Botillo and friends

Last week we went on holiday. We stopped off at a couple of places but our destination was Finisterre, the End of the Earth, in Galicia.

When you travel in Spain, which usually means that you will eat in a restaurant, the choice of food is simple. If you were to travel to Valencia for instance you would probably order paella, if you were to come to Pinoso the paella would be the rabbit and snails variety. Go to Cartagena you might try caldero. In Asturias the first choice would probably be fabada and in Cataluña you might try calçots. Eating the regional food is something that Spaniards do when they visit and it's something we mimic.

We were in Ponferrada, which is still in León but closing in on Galicia. There was something on the set meals list called botillo which turned out to be a reddish ball like thing full of bones, lumps of fatty pork seasoned with paprika all shoved into a gut skin and served with cabbage, potatoes and chickpeas. It is an experience I won't be repeating but the experiment is always worth a shot. 

Now, although she would deny this, Maggie is a bit of a picky eater. She doesn't like fish, she's not at all keen on most veg. and with severe limitations on what sort and style of meat. This can cause problems. For instance Finisterre has a fish dock. This means that its restaurants tend to major in things harvested from the sea. What's more that the offer is quite traditional. There must have been ten or more restaurants in a line and all of them did fritura which is, usually, several varieties of deep fried, and often battered seafood and fish, served by weight. It's a big thing in several Spanish seaside towns. Go to Santa Pola and watch big family groups devour kilos of fried squid and cuttlefish. As well as fritura Finisterre also does barnacles, razor shells, crayfish, lobster, clams, scallops, sea bass, cockles, mussels and so on. Now I wouldn't like to suggest that these restaurants don't have steak or chicken and chips but asking for those things is a bit like ordering egg and chips in a Chinese restaurant. If you're in Finisterre then the expectation is that you will eat fish. We ended up in a pizza and burger place having a conversation about why, using the same basic products, these restaurants choose not to vary their offer and so compete. It's not a huge leap to, for example, clam chowder, seafood pasta, ceviche, curried scallops, crab cakes or scallops with a bean salad. But that's not what Spanish restaurants do. All the eateries offer the same food and the same basic recipes. The repetition of set meals featuring codillo, empanada, pimientos de padrón, lacón con pimentón, callos con garbanzos and churrasco throughout Galicia was almost complete.

Spain is full of great cooks and splendid restaurants but the majority of them, at least the ones within our financial reach, offer cheap and plentiful food as their staple. There are places, lots of them, that offer something more contemporary, more adventurous, but they are nowhere near as ubiquitous as the chop and chips places which is a shame.