Cudillero, voted the most beautiful coastal town in Spain by our readers
Cudillero , with their houses climbing the hillside, it's a postcard . So much so that its aesthetics, so perfect that it almost looks like a set, means that many times we are not able to see beyond and we stay on the surface. But you, readers, with your votes have decided that it does deserve a deeper journey, an in-depth study of this beauty that is so photogenic but also so genetic. Cudillero has been voted by the readers of Condé Nast Traveler as the most beautiful coastal town in Spain. The complete list takes us on a journey of infinite beauty along our entire coastline, but oh, Cudillero!
There are many travelers who come to the town attracted by its fame, walk around the port, take photos, have a drink on one of the terraces of La Marina and continue the trip. But Cudillero demands another rhythm to be discovered.
Beyond the postcard, the astonishment at each bend as it goes down the road from Villademar. Beyond the sunsets from the La Garita viewpoint , Cudillero maintains a calm, marine atmosphere and own that must be found little by little.
You have to wander uphill, pass the St. Peter's Church , get into it get out alley if you can , look out over the roofs from the viewpoint of the peak and then go down the Riofrío Street and by Sol de La Blanca to La Ribera to understand that the town is a labyrinth, that it is not possible to understand it at a glance. Neither him nor his character. It requires an effort to see beyond the obvious.
And within that personality pixie , the name of the variant of the bable that the town has preserved and at the same time the name of the inhabitants of the port area, gastronomy has a fundamental weight. Because this is Asturias and, as in all of Asturias, cuisine and produce are one of the cornerstones of daily life.
Cudillero, 'pixueta' personality
But this is also Cudillero. And here everything is particular, apparently the same as what one can find in other towns on the coast but with a unique character at the same time.
Cudillero is touristy, especially in high season . And like any Asturian tourist port, it has taverns, eating houses and terraces in which to try the local tradition and eat well. More than 20 restaurants for a town with just 5,000 inhabitants in which to try the beautiful in season, the beans, the viceroy or the bocartes.
But beyond the Asturian classics Cudillero still has its own recipe book . A recipe book that, like the town, must be discovered, dishes that go one step further and that must be sought out. A recipe book with unique products such as healer , a small shark that is cured, without salt, in the Cantabrian wind and then stewed with potatoes or beans.
In Cudillero, the sea is king
And if many towns would settle for a local product, Cudillero ups the ante and has several. All of old sonority and flavors . Like the buchos, hake tripe , which are hardly offered anymore because they are a dish that requires hours of work, but which can still be tasted, stewed with onions and peppers and served with chips in places like Sidrería El Remo.
barnacles, andaricas (frying crabs) or cliff octopus that surround the town, hake on the skewer, lamps (limpets) if we are lucky enough to find them in a letter. Caldereta, only potato and seafood. Who needs more to be happy in front of a plate.
fish stews, button (maragota) or tiñosu (scorpionfish), born on boats by the humblest species, although the elaboration accepts fish with more names such as pixin (snuff). Nice stew with potatoes in El Pescador, jigging squid, fried or in its ink. Red mullet, bugs (lobsters). All the wealth of the Bay of Biscay appears in the restaurants of this town that is almost more sea than land.
Everything in that tiny tangle of alleys and alleys, of slopes and roofs, of facades that climb through the only loophole that the coast has given them. Local flavors that know they don't need to brag to be special.
You have to go to Cudillero on purpose . And the same goes for his kitchen, which is not reached by chance. Flavors that have been taking shape over the centuries, which are Asturian but are essentially pixuetos . Flavors that you have to want to reach, that you have to discover and that, as it happens with the hamlet of the town, they are much more than what one finds in that first shocking glance.
*CONGRATULATIONS TO Manuel Ruiz Galiano, winner of the weekend rural experience (courtesy of Ruralka)