Aaron Taboada
What Happened to Fine Dining in Barcelona?

Barcelona’s casual ethos and market cuisine has birthed a new version of haute cuisine. For years, some of Catalonia’s best chefs have been serving diners at the bar, no tablecloth, and by now names like Gresca and Dos Palillos are legendary in Spain. It’s now the most exciting time to eat in the Ciudad Condal (City of the Counts) in years.

What Happened to Fine Dining in Barcelona?
Restaurants
Paul Richardson
Paul Richardson’s Guide to Eating in Madrid

With so much variety to choose from, navigating Madrid’s restaurant scene can seem like a daunting task.   Before you even set sail, it’s worth taking stock of the city’s idiosyncratic dining customs.  Most notoriously, the timetable.    Madrid eats late: lunch is commonly taken between 2pm and 4pm while dinner is not much earlier than 9pm and often (especially in summer) as late as 11pm. 

Paul Richardson’s Guide to Eating in Madrid
Jane Gregg
Barcelona Today: Updates From the Road

Preliminary thoughts and updates on Barcelona these days. Short reviews on hotels, restaurants, wine bars and cocktail bars. Many of these spots will be written up more fully in upcoming blog posts.

Barcelona Today: Updates From the Road
Wine
Jane Gregg
Rioja Growers & Vignerons

A new generation of Rioja winemakers is bringing vineyard, varietal and terroir focus to the region. What these innovators in Rioja have in common is a focus on single vineyards, some planted with old vines. Young winemakers are searching for an expression of terroir–the essence of the vineyard, soil and climate. Vignerons, grower-producers, artisan winemakers or terroiristas are commonly used terms for these new producers.

Rioja Growers & Vignerons
Jane Gregg
The Great Houses of Rioja

Rioja doesn’t have Grand Crus, but certain wineries in Spain’s most famous wine region have a reputation for fine wines. Classic Rioja wineries make long-aged immortal wines, while new-style producers focus on single vineyard Tempranillo wines.

The Great Houses of Rioja

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

We recently attended an olive harvest and oil-pressing day Moreda de Álava, in the Rioja Alavesa region. The oil was produced from Arrónig olives, a little known olive variety common in the Rioja and Navarra regions before olives trees were ripped out or abandoned 30 to 40 years ago to make way for grape vines. Now some local farmers are reclaiming olive groves and putting them into production for extra-virgin olive oil. And many of the groves are Arrónig groves.

At the olive oil mill the bags and baskets of Arrónig olives were unloaded and the olives were quickly pressed into a green-golden liquid. Once the oil was bottled we tasted freshly pressed oil. We tasted it in the blue glasses used in olive oil tastings and we tasted it drizzled on freshly baked Spanish bread. The oil is spicy and burns slightly, similar to the oil made from Andalusian Picual olives. Given the limited production of olive oil made with Arrónig olives, we may not hear much about the oil outside of Rioja and Navarra, but it is worth seeking out. I'm thinking it would be a spicy addition to those alubias de Tolosa (Tolosa beans).

I found a recent article on olive oil written by Mediterranean food expert and cookbook author Nancy Harmon Jenkins, in which she discusses the role of the olive variety in the taste of olive oils. Olive Oil: Tasting the Differences, from The Art of Eating.

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