I have wanted to write about the food of Spain for some time, because it has formed such an important part of my life. I first went there in the Fifties, aged 8, with my parents and ordered some squid in ink sauce at the Hotel Carlos V in Laredo, in Cantabria. I was probably trying to impress them by being brave, but I can still remember its blackness and the slightly sweet flavour and iodine smell.
Since then, I have always loved Spanish food. It’s precisely for the reasons that my parents’ generation loathed it. “Swimming in garlic and olive oil”, they would say. To me, it was liberation from mild-mannered British cooking. It wasn’t just the garlic and olive oil — I discovered the smoky paprika smell of chorizo, the charred aroma of prawns cooked with scattered sea salt on a plancha and became enamoured by the vivid colour of it; the dazzling yellow of saffron and deep reds of simmered tomatoes, roasted peppers and pimentón, almost the Spanish flag on a plate. It’s cooking with passion but, as my research has taught me, if you want to find the best food in Spain you often have to go off the beaten track, and not necessarily to the prettiest parts.
In Santander, for example, the best fish restaurants are in what appears to be a housing estate near where the ferry docks from Plymouth. You walk along the quay for about ten minutes, then cut across into an area of rather dreary-looking modern blocks of flats with lots of empty car parks.
Later you discover that the area is called Barrio Pesquero, a former ramshackle fishing district that had narrow streets, lots of bars and lots of life. Your heart sinks at the uniform modernity, but then you wander down Calle Marqués de la Ensenada and there are sardines grilling and paella simmering outside two or three bright-looking restaurants. There’s a blue one with lots of ropes and nets called El Vivero — it does a superb hake with caramelised garlic that you’ll find on my bistro menu in Padstow now. Then there’s La Gaviota — the Seagull — with a jaunty red and yellow menu, a picture of flying, squawking gulls, more hake — this time cooked a la plancha, griddled with a sort of soft confit of garlicky potatoes — and a hot platter of just-grilled langoustines, split lobsters with mussels and razor clams. Like many restaurants in Spain, decor is not a strong point, just aluminium tables and chairs, tiled floors and a TV in the corner of the room.
Getting off the ferry and finding myself in a seafood lovers’ heaven, albeit on a housing estate, was a valuable lesson for the rest of my book and TV research trip, from Galicia in the far northwest, through most of Spain, and ending in Andalusia.
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It chimed with an experience I’d had in Seville a couple of years ago. I had gone there with memories of being alone there in my early twenties — bullfights, a youth hostel near the railway station, being astonished by weeds sprouting out of the cathedral walls and dusty tapas bars with plates of dark ham and nutty fino sherry.
The food this time in the restaurants around the cathedral was disappointing. I took my fiancée, Sarah, there and had to suffer her blunt Australian views about it. I had enthused to the rooftops about how good it was going to be, though she did concede that the tapas bars were really special.
I was already talking ambitiously about a book, but had to concede that all was not well. This was no Italy. Then we found a little restaurant at the back of a bar. No tourists, just a few businessmen reading the paper and food plonked down in front of us. Suddenly I got it. The Spanish don’t make a lot of fuss about their best food, you’ve got to nose it out. You find it in villages in the hills, at the edge of town, in the truck stops at a conference hotel at the back of Valencia and in a housing estate in Santander.
With this in mind here are a few places I liked because the food was real and so were the places. It’s the sort of food that makes me happy. If you want to be comfortable, you’d better pick up your Michelin Guide and head off to restaurants such as Arzakin San Sebastián, which happens to be very good too.
GALICIA, ASTURIAS, CANTABRIA
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The regions along the north coast have good seafood and Galicia produces the best white wine to drink when eating fish: Albariño. Asturias and Cantabria make cider that probably wouldn’t travel, but tastes just right with a bowl of the famous Asturian bean, salt pork and chorizo dish, fabada. The coastline here is romantic, with deep estuaries in Galicia called rías and lovely little fishing ports.
O Gato Negro, Santiago de Compostela
This tiny bar is in a narrow street behind the cathedral, where they make very good seafood empanadas — bread stuffed with mussels, sardines or octopus.
Details Calle Rúa da Raiña, 00 34 981 583 105
Casa Juan, Monfero, about 30 minutes from La Coruña
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This is where to go for cocido gallego — boiled pork with chorizo and chickpeas. It is not for the fainthearted, but it is worth it for the rural nature of inland Galicia. Check out the monastery just up the road.
Details Las Travesas, 00 34 981 793 803, restaurantecasajuanmonfero.wordpress.com
Las Penas, Santurio near Gijón
Go for the heartiest of pork and bean stews called fabada Asturiana. They use a rich, creamy white bean about the size of the first joint of your little finger, fabes de la Granja , which cost about €14 a kilo. The cider-pouring is an artform in itself there.
Details 00 34 985 338 299, restaurantelaspenias.com
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La Gaviota, Santander
Great seafood in a utilitarian setting.
Details Calle Marques de la Ensenada, 00 34 942 314 575.
THE BASQUE REGION, NAVARRA AND RIOJA
The northeast corner of Spain has memories for me of thick ribs of aged beef cooked over charcoal on a terrace with a keen breeze coming off the sea. There’s also monkfish and turbot brushed with olive oil and lemon juice and cooked by a parrillero — nothing short of a barbecue king — and lamb chuletas, which are chops cooked over vine prunings. Here you’ll find Basque cheese such as Idiazábal, Txakoli, a delightful, slightly fizzy wine drunk with seafood in San Sebastian, and red wines in Rioja and Navarra. The tapas or pintxos in San Sebastian are worth a visit in their own right.
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Restaurante Roxario, Astigarraga
For those thick beef chuletas, they grill the meat over charcoal right in the restaurant of this bustling cider house.
Details Calle Mayor, 00 34 943 551 138, roxario.com
Asador Etxebarri, Axpe, Atxondo
A Michelin one-star restaurant that specialises in cooking everything with smoke: butterballs for a starter with chopped truffle, percebes, poached oysters with smoked “foam”, huge cockles steamed open over smoke, elvers, mackerel, chistorra sausage, chuletas, huge beef wing rib chops, and ice cream.
Details Plaza San Juan, 00 34 946 583 042, asadoretxebarri.com
Asador Mayflower, Getaria, Guipúzcoa
This is a great seafood grill for fresh turbot and monkfish from the coast.
Details Katrapona Plaza, 00 34 943 140 658.
Hotel Echaurren, Ezcaray, La Rioja
This is a great base in Rioja — a comfortable hotel with two restaurants, one doing local dishes and one much more adventurous. At the former, you’ll find pisto riojano (eggs scrambled with braised summer vegetables) and bacalao a la riojana (salt cod in a dried red-pepper sauce), while at the latter there are boned and rolled lambs’ tails slow-cooked with honey and rosemary, smoked salmon, goat’s cheese and sprouted nigella seeds encased in a piquillo-pepper jelly.
Details Padre José García, 00 34 941 354 047, echaurren.com.
Bar Ganbarra, San Sebastián
This is my favourite pintxos bar in San Sebastián. When you walk in there’s usually a vast display of wild mushrooms on the bar top. They do great sautéed wild mushrooms with eggs and crab tartlets.
Details Calle San Jerónimo, 00 34 943 422 575, ganbarajatetxea.com.
CATALONIA AND VALENCIA
In my mind this Mediterranean coast is still a little fishing village with a gnarly fisherman painting his boat with bright blue paint for the coming season. No longer, sadly, but you can still find echoes in northern Catalonia. Barcelona and Valencia are the most civilised of cities, sunny and colourful. I would go north of Barcelona for Catalan seafood dishes and south of Valencia for paella.
Restaurant Hispània, Caldetes
For really good seafood, try the Catalan fish, lobster and potato stew, suquet de llagosta i peix. If you’re amazed by an unfamiliar but intriguing flavour in it, it’s sea cucumber.
Details Carretera Real, 00 34 937 910 457, restauranthispania.com
Casa Matilde, Tronchón, Valencia
For really informal mountain food — think slow-cooked chickpeas dressed with garlic mayonnaise — head to this tiny cottage restaurant in Tronchón with numerous little rooms.
Details Calle de la Crucera, 00 34 964 178 523.
Casa Salvador, Valencia
If you thought that paella was the only rice dish, go here for arroz meloso a rice stew with monkfish, langoustines and wild mushrooms. The restaurant is at the mouth of the river that feeds the Albufera.
Details Calle l’Estany de la Cullera, 00 34 961 720 136, casasalvador.com
CASTILLA LA MANCHA, EXTREMADURA
There’s something quite majestic about driving across the plains of Spain. You can see a long way to where the land meets the sky. Mostly visitors keep to the modern motorways and miss the splendour. This is the region for garlic, olive oil, saffron and peppers. The deep red smoked, dried paprika, pimentón is the most distinctive of flavours in Spanish cooking.
La Venta, El Molino, Ciudad Real
Following the trail of Don Quixote, you will definitely end up at the inn where he was knighted by the landlord. It’s slightly touristy but is still charming. Go for theDuelos y Quebrantos (sorrow and sadness) scrambled eggs with kidneys. They specialise in the dishes mentioned in Cervantes’ book, such as pisto Manchego.
Details Puerto Lapice, 00 34 926 576 110, ventadelquijote.com
Restaurant Los Ángeles, Las Pedroñeras
Very good classic La Mancha dishes are served here, particularly sopa de ajo (garlic soup).
Details Carretera Madrid-Alicante Km 162, 00 34 967 160 330.
Restaurant Carlos V, Losar del la Vera, Extremadura
On the way to the fiery red fields of pimento chillies in the La Vera valley, I stopped off in the town of Losar de la Vera for some lunch and was rather taken with the roasted kid they served with olive oil-fried chips. We each had a whole back leg — tender with lovely crackling skin — and a glass of local tempranillo.
Details Avenida Extremadura, 00 34 927 750 636, restaurantecarlosv.com
ANDALUSIA
It’s 39C in Seville every day this week but I expect that it will be dry heat. No wonder we all perceive Andalusia as hot and passionate. I would be ordering ice-cold beers in tiny chilled glasses so that each had no time to warm up on my tapas bars.
El Rinconcillo, Seville
In this tapas bar, instead of beer, I would order fino sherry to go with the Ibérico bellota ham.
Details: Calle Gerona, 00 34 954 223 183, elrinconcillo.es
Casa Bigote, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz
They do great fried fish here.
Details: Avenida Bajo de Guia, 00 34 956 362 696, restaurantecasabigote.com
Antigua Abacería de San Lorenzo, Seville
This is a little bar-cum-restaurant owned by a very cheerful and busy man called Ramón. He cooks in front of the customers on a tiny stove and, while we were there, in between serving the drinks at the bar, he cooked almejas — clams fried in olive oil, with garlic and parsley — fried squid, potatoes with tuna and roasted red peppers with onion and eggs.
Details Calle Teodosio, 00 34 954 380 067, antiguaabaceriadesanlorenzo.com
Rick Stein’s Spain is published by BBC Books at £25. The television series starts on BBC Two on July 14.