Restaurant of the week: Galaxy
What at first glance is little more than a bar-restaurant in a border town, halfway between a bullfighting club and a spaceship from the Star Trek of the 70s , hides a disconcerting place where the Iberian meats and its derivatives -the double loin, the best ham and a morcón to cry- and the black cow They roam freely alongside **the best prawns in Huelva**, the thickest and juiciest barnacles and Galician oysters as flying saucers or a red tuna from Barbate the size of Apollo XI.
Surprising, yes, but not so much if we take into account the situation of Badajoz as a crossroads on the north-south axis and its immediate proximity to Portugal . The Galaxy it is like this: as an interplanetary base of the best raw materials in the middle of the Extremaduran universe.
The Galaxy has been standing since 1982 and its founder was the novillero José Martínez Castaño, "Pepe Hillo" in the bullfighting world and father of José María Martínez, the current owner, guardian of the product and cutter of ham as a young man who has known keep alive the spirit that his father instilled in the place.
the best product available daily on the market, without concessions, and simple traditional cuisine don't mask it. As simple as that. Or not so much.
In the order it is essential to start with the excellent Iberian products: the ham, the loin cane, the “doblao” loin -a piece that is folded over itself longitudinally to obtain a thicker section and is cured in Iberian lard-, sausages, sausages and morcones.
The usual offer of seafood and fish surprises: prawns, carabineros, king prawns and hooked fish **Huelva; barnacles, oysters, Norway lobsters and hake** Galicia . And that totum revolutum that is the "Pepe Hillo" scrambled eggs that combines hake, prawns and Iberian ham.
We will continue with stews -potatoes with rib, retinto tail or kid stew- and we finish with the meats: Iberian pork cuts and retinto and Galician blonde chops. To end, a Tierra de Barros cake , although a little more interest in the excellent regional cheeses.
The Galaxy is not always easy, make no mistake. It can go unnoticed by the less attentive diner. It can even seem like a more or less ordinary bar if the order is not correct and, sometimes, not even the property seems aware of the potential and excellence of what it serves and what could be served with a pantry as extraordinary as the one from Extremadura.
But, there, in the middle of Badajoz, between Gijón and Huelva, between Madrid and Lisbon, there is a hidden gem waiting to be discovered
Address: Av. Villanueva, 6, 06005 Badajoz See map
Telephone: 924 25 82 11
Schedule: From Monday to Saturday from 12:00 to 00:00. Sunday closed.