Since 2015, Aponiente has been located next to the train station in El Puerto de Santa María (Cadiz). Specifically, it is housed in a grain mill from 1815 that operated using the tidal power of a canal of the Guadalete River (more abundant in the 16th century than it is today) known as Caño del Molino or La Madre Vieja, which was opened in 1701, changing the course of the Guadalete.
Located next to the Natural Park of the Bay of Cádiz (which stretches from Rota in the north to Cádiz in the south), this is a mill of about 1,000 or 1,800 square meters that had recently been a salt warehouse for the local salt pans (Salinas de San José). It is a stone-washed building with a terrace from which one can view the labyrinth of fresh and saltwater channels, rich in nutrients and home to fish, mollusks, and birds. These are the marshlands formed by the San Pedro and Guadalete rivers, full of channels and ponds that enable the existence of the salt pans. It is a very rich ecosystem aimed at revitalizing a struggling economy.
HISTORY OF ÁNGEL LEÓN AND APONIENTE:
Ángel León (1977, Jerez de la Frontera) is a person who puzzles me.
On one hand, he claims to be misunderstood and boasts about his ignorance by emphasizing that he has never read a book.
But on the other hand, he is the son of a hematologist, has the support of universities, laboratories, scientific and technological foundations, European funds, and companies like Santander finance his research projects. Moreover, he is a chef who has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Top Chef; he has 3 Michelin stars and 3 Repsol Suns; he has received the Medal of Andalusia and the National Gastronomy Award; he runs Aponiente, La Taberna del Chef del Mar in the old Aponiente (El Puerto de Santa María), Alevante in the Hotel Gran Meliá Sancti Petri (Chiclana de la Frontera, Cádiz), and Glass Mar (Madrid, closed since the pandemic), among many other awards, projects, and businesses.
On one hand, I find all his work very interesting and fascinating:
- The in-depth study he has conducted since 2006 on fish (or parts of fish) that are not sold at fishermen’s markets and are returned to the sea (or discarded) due to lack of commercial demand. As a result of this study, since 2009, he has been serving marine sausages (botifarra, chorizo, sausages, cecina, mortadella, sobrassada, bacon, etc.) to make use of all this fish that many companies were discarding.
- The development, in 2007, of the Clarimax, a machine for clarifying broths using diatom microalgae.
- The discovery, in 2008, of the olive pit as fuel.
- The development of plankton as an ingredient for human consumption since 2009.
- Successfully cultivating Zostera marina in a controlled manner (about 3,000 square meters, experimental, in the sea at the Natural Park of the Bay of Cádiz), an aquatic plant of the grass family he calls “sea rice,” a type of marine cereal that can serve as a staple food for people. Additionally, creating a seed bank to repopulate it.
- Researching marine mycology, from which he managed to serve acetabularia (a mushroom or a unicellular green alga shaped like an umbrella?) in a dish, accompanied by a plankton and truffle emulsion.
- He was able to turn water into salt thanks to a solution of a mixture of salts that crystallize instantly (a salt pan in Cádiz takes months to obtain salt from the sea) when falling on the food and, moreover, it is a new cooking technique because it allows the food to cook when it reaches 135ºC. A way to highlight the importance of artisanal salt pans and regenerate them, rather than being a substitute for salt.
- The development of edible Abyssal Lights. He uses the protein (luciferase) from a very small crab that, when combined with water and shaken, reacts in such a way that it emits blue (cold, like a fluorescent) luminescence and can also be achieved thanks to the proliferation of a bioluminescent bacterium (Vibrio harveyi) associated with plankton microalgae.
And I like:
- I like when he says he sees the sea and cooking more as a marine biologist than as a chef because he believes the eyes of the former help him learn more.
- I like the idea that a chef can be the catalyst for generating ecological, landscape, and social wealth and can develop key projects in the fight against climate change.
- I like that he is a defender of unknown marine resources and that he is able to bring underappreciated and economically undervalued fish to haute cuisine.
- I like his interest in discovering still unknown products and in obtaining new sustainable marine-derived ingredients (collagens, pigments, oils…) to incorporate into the human diet.
- I like his ambition to develop land-based crops in the sea and create a “marine garden.”
- I like the paths he opens to the future of food and his interest in the food industry.
- I like his collaboration in recovering ancient cultivation methods.
- I like his apparent environmental commitment to the production of sea products, highlighting despesque, an artisanal fishing technique typical of the Bay of Cádiz that involves removing fish (mainly sea bass, gilthead bream, and mullet) that remain in the salt pans, which must be emptied every November.
- I like when he promotes the seafaring cuisine of Cádiz.
On the other hand, I find that all this knowledge is not reflected in his cuisine.
He is not a chef I have followed closely. I ate at Aponiente (the old location) once in 2013 (1*), and I went to Bistreau and La Mesa at the Mandarin Oriental in Barcelona in 2014 and 2015 respectively. If I haven’t followed him more closely over the years, it’s mainly due to geographical reasons (1,100 km from my home) and, above all, because his way of presenting his cuisine has never made me enjoy it much. I don’t mean exactly that I don’t like his cuisine, but rather the way he offers it.
Regarding his professional career:
He began his culinary studies at the Taberna del Alabardero (Seville). Three years later, he moved to France, where he worked at the restaurant Le Chapon Fin (Bordeaux). He returned to Spain to work with Fernando Córdoba at the restaurant El Faro (El Puerto de Santa María) and at La Casa del Temple (Toledo). Finally, he returned home to launch Aponiente in 2007 in El Puerto de Santa María, a restaurant specializing in marine products where he began to be known as “The Chef of the Sea.“
MENU:
They offer a single menu that they say lasts between 3 and 3.5 hours. As for the wines, they offer a wine list and two pairings at different prices, but they do not specify the number of wines or their origins.
They inaugurated the season and the menu in March 2023, and I would say that during our visit at the end of June, no dish had changed much since then, which surprised me given the availability of seasonal products.
It is a tasting menu divided into what they call “chapters” and has a very classic and standardized structure: appetizers, cold dishes, hot dishes, desserts, and petit fours.
Chapter 1:
Maritime Salty Cuisine
The welcome and appetizers are served in the glass pavilions at the entrance, before entering the actual restaurant, which is preceded by 4 century-old olive trees, a gift from the Vañó family (Castillo de Canena).
Wine: They serve, by the glass, a sparkling rosé made using the ancestral method (second fermentation in the bottle but without disgorgement, with a beer cap) from Bodegas Forlong, Burbuja Rosado 2022, made from the Tintilla de Rota grape variety.
Sea Urchin Roe with Milk:
A cold milk sponge (a puffed and grilled cow’s milk foam on the Teppan Nitro) with a sea urchin gonad on top and a nasturtium leaf. The sea urchin flavor is not noticeable. A small bite of 1 cm³.
Mullet Roe Flan with Mojama Caramel:
A small flan, once again, about one cubic centimeter, made with mullet roe and, on top, a caramel of mojama (salt-cured tuna loin). Another small, salty bite with more of a butter flavor than mullet.
Shrimp Tortilla:
A modern version where the shrimp are not fried and are simply blanched for a few seconds, with small green dots of plankton cream. It has more of a chickpea flour taste than shrimp (9 units). We prefer the popular and traditional version.
They take us into the restaurant and explain that the space was a former tidal mill built in 1815 and was the most important in Europe throughout the 19th century. It has 9 underground channels, similar to the one they show us right at the entrance of the building, in front of the reception.
These channels allow the water to pass up to 850 meters and a system of sluices regulated its entry and exit to turn the turbine. This turbine turned two stones, each weighing 350 kg, which ground the wheat by friction. From the original construction, the two side walls of the facade, made of oyster stone, are preserved. They moved in 2015 but cannot touch anything; all the decoration must be perfectly removable.
We move along a corridor where, on the right, we can see the river with the tide high; and on the left, first, the cellar and then part of the kitchen, where we count 10 people cleaning fish.
The cellar has about 1,500 references and a “sacristy” where they only have wines from the Marco de Jerez, which make up 40% of the list. We see a press, and they tell us it was one of the presses that Santi Santamaria had at El Racó de Can Fabes, and it is not exactly for duck à la presse but for smaller birds like woodcocks. They still use it to crush crabs, but not in the current menu.
They show us the water that flows under the building, the mouth of the Guadalete River, with the tide high. In fact, we are less than 4 km from the Bay of Cádiz and, therefore, from the Atlantic Ocean. They explain that the ebb and flow of the tide is absolute, that the deepest point is about 3 meters, which can be seen perfectly at low tide when the river is completely dry. The tide rises and falls every 6 hours, so it is complete twice a day.
We see the first production station, where they are responsible for receiving all the raw materials, cleaning them, and distributing them to each station. At that moment, they were preparing moray eel skin. Next, we see another kitchen, the central kitchen, an open kitchen that faces the main dining room. They say this is where all the dishes we will eat from now on are prepared, both the cold and hot stations. There are about 15 chefs, all in uniform, with white chef shirts, navy blue aprons, black sneakers, and tall hats. You can see about ten stoves on a central island, an oven, an oven/grill, a group of chefs plating, a chef stirring a pot that must have a capacity of over 20 liters, in the background some chefs grouped around a sink, others in an intermediate process of preparing some giant deep dishes… We move forward and, on the right, speaking with other chefs, what seems to be the head chef says to us, “Good afternoon, welcome, enjoy” without allowing us to stop for a moment. We don’t see Ángel León anywhere. We enter the dining room, with more than a dozen round wooden tables, without tablecloths or any initial table setting.
We sit down, they ask us again if we have any allergies or if there is anything we don’t like, and they request that if we need to go to the bathroom, we let them know so they can inform the kitchen. They give us a booklet with the entire menu and a list of all the team members’ names, very well bound and with beautiful illustrations/watercolors by Pilar Jaraquemada.
They serve us a glass of Sacristía AB, a selection made by Antonio Barbadillo Mateos at Bodegas (Infantes) Orleans Borbón. It is a Manzanilla en rama with almost 9 months of biological aging to achieve a slightly more oxidized point, making it more enveloping and pleasant. Antonio Barbadillo created this project with his family to carry out specific sacas from different soleras of Sanlúcar wineries. A magnum bottle from saca 17.
Oyster Tripe with Lemon:
Oyster (typical of Cádiz, a bit larger and flatter) with lemon. They say they want to pay a small tribute to the vendors who used to roam Cádiz with their baskets full of oysters. They would open them right there, squeeze some lemon juice on them, and they were ready to eat. They have tried to capture the same essence, saying we will find the same oyster but in the form of a cream. We are asked to flip the shell over and find a white emulsion stuck to the inside of the shell, an emulsion of the oyster, its juice, and lemon. They accompany it with an oxalis vinaigrette, which I understand are the white spherifications. There are also leaves with drops of water. What a mess. And, moreover, the oyster is nowhere to be found.
Squid Cheese:
They tell us that we will continue with a cheese, but it will be a special cheese, like everything in this house, because it will be a marine cheese made with squid. At the base, there is a squid tartare. We continue with a milk obtained by pressing the squid (they say they have not yet been able to milk the squid) and to which they introduce the Penicillium roqueforti fungus (which after 5 days and at controlled temperature, forms a rind on top, with a flavor very similar to Roquefort cheese but milder, not as intense) and milk to which they also add casein (the protein in milk) so that the fungus can feed. It is accompanied by a PX caramel and elderflower. A small piece of a cake they show us about 4 cm in diameter, which they then take away. It smells like Roquefort and has a very soft and pleasant texture. I would serve double or more to really taste it.
Marinated Cuttlefish Paper:
They bring a cart with a kakigori machine, explaining its origin and how it is used, and they show us a frozen block of cuttlefish loins. To make this block: they take some cuttlefish loins, press them, and ultrafreeze them. Once they have this block, they pass it through the kakigori machine to create these “papers” of cuttlefish like the ones we have served on the plate. Using tongs, we are to take each of these sheets and dip them first in the bowl with beaten egg yolk and then in the bowl with a marinade powder (typical of fried fish), as if we were “breading” the cuttlefish sheets. Quite a paraphernalia to show how they make the dish, even though it comes served from the kitchen, and they do nothing in front of the diner.
Fig Leaf and Plankton Escabeche:
They serve us an immense deep plate that isn’t filled even a minimal part; it’s a bit ridiculous. However, it is a beautiful plate, made of unglazed ceramic, very austere. Already plated from the kitchen: plankton, cockles, and some nitrogenated horseradish shots (the white balls) and a pentas flower.
At the table, they pour their escabeche, a green sauce they say is a traditional escabeche to which they have added fig leaves to obtain the chlorophyll, the green color, the acidity, and the freshness.
They recommend not mixing it; first, take the food from the center outwards to get all the ingredients from the plate, and then try the escabeche on its own.
The fig leaf reminds us again of coconut (if it doesn’t already contain it), making us think of Thailand. The cockles are delicious, of good size, very tasty. I really like the density and texture of the green sauce.
Caviar Salad:
At the bottom, plated from the kitchen, is an emulsion of onion serum.
At the table, they serve piriñaca water and imperial smoked caviar with sea lettuce.
Piriñaca (as pipirrana is known in Cádiz) is a chopped mix of tomato, onion, and pepper dressed with olive oil and Jerez vinegar, which is usually made to accompany fish and, when it accompanies seafood, is said to result in a salpicón.
Bread:
Two types of bread from Panadería Horno Artesa (Arcos de la Frontera, Cádiz), which also supplies TohQa and other well-known restaurants. At the restaurant, they only give it the final touch of heat.
- Semolina bread (50% soft white wheat and 50% hard wheat) painted with Oro de Bailén olive oil to add a crispy touch to the crust. Served very hot, even steaming.
- Dark bread typical of the Sierra de Cádiz, made with white wheat flour, dark flour (which gives it a more toasted color without being a wholemeal flour), rye flour, and bran flour based on malt, oats, and wheat.
- Both breads:
- 80% humidity.
- 20% wheat sourdough.
- 24-hour fermentation at 4ºC.
- Finished in a wood-fired oven.
PLANKTON BUTTER from the tetraselmis variety, the first that Ángel León extracted from the sea, starting the whole cuisine based on these microorganisms that make up plankton:
Served on a plate like a tile to accompany the entire meal. Good, the plankton gives it a taste that always reminds me of green tea and some dried (dehydrated) seaweeds.
After so many explanations, I would have liked them to leave some time to eat the bread with butter, but they immediately brought the next dish.
Quisquilla, Green Pepper, and Sanlúcar Peas:
3 peeled quisquilla (Crangon crangon) tails, served raw along with their roe. Accompanied by lágrima peas from navazo or desterrado cultivation, from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, a type of cultivation close to the sea, which is supposed to add salinity to the plant and, therefore, more flavor intensity to the fruit. Also accompanied by a green pepper cream from Conil emulsified with hake collagen, served hot. Finally, a sour cream that adds a touch of acidity.
A surf and turf dish that is not well integrated, with the pepper dominating, the quisquilla on one side, and the green pepper sauce on the other. And the peas, rather than lágrima, are so small they seem like inflorescence!
Razor Clams Marinera Style:
At the base, sliced razor clam (or straight razor clam, a smaller razor clam typical of Cádiz that is more commercially used as fishing bait than for human consumption, always undervalued and used in a humble traditional recipe).
Also, at the base, some drops of bitter orange (they say “like a rising sun”).
At the table, they serve a marinera sauce (a stew that accompanies seafood made with white wine, paprika, onion, tomato, etc., along with the seafood’s water). Normally, it is more like a broth, but they have thickened it and serve it more opaquely.
Also, at the table, they serve a frozen powder made from the interiors and discarded parts of the razor clam.
Sea fennel leaves
Very small; so far, all the dishes are tiny. It doesn’t smell like anything.
The perfect cooking of baby squid with ink sauce and almonds:
Puntillas (although some say they are small cuttlefish, for me they were Alloteuthis subulata, a type of small squid).
They bring a guéridon in front of the diner with, on one side, a pot on a gas burner with very hot sunflower oil and, on the other side, a rack where they place the puntillitas to pour ladles of hot oil over them (only on one side of the small squid), frying them with the oil draining through the rack.
Of the 3 puntillitas from Sanlúcar that we eat, one is natural, with this frying and nothing else (without flour or any coating). They say they use sunflower oil because it is neutral and their only intention is to enhance the taste of the cephalopod and its texture; perhaps this is their intention, but the fact is that we keep repeating that sunflower oil is not neutral, especially when you are not a regular consumer, as is our case. Therefore, we ended up eating a squid heavily masked with the aftertaste of hot and “fried” sunflower oil.
The other two puntillitas are served with a hollandaise sauce (butter, lemon juice, egg yolk, and a bit of black pepper or cayenne) made with squid ink; underneath, a puntillitas stew, which they say includes onions to create a sweet contrast; 2 tender almonds; and 2 purple onion flowers.
I ask if there are seasons for puntillitas, and they tell us that now is the time when they are most filled, sweeter, and about to spawn.
Additionally, they emphasized the very high quality of the small squids and the exceptional nature of the product; I find that it wasn’t so extraordinary and that we eat better squid both at home and at other restaurants.
Cañaíllas Stew:
In a small spoon, they say we find the cañaílla (Haustellum brandaris, a spiny snail), with all its essence in different textures. What we see in this tiny spoon are 3 faux snails (made from some kind of purée, each a different color) that are made with its interior (presumably the “tail” or the darker part of the snail) and, next to them, tiny dice made from the outer part of the snail (have they “peeled” the snail?), as if they were tendons, to add texture to the bite.
In a stone bowl, a marine puchero cream made with tuna and accompanied by a spearmint (Mentha spicata) oil, which they say is a very typical combination in Andalusia.
What they want is for us to first eat the spoonful in one bite (well, I wouldn’t know how to make two!), so we can use the spoon to eat the puchero. But since the bowl is porous, the spoon is very thick, and it is very difficult to scoop up the little sauce there is, the idea is to dip dark bread in it.
Overall, one of the biggest nonsense dishes we’ve ever been served. And, once again, I don’t know where the poor product ends up.
Marine Softness Stew:
As the main product, the swim bladder of fish, in this case of gilthead bream (very typical in Asian cuisine, they say). They show some at the table, open, clean, treated (cooked) so they look nice. I ask if I can taste one, and they say no, they are for showing to people because they’ve never seen them before.
On the plate, we find them cut into strips like tagliatelle (pasta), and they tell us that they might remind us of cod tripe. This obsession with telling customers what their creations should remind us of and what we should find in them. Besides, I find that they don’t resemble cod tripe much, neither in taste nor texture. Cod tripe tends to be much larger and, therefore, thicker and meatier and also softer; the gilthead bream’s were thinner and tougher, like tendons. And, as for the taste, since these were fresh and not salted, they were also less intense and less salty.
Accompanied by a sauce made with the tail of the moray eel, which they say they add to give it flavor and collagen (something that, if they didn’t manipulate the gilthead bream tripe so much, it would have on its own), achieving a very unctuous and melty sauce. Melty texture of the gilthead bream tripe (the tagliatelle) and melty texture of the moray eel tail sauce. To find the positive side, I could say: two different melty textures (the sauce is stickier), how complex and what a play of textures!
They finish the dish with pickled onions (some with beetroot and some with plankton oil) that they say is to add a fresh touch (the slight melty texture of the tripe must “bother” them, even though it’s so good!).
All covered with a butter foam that, fortunately, did not mask the taste of the sauce, because the taste of the tripe had long been killed.
Chapter 2:
Sweet Maritime Cuisine
It seems that Ángel León is not very fond of ending meals with sweets (a preference we share); he says he “thinks salty and cooks salty.” Even so, since 2021, pastry chef David Gil has been accompanying him in his quest for the sweetness of the sea.
Roe Bubbles:
Their version of bubble tea, a Taiwanese-origin beverage that is an infusion to which flavored bubbles are added, originally made of tapioca. They make their digestive version, which is also meant to cleanse the palate (as if we were so full we needed to brush our teeth…).
Inside a glass ball, an infusion of banana water with smoked flying fish roe.
At the tip of the straw, the brown part is crème fraîche with sprinkled hazelnut shell.
First, you have to eat this part from the glass straw and then suck the liquid inside the ball.
It has a smoky taste; fortunately, it is not sweet. I suppose we should say it is a fun dish. The truth is, it is different and at least not one of those desserts with ice creams, crushed ice, emulsions of various more or less exotic citrus fruits, and different dehydrated crisps to add texture. I wonder which species of flying fish roe we might have eaten and who smokes them, a whole world to discover.
Moray Eel Mochi: Under the skin hides a layer of rice cream and it is accompanied by an ice cream.
A mochi made with moray eel skin. They explain that they marinate the skin with milk and cinnamon so that the protein in these two ingredients masks both the smell and taste of the fish. As a result, due to the amount of collagen in the moray eel skin, the texture will be silky (very similar to traditional mochi) and both the smell and taste will be of cinnamon rather than moray eel. And so it is, it smells like cinnamon, reminiscent of meringue milk or rice pudding. In fact, under the faux mochi, there is a thin layer of rice pudding.
Accompanied, in a separate bowl, by an ice cream made with soy and miso and, like the chocolate in a stracciatella ice cream, caramelized fish flakes.
The idea is to first eat the mochi, then take one of the pieces (since it is segmented into different pieces) with your fingers to feel the texture of traditional mochi; then move on to the ice cream; and finally, combine a piece of mochi with the ice cream.
It reminded me of the “elastic trumpets (of death)” from Mugaritz in the summer of 2021. Through a preparation with psyllium (a plant fiber), they proposed playing with the gummy and elastic texture (similar to a mochi) that was complemented by a mushroom ragout (porcini, black trumpets, and shiitake) and toasted almond. A more attractive diversion to touch with the fingers than for the taste it provided, in the same way as with these desserts from Ángel León. Moreover, conceptually, it is not so unique to use resources from savory cooking in the pastry world. I think he could be bolder and let the taste of the moray eel come through.
I ask the waiter why the desserts don’t taste like fish, and he tells me they aim for them to be connected to the sea but still accessible to everyone.
Sea Candies:
They bring a guéridon with a rock structure and a volcano emitting smoke (liquid nitrogen) to present their marine gummies. They explain that the candy industry uses a lot of collagen and animal-derived protein to make gummies and that in cooking, algae have also been used for years as thickeners and protein sources. So, they make gummies with algae instead of animal-based thickeners.
There are three types of algae that they cook in an Ocoo (they don’t know which function), then sweeten with syrup, and finally give different flavors. They also don’t know the origin of the algae, whether they are from Barbate, Galicia, or somewhere else.
Algatinado, a red algae dipped in liquid nitrogen (to acquire texture) and coated in a strawberry and hibiscus powder. A crispy textured algae that can be found fresh from March to December.
Irish moss (Chondrus crispus) dipped in Moroccan lemon juice and then in liquid nitrogen so that the juice is well impregnated and it gets the necessary texture. A red algae, although our sample was green.
Sea spaghetti with a licorice flavor, already prepared in the kitchen and just placed on the plate. They want it to resemble palodul (sweet stick) but it had little licorice flavor.
Three poorly made bites. It might be a good idea, but some points need to be refined. Quite unpresentable.
Mignardises:
Tuna and Chocolate:
They bring to the table a cart with a “ham” of tuna belly (from a 350 kg almadraba tuna) and make two very thin slices with a knife. They cure the tuna in the same way as pork hams but with a small difference, it only takes 30-40 days to achieve the curing, not needing as many months or years as pork.
They use it to accompany this bite they call “tuna and chocolate.” At the base, a dark chocolate marshmallow accompanied by a piece of caramelized mojama, a drop of olive oil, and finally, the piece of “ham.”
Very kindly, they offered us a piece of “ham” so we could taste this exceptional cured tuna belly on its own.
There was much more chocolate than tuna. I ate some chocolate alone to balance it to my taste. I didn’t find the piece of mojama or the drop of oil; what I found was the chocolate marshmallow and melted chocolate. The fact is, following the chef’s trend, the chocolate overpowered the fish, and the tuna was barely noticeable. Once again, it’s a shame to do such good work with the tuna only to mask it with other ingredients.
Next, the last 3 petits fours.
Corvina Bone:
The otolith is this “bone” that the corvina and other fish have, which they use as a navigation system, meaning it allows them to sense acceleration, the direction of gravity, and balance (like their GPS), and it also has to do with hearing. A kind of calcium carbonate stone that some indigenous peoples of America used as an amulet, as currency, or to make jewelry.
The petit four is a kind of porous stone that looks like alabaster. In reality, it is a “bonbon” filled with soft caramel (elastic caramel made from butter and hazelnuts, similar to toffee) with plankton, macadamia nut cream, and covered in white chocolate.
Sailor’s Wafer:
A small tube, a wafer made with sea bass skin filled with buttercream and an almond crunch.
Inés Rosales del Mar. Olive Oil Tortas since 1901:
Their homage to the classic Sevillian tortas, an olive oil and anise torta to which they add a piece of soft-shell crab that is printed on top of their version of these tortas.
A sheet to be shared between two people, incredible. It is very good but has nothing to do with the traditional tortas; they serve it inside their famous little box.
Just when we thought we were finished, they bring us…
Minted Seaweed:
A candy that they explain by referring to Fisherman’s Friend, the traditional menthol candy. They make their version, Fisherman’s kombu, which also has a menthol touch. They serve it directly in the hand. It is a piece of kombu seaweed with a mint flavor and no trace of seaweed taste, evidently.
WE DRANK:
A bottle of Ube de Ubérrima, El Reventón 2022 from Cota 45, a still white wine made from Palomino Fino from this vineyard in Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Once again, we tasted a 2022 from this magnificent winery where the expression is of clarity and elegance. What a vintage this 2022 is, with Paganilla and Reventón!
As for the room (extremely cold throughout the meal), both our waiter, Adrián Veredas (Granada), and the sommelier, Lucía Fuentes, were very good. Attentive and helpful, with a good attitude, good diction when describing the dishes (very important in these restaurants where we have to listen more than eat), showing interest in our questions and eager to explain and convey. Moreover, the wine service is very good, and Lucía demonstrates a good knowledge of the wines from Marco de Jerez, making it clear that she is up to date with all the latest developments and that she also has hands-on experience. However, the price of the wines is a bit excessive.
In summary, just as there can be entertainment cinema that passes without much impact, this is an entertainment cuisine that, in any case, satisfies me more to read and follow intellectually as a source of knowledge about the aquatic environment of the area than it does to eat it in situ. In this sense, we didn’t feel much like returning. And, once again, we left without ever having seen Ángel León.
Your articles are absolutely first class Carola. Thank you for sharing. Very interesting reading.