguelito 'er de las sardinas', because it is in Marbella where we find ** The Mile of Luis Miguel Menor and César Morales: 300 wines* * (bravo, also for that selection of champagnes of small products) , fetén cocktails and naked product , the same one that seems so boring (wink, wink) to our admired Andoni Luis Aduriz. Exceptionality without make-up in coquinas, oysters, shrimps or sardines with skewers.
Until Pontevedra and one of the houses of a more truthful beauty, more traditional: O Loxe Mareiro and that magical window from which it is impossible not to surrender to the bohemian sound of the docks. "There is a place where everything begins and ends no sea...".
Contemporary seafood cuisine by the Abastos team
Contemporary seafood cuisine by the Abastos team whose DNA is the product of the estuary, the fresh genre and the flag of simplicity: at this point I am the only one for whom I fight. It's that they are rich even in his speech: "a house of xantares mariñeira".
In Ribadesella the star has been shining for years (the star without a star, which are the ones we like the most) of Abel Fernández and his wife, Luisa Cajigal, in Güeyu Mar; totemic cuisine vs. Vega beach and his obsessive search for best grilled wild fish , to the sound of the fire, “when there was no language, people cooked their things on the fire on the ground. There was no gas, there were no express pots and Humanity ate with fire”.
are already classics of our gastronomy, its grilled oyster with caviar, grilled red mullet and especially the King (also known as viceroy, alfonsino, cachucho, female red or golden pomfret), the most true cuisine.
And an extra peninsular ball, a suggestion (it must be said) by Ferran Adrià: ** Casa de Chá da Boa Nova in Leça da Palmeira**, built on the rock itself by the Pritzker prize winner Siza Vieira, chosen National Monument and icon of a Portugal that is knocking at the doors of the hedonistic firmament.
The hands of Chef Rui Paula through a vegetarian proposal (good idea), an immensity of Ports and a menu delivered to the sea: lobster, shrimp, scallop, carabinero, shrimp, sea bass or cod guts. They sign it with a "by seas never before sailed". That's it.