Joe Ray

Saturday, December 05, 2009

The Consecrated Onion - The Great Rioja Tapas Crawl Part III

LOGRONO, Spain

“At El Soldado de Tudelilla, get the tomato salad and the little sardine sandwich with sport peppers,*” says Artadi.

We do.

The notes for the little sandwich (a pincho) say “Why don’t we eat more sardines in the U.S.A.?”

The question floats into space as I take a bite and flag the stout-bellied barman for a tomato salad which turns out to be the star of the show.

Said barman makes the salad on the bar beneath our noses by plucking a tomato from of the cooler with the wine and the onions and cuts it into bite-sized chunks with a pocket knife. He does the same with the onion.

“This is not just any onion,” he says, “This is the white onion of Fuentes de Ebro,” which, we’ll learn, is more mild than a Vidalia.

“It is a town consecrated to the onion,” he says.

He adds a can of still faintly-pink tuna to the plate and drops a few olives over the top before giving the whole thing a shot of vinegar, a 15-count drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of gros sel.

It’s a little mountain on a plate that disappears in a heartbeat.

“We’re going to be late,” I say.

“I don’t care,” comes the response.

Perfect.

Count on about 10 euros for salad, sardines and a glass of wine or two

El Soldado de Tudelilla MAP
C/ San Agustín 33
Logroño, Spain
+34 941 209 624

*Truth be told, he said “guindilla.”

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Monday, December 22, 2008

Sardines Over Royalty

I’ve been lucky enough to go to the Bistrot Paul Bert twice in the past month or so. Simon Says’ namesake and I have a fondness for this place to the point where it’s surprising we haven’t bumped into each other.

Truth be told, the last couple of times have been… ok. Perhaps both the chef and I have been a bit too game for game. I had a partridge dish which I liked principally because it had some buckshot in it and lievre à la royale (hare with foie gras and a deep-colored wine sauce) that left me, if we call a spade a spade, with a lot of connective tissue on my plate.

BUT! There have been plenty of reminders why I love this place: particularly a heaping dish of tiny, fried sardines which must have taken advantage of the P-B’s husband and wife team which also runs the neighboring seafood specialist, L’Ecallier du Bistrot. The only way to win with a dish like this is to hit it out of the park; nothing leaves a worse impression than bad fish.

I love a place that’s got the confidence in itself and its customers to serve a ‘low’ fish… which is why I’ll keep going back.

Bistrot Paul Bert - MAP
18, rue Paul Bert
75011 Paris
011.33.1.43.72.24.01
Noon-2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.-11 p.m.
Closed Sunday and Monday

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Thursday, November 13, 2008

Two hands on the cans

Barcelona’s canned goods quality fanatic Quim Perez should know about this place.

I find the Lisbon landmark, the Conserveira de Lisboa (The Lisbon Cannery) - famous for their Tricana line of high-end canned seafood, completely by accident.

After I pay for a few tins, cannery owner Regina Ferreria walks out of the back room. She asks me what I’ve found, grimaces and walks to the side wall of her tiny, picturesque shop and pulls down a 125 gram tin of ovas de sardinha – sardine eggs.

She uses both of her hands to place her gift into mine.

“Open them gently. Place them on a plate. Place them on bread – not toast – so the olive oil gets soaked up,” she says. “No forks! It bothers them - use a spatula. Serve these to your sweetie with vinho verde.”

I need to stop traveling alone.

Conserveira de Lisboa - MAP
Rua dos Bacalhoeiros, 34
Lisbon
+351.218.871.058

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Sunday, September 28, 2008

Sardine is not a four-letter word

QUIBERON – After three and a half hours on an early train from Paris and another hour on the bus, the idea of sitting around tourists and retirees in a restaurant didn’t really float my boat. Returning from a meeting to set up an outing with a gooseneck barnacle fisherman, I walked right in front of the solution: La Belle-Iloise cannery.

Five minutes and a six-can variety pack of sardines later – everything from the little silver fish marinated in muscadet to two peppers, olive oil and lemon – I was in business. Sitting on the seawall, I ate a tin of sardine à la tomate served on pain Poilâne that I smuggled from Paris. Though there’s a fierce debate as to whether La Belle-Iloise or La Quiberonnaise makes the better sardine it didn’t seem to matter; in the space of five minutes, three people walked by jealously eyeing my picnic and smiling. One guy even offered up a “Bon Appetit!”

On the bus, I had listened to an interview with Alice Waters who extolled the virtues of both cooking and eating with friends, yet here I was, straddling the seawall by myself, getting a sense of place from a can.

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