JANUARY-AUGUST, 2008
26-Aug-08 - Back to work, and visits to two consultancy clients in Spain. I flew with a new airline I’d never heard of - First Choice, although I think they’ve been swallowed up by Thomsons since then. Anyway, it was cheap enough - £50 from LGW to Reus. I like those small regional airports as you don’t have the obligatory marathon walk. Except I was wrong. The aeroplane stops right outside the terminal building, all right, but then you walk across the front... Down the side... Across the back... Down a side-street and across a road before coming to passport control. Next time I’ll risk Barcelona again. My stay was very pleasant. My client, a Dutchman with a vineyard in the DO Montsant, put me up in the lovely Hotel Sport in the middle of Falset, recently refurbished after a disastrous fire and with a pleasant terrace overlooking the garden (a bit overgrown, but they were working on it). We had dinner tasting his wines in the middle of the vineyard, under the stars, with a Dutch journalist and importer, and it was an excellent evening.
The following morning I caught the train from Reus to Logroño - five hours but only €40 first class, and they have big, comfortable, reclining seats (although no tables) and I was fortuitously close to the bar. I met up with my second client, an importer from Singapore looking to do business with airlines in the far east, and we had a drink and a sandwich together before arrival. I’d booked us into the Hotel Las Gaunas, which is actually part of a huge petrol station on the ring road. It’s smart, modern and reasonable (about €50 a night) and when you’re doing what we were doing (visiting ten bodegas in two days) ideally placed and with free parking. Having established that in Singapore they drive on the left, as we do, and that my client had not driven in Spain for twenty years, I elected to do the driving. I’d prepared a shortlist of bodegas and we did get around them all: Allende, Ramón Bilbao, LAN (excellent lunch), Ostatu, Luís Cañas, Baigorri, Lar de Paula, Artadi, Darien (another excellent lunch) and Palacios Remondo, and tasted some fab wines. We had dinner at the splendid Mesón Eguës in Logroño (a meat-lover’s paradise) on the first night, and a tapas-y nosh at the hotel cafeteria on the second. Interestingly the hotel restaurant was closed ‘for the holidays’. Well, it was August. It was an early start on the Saturday morning to catch the 10:20 flight from Bilbao to LGW, and then home for a few days before September gets going.
12-Aug-08 - L’Ambassade de L’Île on the Old Brompton Road is the UK outpost of l’Auberge de l’Île in Lyon (see post passim) and Jean-Cristophe Ansany-Alex (JC). You may remember that the Île de Barbe, an island in the river Saône in Lyon, is a ‘sovereign state’ within France, and JC is its ‘governor’, and this is his ‘embassy’. With me so far? Well we had lunch with the glamorous Alison Jee, who handles JC’s PR, and she told us that he had told her that his restaurant in Lyon (inherited from several generations of his family) is ‘his wife’ but that l’Ambassade is ‘ his mistress’ - very French. But I knew what he meant. The Lyon place is in a grand, granite former monastery on the island. It’s low-lit, labyrinthine and sexy. L’Ambassade is even sexier: soft, shag-pile carpets, padded white-leather walls, and loos where the water comes up through the plughole lit in purple and blue by an uplighter. The door of the Gents is smoked glass, so you’re on show to any passing punter and the staircases are spiral and viral... But there is a fagzone for smokers out front. I couldn’t fault the food (pike stuffed with frogs’ legs, for example) but the décor is something of an acquired taste.
04-Aug-08 - The Booze Cruise. We’d been threatening this for a while and If I’d booked earlier it would probably have been cheaper, but what the Hell? James and Claire came down, and Claire volunteered to drive (as her Volvo estate has more room in the back than our Proton Impian saloon). Four adults and a car for £119 return is not bad for the middle of the school summer holidays, although Transmanche Ferries do have special offers of £37.50 one way from time to time. It’s an early start, though: we left Worthing at 04:45 and got to Newhaven shortly after 05:00. It’s a 90-minute check in for the 07:00 sailing of the Côte d’Albâtre, but all you actually do is sit in a line of traffic after check-in (and beware - there are no loos outside the terminal building). Anyway, when we finally did move it was very quick, and we were parked and up on deck very soon. A tip here: grab a table in the cafeteria before doing anything else. The serving counter won’t be open but at least you’ll be in pole position when it does. They serve a half-decent full English and, of course, you can have a bottle of wine with it, as we are at sea. The voyage takes about 4 hours but, having the luxury of not driving at the fare end, I found the bar prices to be very reasonable.
We had booked into the Windsor Hotel, which is on the seafront and has a restaurant with panoramic views towards the sea, across acres of lawn (a bit like Hove lawns, only more so, I thought) We arrived about 12:30 and decided to have an early lunch in the hotel followed by a siesta to catch up on lost sleep. The rooms are comfortable with new bathrooms (although the old building has rather more than its fair share of gloomy corridors) and, at €80 a night, reasonable value for the highest of high season. They do room service, too, and there’s free wi-fi throughout the hotel. That night we went down to the harbour, which must be one of the most picturesque in France, and found a small restaurant with tables on the pavement called Bistrot du Quai chez l’Gros which had chalkboard signs saying ‘we do NOT do moules marinières.’ Unlike every other restaurant along the waterside. They did do an excellent steak, however, as well as fish and we had another lovely evening watching the sun go down over the multi-coloured buildings around the harbour’s edge. I assumed that ‘l’Gros’ was the big guy who dealt with front-of-house, and he was assisted by a wonderfully charming young woman, but I didn’t get any names.
The following morning we made the pilgrimage to Auchan and filled the Volvo up. The strength of the Euro is such that things aren’t as cheap as they once were, but litres of Famous Grouse at €13 and Gordon’s Gin at €12 were very welcome. We also got some Four Rose Bourbon, and James and Claire were looking for Malt Whisky, Armagnac and Cognac, as well as some very smelly cheeses and (Claire’s passion) Pims chocolate biscuits with pear filling - apparently you can get the orange and raspberry versions in the UK, but not pear.
That night we decided to eat somewhere different, and let James and Claire choose. Owing to a chain of circumstance too complex to relate, we ended up back at the Bistrot again... And I had the same meal. All right, I admit it, I have become a creature of habit.
Next day we were aboard for the 13:30 sailing and home in time for apéritifs at 6:00 pm. We are still kidding ourselves that we saved money on the trip but I think this is probably an illusion. However, we did have a very good time.
29-Jul-08 - This time it was the 40th wedding anniversary and, as mentioned in an earlier post, I had booked lunch for us at Paul Bocuse in Lyon, with first-class railway tickets all the way. It’s a long journey - nearly seven hours in all - but no longer than a three-hour train ride to Stansted (Outer Spiral Arm of the Galaxy), two hour check-in and two-hour flight in a sardine-tin courtesy of Ryanair). We stayed at the Hotel de la Cité Concorde on the Quai Charles de Gaulle, which is a 12-minute bus-ride (€1.60) from the city centre. The hotel is smart, modern, comfortable and has spectacular views across the river Rhône. I booked through
booking.com and paid €69 a night, which was an absolute bargain for a hotel of this quality (the published prices are much higher - book early!). Not everything was perfect: indeed, I couldn’t understand how a modern chain hotel could get all the big things right (comfort, location, price, service) and get so many little things wrong: no English-language TV channel, TV broke down on day 2 and couldn’t be fixed, bath wouldn’t drain properly, no ashtray in a ‘smoking’ room, taxi ordered but not booked. These were, however, minor irritations and we weren’t in any hurry anyway. The bar had excellent light meals to enjoy on the terrace behind the hotel, and on Wednesday we took the bus into town, and had lunch at an open-air cafe under a spreading chestnut tree in the Place Bellecour (eat early, you won’t get in after 12:30).
The big day was, of course, 31-Aug-08. And Paul Bocuse. The sun shone, the Sâone sparkled, and we were greeted, as always, by Daniel Abdallah in his red ‘bell boy’ uniform with a pillbox hat. He delivered us to François Pipala, the Maître d’ who delivered us to Taittinger ‘La Française’ and the table. There is too much to describe here (but you can always take out a subscription to YES CHEF! Magazine if you want to know more) but suffice it to say that the cassoulet de homard à la amoricaine was adjudged by Jill as the finest dish of any kind she had ever tried in her life. We had the whole seabass baked in a pastry-case and, for dessert - a miniature cake with a single candle as Daniel played ‘happy birthday’ on the portable hurdy-gurdy. An extended French family sitting opposite joined in with a cheer and there was scarcely a dry eye in the house: François immediately delivered a clean plate to the table with a packet of tissues on it. This must be a regular occurrence at Bocuse.
15-Jul-08 - a bit of white space on the calendar: a quiet month, as always, culminating in our wedding anniversary on the 31st. A couple of lectures at Plumpton College on the 15th and a talk (and lunch) to the Findon Village Probus Club at West Worthing Tennis Club on the 16th. I enjoy talking to Probus: even at my advanced age I’m still usually the youngest person there, and they tend to be people with an education who can actually understand my jokes. The subject was ‘working in local radio’ and many of them had been my listeners in the BBC days (special thanks to Mike Solomons for legendary support). The chicken pie was halfway decent, too.
26-Jun-08 - Final task of the month was a two-day tasting of the 2005 vintage from Ribera del Duero at the Decanter offices in the glam Blue Fin Building in Southwark. There were 129 wines on the card, joven, crianza and the odd pre-release reserva, but as to the results, my lips are sealed until the magazine is published in September (subscribe
here) but have a look at the post-tasting video
here.
21-Jun-08 - We went, as we have done for several years, to the Caer Gwent care home in Worthing to perform the official opening for their annual strawberry tea fundraiser - something I’ve done several times before. It was good to see the support given by the volunteers including Worthing’s former mayor, Heather Mercer. Last year she was there as a visitor in her official capacity; this year she was helping out on the tea stall. They managed to raise more than £500 towards the residents’ leisure activities.
16-Jun-08 - Back to LGW for a flight to Bilbao, and another seminar for independent importers, this time about Rioja, and in Logroño in the offices of the Consejo Regulador. The organisers (Phipps PR) had generously put me up in the NH Herencia Rioja on c/Marqués de Murrieta (excellent hotel especially at €85, but wifi is a rip-off at €8.56 an hour). I chose the wines to illustrate the range of what Rioja is producing at the moment:
Young white: Plácet, Palacios Remondo
Oak-aged white: Capellanía, Marqués de Murrieta
Rosado: Viña Tondonia Rosado Reserva
Young red: Erre Punto, Remírez de Ganuza
Crianza: Dinastía Vivanco (they gave us a tour and lunch at their fab new bodega)
Reserva: Viña Ardanza, La Rioja Alta
Gran reserva: Montecillo Reserva Especial 1982
Alta Expresión: Barón de Chirel, Marqués de Riscal
Varietal: Conde de Valdemar, Reserva Garnacha
They were all excellent, and the Montecillo was probably the trump card, but it’s a fully-mature wine from a magnificent vintage, and there aren’t many left from 1982.
The following day we visited Ontañón with its surreal sculptures and stained glass windows, and the splendid ‘château’ that is Campillo, before the guests left to go back to London. I stayed on (at the Hotel Carlton, a wonderful place at which I’ve stayed many times before - €65 a night and free wifi throughout) and had a rather surreal experience the following day. I’d be corresponding with an acquaintance called Suanna Munilla, whom I’d met a few years ago when she was working for a promotional agency in Zaragoza. She had since moved to Rioja and invited me to visit the bodega (Lomablanca) at which she was working. I accepted, of course, and asked her to make arrangements with the Consejo Regulador. All I could really remember about her was that she was very dynamic and very attractive, and spoke perfect English.
On the day, my first visit was to Bodegas Baigorri in the Basque country - a magnificent crystal palace with space-age winemaking technology, landscaped into the side of a hill with spectacular views. I was shown round and given a tasting by Simón Arina, the winemaker, and his top wine is called garage, made from old-vines Tempranillo. I gave it 18/20... But it is €66 ex-cellars.
And then it was off on the long drive south to the Rioja Baja - Aldeanueva - and Bodegas Pastor Díaz. I had a shock of déja vu as I arrived: the entrance, door, bodega shop were all familiar, even though I knew I’d never been here. I finally realised that, when I was researching The Wines of Rioja in 2003 I had got lost in this town, and stopped here to ask for directions. Anyway, moments later I was greeted by the attractive Susanna. We embraced and I said what a pleasure it was to meet her again. She seemed a little confused, and her English was nothing like as good as I remembered, but we got on with the tasting. The wines were good, the best a 2000 Gran Reserva retailing in the shop at €9, which is excellent value (I gave it 17/20). During the tasting I engaged her in conversation about when we had last met, in Zaragoza, and gradually it became clear that she had never been to Zaragoza and we had never met before. When I got back into the car I switched my ’phone back on and there was a message from Susanna Munilla. She’d been expecting me at Bodegas Lomablanca all afternoon and, of course, I hadn’t turned up. I had been entertained at a different bodega by the wrong Susanna. We agreed to meet at the hotel and we did taste the range of wines on the balcony overlooking the Gran Vía. The wines were excellent and I have promised to visit Lomablanca the next time I’m in Rioja, which may very well be at the end of August.
It was an early start on the Friday for an 06:30 check-in at Bilbao, but with a mercifully early arrival at LGW. This was convenient because I’d been asked by Phipps to go to a restaurant near Clapham Junction called Lola Rojo to meet Tom Moggach, who writes for The London Paper. The idea was to try a range of Rioja wines with a range of their tapas, and this provided to be a splendid way to finish the week. The food was exceptionally good, the wines were the perfect match, and Tom proved a genial and entertaining luncheon companion. And, yes, she is his mum.
10-Jun-08 - To Edinburgh for a presentation on behalf of the DO Vinos de Madrid, at the National Museum of Scotland, arranged by Westbury PR. The idea was (as ever) that independent wine merchants and sommeliers could taste a range of wines which were never going to be bought by the supermarkets because production was too small, and the wines showed extremely well, in spite of the fact that many of the merchants who attended had - in common with almost everybody else - never even heard of Vinos de Madrid. I was fortunate enough to visit the vineyards (in a kind of ‘crescent’ shape south of the city) about 18 months ago and had seen the quality. About a dozen bodegas were represented, including Valleyglesia, Orusco, Don Álvaro de Luna, Señoríó de Val Azul, Ricard Benito, Francisco Casas, Luís Saavedra, Andrés Morate, Tagonius and González Orti. The most modestly-priced wine was €1.50 ex-cellars, the most expensive €85, with everything in between. The guests seems to like the line-up and we topped off the evening with dinner at Oloroso in Castle street... With ten wines. It went extremely well and I hope that some of the importers found something with which to boost their lists. But then it was another mad dash to Waverley station to catch the 23:40 overnight Caledonian Sleeper to Euston. I had forgotten quite how small the cabins are, but there’s a lovely bogbag of toiletries, air conditioning and a saloon next door with a bar, tables and chairs. The steward took my order for breakfast and I zonked. The train gets in at 07:00, which was a bit early for my date with the OLN New Wave Spanish Wine tasting at The Worx at 09:00, but I consoled myself with the thought of stopping at a coffee shop somewhere in London on the way. The breakfast on the train was adequate, although the bacon roll was almost inedible, but I was quite disappointed to see how many people got off: I can’t think that they can be making much money on the sleeper service, and it’s a pity because it’s an excellent and civilised way to travel and doesn’t involve the modern living hell which is airports - and at £159 first class it’s cheaper than a hotel in Edinburgh. I was surprised, as I headed for the main concourse, to see that the train had been hauled by a class 66 (freight) locomotive borrowed from EWS: another sign that the service may be under threat. There seem to be very few non-freight locomotives around these days.
I had missed the first day of the OLN tasting (they moved the dates) during which my colleagues had whittled some 800 wines down to the top 100 or so. It was then our job to go through these ‘best of the best’ and pick the ones to get the golden gongs, which was a lot more fun. There were some real stars (get a copy of OLN in September for the result - my lips are sealed) and it really does give an overview of what’s going on in Spain. Better yet, it was all over by early afternoon and off back to Victoria for the train home.
03-Jun-08 - Oporto - another gastronomic odyssey for Yes Chef! I arrived late and made my way to the hotel Vila Galé, which booking.com) it’s not expensive (although wifi is - €5 an hour). We were to meet Ana Sofia Oliviera from Viniportugal, who had made all the arrangements, the following morning. From then on it was a whirlwind tour encompassing Quinta do Ameal in the DOC Vinho Verde, wine and Port tasting at Wine & Soul in Pinhão, dinner with chef Albano Lourenço in the one-starred restaurant at the Quinta das Lágrimas in Coimbra, tasting sparkling wines with Filipa Pato in the DOC Bairrada, olive oils with Verónica Santos Lima in Santarém, and a tasting (with music) and dinner at Quinta do Monte d’Oiro which was an experience not to be missed. I’m skating over the surface here because the detailed feature is in the current issue (no. 6 - summer 2008) of YC! and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to find out what actually happened. There was more - Quinta do Mouro in the Alentejo (fab wines) and Montanheira where they farm the black pig (in a huge nature reserve) and produce everybody’s favourite pork products.
We finished up on the last night at a ‘winemaker dinner’ with Jaime Quendera from Casa Ermelinda Freitas in Fernando Pó, (Vinho Regional Terras do Sado) in one of Lisbon’s trendiest restaurants, Terreiro do Paço. This was a bacalhau-fest (the Portuguese national ingredient) and excellent, but you’ll have to buy the mag to find out the details.
I flew back from Lisbon to Luton, where my son and daughter-in-law live (well, in a village outside Luton) on James’s birthday, and I’d arranged for Claire to pick me up and go for a , surprise lunch to celebrate. He confessed he was disappointed because when Claire had told him that she was taking him for a surprise and headed towards Luton airport, he though she had booked a weekend break in Barcelona. However, we had an excellent lunch at The Fox in Harpenden - steak again with an excellent bottle of Planeta. Claire had the seabass with a glass of Selaks Marlborough Sauvignon, because she was driving. It’s all right, she loves driving, honest. I got the train home and was there in time for apéritfs.
01-Jun-08 - No rest for the wicked: off to Barcelona again for a meeting in Cantallops, up in the Pyrenees in the DO Empordà. The Catalan trade office COPCA was holding an event for UK importers to familiarise themselves with this rather obscure wine-producing region, and I was to give a presentation explaining what it is and where it is. There are some fab wines here including the old traditional sweet and fortified style ‘Garnatxa’ which goes back centuries and which I love, although there’s not much export potential, given the ageing requirements - several years in giant glass jars in the open air before blending and sale. These wines are made all around this coastline, and I encountered similar ones last year in Roussillon, in France, which is just to the north (indeed, the vineyards of the DO Empordà are contiguous with those of the AOC Côtes de Roussillon). The running, however, is being made by new, modern styles and young bodegas eager to get the world outside to see what they’re doing.
The hotel was stunning - Can Xiquet in Cantallops sits above the village with amazing views across the valley. One morning I stood in the vast, glass-fronted shower looking through an enormous picture window towards the Pyrenees. The rooms are vast, with all the latest electronic gadgets (including wifi), and a decanter of the local Garnatxa as well: civilisation. I was speaking to a group of independent UK importers who’d expressed an interest in the area - it’s not somewhere you see a lot of supermarket buyers, so there are big opportunities for the independent wine trade, and we were able to taste the range of wines from eight major producers: Pere Guardiola, Arché Pagès, La Vinyeta, Espelt Viticultors, Empordàlia,Vinyes dels Aspres, Terra Remota and Oliveda. The following day we were split into two groups and each visited four bodegas. They were showing some splendid new-wave wines, and a few members of the party were beguiled by the sight of 20-litre carboys of Moscatel perched precariously on the wall at Vinyes dels Aspres. For me the highlight was Oliveda, only because I’d been there before (back in June, 2002 when I was researching a presentation on Cava). The wines were as good as I remembered them, and a couple of ice-cold Cavas after a thirsty morning’s work were very welcome before the tasting... As were samples of their marc and brandy afterwards. The day was shaping up well. We lunched at Ca La María, an ‘artisanal’ restaurant in Mollet de Perelada, where the duck was very good - indeed everything was very good including, of course, wines from the producers we’d visited that morning. I had to miss the afternoon session as they had very kindly arranged a car for me to get back to Barcelona airport, from where I had to fly to Oporto.
24-May-08 - Barcelona to do a presentation for worldwide importers for an outfit called Wine Pleasures, at one of those bigtime golfing/activity/mountain biking resorts in the province of Barcelona - to be precise El Muntany in Seva, about 65 km north of the city. Once again the hotel was fab, and far more expensive than I could afford, set in magnificent grounds. I did a presentation on the first evening, after which there was an informal tasting for buyers to meet exporters and, once again, I met a lot of old friends there.
The journey back to Barcelona the following morning was a nightmare. If you’ve been on the AVE or the Talgo on Spain you might think they are lucky with their trains, but have you tried the kind of everyday trains people use to get to work and back? Suffice it so say that it was so late that I missed my flight to Jerez and had to fly to Seville, which meant a €125 taxi-ride to Jerez and a missed tasting at Bodegas Domecq that evening. But once again it was a wonderful luxury hotel - the Prestige Palmera Plaza (somewhere around €100 a night but fab rooms and free wifi throughout) - and I was primed to get to Vinoble, the biennial festival of sweet and fortified wines that’s held in the 12th-century alcázar. The place is beautiful, of course, but very well organised for a major wine fair, and they were all there from Spain, of course, but every wine-producing country. I tasted ice-wines white and red from Georgia and Croatia; late-harvest wines from Uruguay, Georgia, Lebanon, Argentina and Chile; a Botrytis Sémillon from Chile, and from Spain a Moscato (not Moscatel) from Navarra, and late-harvests from Txakoli (!) and Castilla y León. And then there's the ice-cider (no, honest) from Canada. It was an education, and I also managed to get a visit to Bodegas Emilio Lustau to taste their range of Sherries (for the record, my first ever visit to Spain in 1974 was to Emilio Lustau, but that’ll have to wait for the autbiog).
Then it was back to Stansted and the good old De Salis again before limping home the following morning (3 hours on the train but they do have a trolley manned by a very attractive Polish girl which dispenses neat whisky to the suffering), and home again.
22-May-08 - Back to waste-your-life-to-and-in-the-airport-land: a three-hour train trip to Stansted for a flight to Seville (8 hours door to door) but the solace of the excellent Hotel Abba Triana, on the banks of the river Guadalquivír, with large comfortable rooms, air conditioning and a good minibar, but wifi only downstairs in the public rooms (a waste of time - I want to work in the privacy of my room) and at a swingeing €10.44 a day. Even O2’s ripoff rates (£6 a megabyte) are better than that. The first event was TopWineSpain at the splendid Hotel Benazuza, which is part of the El Bulli empire. It’s a complex of cool Moorish courtyards with pools, hedges and flowerbeds, and about three dozen bodegas offering their wines for tasting. I couldn’t get round everybody in the time available, but did get to see such as Castaño (Yecla), Dominio de Tares (Bierzo), Matarromera (Ribera del Duero), Hermanos Sastre (Ribera del Duero), Remírez de Ganuza (Rioja), Izadi (Rioja) Páganos (Rioja), Luberri (Rioja), Clos Mogador (Priorat) and Huerta de Albalá who are making red wines in the province of Cádiz. I waved at lots of other friends, too, but it was time for (an excellent) lunch, after which I sloped off back to the hotel for a siesta.
21-May-08 - The end of May was something of a marathon. First the London Wine Trade Fair, where I did a presentation on Rioja wines, as well as meeting loads of old friends from the trade. My only beef about this event is the location: ExCel in East London, aka the outer spiral arm of the galaxy. When it was at Olympia I could get there in just over an hour and a half
- two trains door-to-door. Now it’s four trains and anything up to three hours, including the Central line sardine-tin packed with Canary Wharf workers and the ‘will I live long enough to get there’ wait for the DLR from Canning Town and then the million-mile walk (no lifts, endless stairs) to the main entrance. Why on earth they can’t simply lay on a shuttle bus from London Bridge I really don’t know. But then, I really don’t know how there can be so many design faults in a new building. Take the loos for example. (1) they’re down two flights of stairs. (2) They’re accessed by single rather than double doors, so you stand there for ever waiting for a stream of people to come in or out. And (3) after YEARS of bad examples there STILL aren’t enough cubicles in the ladies’, which means queues outside the (single) door. Have they learned nothing from the past mistakes of public buildings? Answers on a postcard (clue - it has two letters and begins with ‘n’).
16-May-08 - Then it was back to the airport. Where else can you be herded, chided, sneered at, forced to queue for hours, treated like cattle and pay well over the odds for food and drink? Visit your local airport. I’m getting close to the point that, if you can’t get there by train, I’m not going. But it was back to LGW (with a 4:00 am check-in - Gatwick at that time of day is rather like the Vestibule as described in Dante’s Inferno: hordes of people aimlessly wandering about trying to find something that’s open so they can buy a cup of coffee). Arrived at Nice and then a car to Saint Tropez, where we were to interview Michel Roux, who has a house there. He was hosting a luncheon for a dining club to which he belongs in London and I did several pieces for his in-house magazine at The Waterside Inn, including one with his landscape gardener, one at neighbouring Château Minuty, which makes his wine (he has one hectare of vines), and with Thierry Thiercelin, head chef of the very glamorous Villa Belrose, whose terrace overlooks the bay: it was Cannes Film Festival time, and there were more than usually large yachts moored along the coast. The Belrose has a Michelin star and Thierry is actively chasing a second. In the meantime he has found time to remarry the wife he divorced several years ago: ‘some things are just meant to be.’
05-May-08 - On Bank Holiday Monday we had an open day to celebrate the fifth birthday of Splash FM - and 400 people came. The studios, though well appointed, are small, and eventually we had to show people around about a dozen at a time, but everyone seemed to enjoy the experience. It’s nice to know that such a small, local station is really appreciated by the people it serves.
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03-May-08 - The first half of May was, thankfully, rather quiet. We had the annual dinner of the ‘SCR Refugees’ (a group of people who used to listen to my breakfast programme on BBC Southern Counties Radio) at the Beefeater in Horsham - I was amazed how these chain restaurants have upped their game since I last went to one. Much more interesting food, cooked better and with more interesting wines. Dinner for about £25 each was very reasonable. Indeed, a couple of days later I had lunch with my old BBC boss, Mike Hapgood (now head of region in Southampton). We have an informal ‘luncheon club’ and talk over old times, about every three months. We met at The Woodman Arms, which is an excellent pub on the A27 at Hammerpot, between Worthing and Crossbush. They had a terrible fire (the pub is an ancient thatched affair) a few years ago and had to close for almost a year while it was rebuilt. Ironically, only the fireplace survived. I was invited to the relaunch and have been back several times since. In the summer the gardens are beautiful and they serve food outside - good honest old-fashioned pub grub - on this occasion a delicious large slab of cottage pie washed down with a pint of extra-cold Guinness. Mike had something healthy but I can’t remember what it was, with a pint of London Pride.
29-Apr-08 - April finished with a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon to speak to the Midlands Wine and Spirit Association (MWSA). We met at the local college and tasted through a range of wines, and I was surprised how many people I recognised, including Chris Connolly of Connolly’s Wines in Birmingham, who had made the arrangements. The reason for the familiarity is that, a million years ago, I used to write a weekly column for the Coventry Evening Telegraph and got to know most of the local wine merchants. It was an excellent evening, with food provided by the college, and they generously put me up at the Thistle, down by the river (very comfortable but £90). I was driven there by the vivacious Joy Clayton Smith of Alliance Wines, and as we went along Chapel Street w passed the Shakespeare Hotel, where Jill and I spent the first night of our honeymoon in 1968. It hadn’t changed, but then, it is about 400 years old so what’s another 40?
21-Apr-08 - Back in the UK, the last full week of April is always the Decanter World Wine Awards at The Worx in Parson’s Green, and one of my favourite weeks of the year: total immersion in Spanish wine from every region. I had three teams of three - importers, journalists, sommeliers and winemakers - and between us we tasted some 900 wines over four days (the fifth day is the taste-off for the trophies). The last couple of year Spain has struggled in the gold medal stakes but, at long last, the penny seemed to have dropped amongst bodegas submitting wines for the competition, and we were able to award 23 gold medals. Yes, I know, that doesn’t sound very many against 900 entries, but the judging is very strict, with regular blood on the tablecloth as ‘experts’ violently disagreed with each other. I stay up in London rather than commuting every morning from Worthing (an hour and 20 minutes to cover 59 miles. I’m sure it was faster in the days of steam). Last year I found a B&B actually in Parson’s Green, but it was a bit bleak. This year I found the Sara hotel, about 150 yards from West Brompton tube station (two stops from Parson’s Green). It’s very cheap (£42 a night) and cheerful and had the three Bs, but no wifi and don’t use the lift. There’s a halfway decent pub (with a very pretty barmaid) on the corner called the Tournament, and I was able to spend my evenings split between there and the good old White Horse at Parson’s Green: still an excellent place. Pity they don’t do accommodation.
15-Apr-08 - To Málaga for a conference called WineCreator in Ronda, staying overnight at the Hotel N.Ch in Torremolinos. It’s a long time since I went to Torremolinos, and I had forgotten how utterly dreadful it is. The hotel is pleasant enough, although it’s in the middle of a shopping precinct. It claims to be ‘gay friendly’ and kosher (on different websites) and although I’m acquainted with the charming lesbian rabbi Elizabeth Tikveh Sara (in Hove) I didn’t find many yarmulkahs here. The taxi dropped me off on the road outside, the driver saying - ‘it’s in there somewhere’, and at 10:00 pm (barely opening time for restaurants generally in Spain) everything seemed to be closed. There was, however, a bar where I ordered a cerveza and asked the rather attractive barmaid ¿Se habla inglés? She replied ‘Yeah, well it makes life easier, dunnit?’ That was what reminded me that I was in Torremolinos. The hotel itself is in the Plaza Gamba Alegre (‘Happy Prawn Place’) and was next door to a tattoo parlour but comfortable enough and excellent value (€43), but had no wifi. However, I was only there for one night, picked up the following morning by Clara Verheij from Bodegas Bentomiz, who started me on my short tour of some newer bodegas in Málaga. She and her partner, André Both are a Dutch couple who founded their wine business in 2003 and reinvented the sweet wines of Málaga, as well as branching out into dry white and red. The wines are called Ariyanas and come with the beguiling VinLok glass stopper closure. Next we went to the countryside bodega of what used to be López Hermanos but is now named after its main wine, Málaga Virgen. They still make the magical classic sweet wines from Pedro Ximénez, but have also diversified into such as a Muscat-Chardonnay called Barón de Rivero and a red Syrah called Tinto Pernales, under the DO Sierras de Málaga (SdM), which was introduced in 2000 for non-sweet wines from the area. Most SdM wines, however, come from the Ronda area, and the following day we visited Bodega Joaquín Fernández, a small outfit run by winemaker Pablo Ortiguera. This is an organic project producing wines from Cabernet, Syrah, Garnacha (ahem!) and Merlot under the brand names Finca los Frutales and Finca la Nogaleda. It’s tiny and friendly and the wines are very good. Our final visit before the conference was to Bodega El Chantre. I was last here in 2005, at which time it was a building site. It’s been transformed since into a magnificent palace at the top of a steep slope, under an ancient Roman amphitheatre. They grow Tempranillo, Cabernet, Syrah and Merlot under the DO SdM, ageing the wines in French oak and marketing under the family name: Ramos Paul. The wines are uniformly excellent, but sell at around the €30 mark in Spain.
Then it was along to the conference in Ronda. They put us up in the Parador, which looks straight down into the gorge, 120m below, beside the ‘new bridge’ - built in 1793. The old town is spectacular and small enough to be explored on foot, although it absolutely threw it down with rain all the time we were there. The night before it started we had the most excellent dinner at Tragabuches, Ronda’s only Michelin-starred restaurant, and it was sublime. The main menu was foie and goat’s cheese with caramelised apple, egg cooked sous-vide with cabbage, truffle, Iberian bacon and Andaluz soup, hake from Motril and seared chicken with black sausage. The wines were splendid, too but my memory fails me, perhaps because I was sitting near to Dany Rolland, the wife of Michel Rolland (he was away in South America) who is living proof that French women only get more beautiful as they grow older.
Anyway, the Winecreator conference was supposed to be about the creeping globalisation of wine and what we can do to return wine to is ‘terroir’, and had been organised by wine-writer José Peñín and Josep Lluis Perez of Mas Martinet in Priorat. The Great and the Good were headlining: Jancis Robinson was the Chairman, and the official opening was by Prince Michael of Kent, although he disappeared immediately afterwards. Victor de la Serna moderated, and panel members included Dirk van Niepoort, Ales Kristancic, Denis Dubordieu, Olivier Humbrecht, Álvaro Palacios, Carlo Ferrini, Peter Sisseck, Stéphane Derononcourt, Dany Rolland and Paul Draper. The journalists who were supposed to ask the tough questions included Michel Bettane, Joshua Greene, José Peñín, me, David Schildknecht, Joel B. Payne, Eleonora Scholes, Roberto Gerschmann and Pierre Casamayor. So, an excellent line-up of some of the world’s cutting edge wine talent but... Somehow, not a lot seemed to happen. On the first day most of the speakers rambled on about how good they were, although Victor did tighten matters up towards the end, and the second day was much better. Most of the main questions remained unanswered, however, and I couldn’t help feeling that we could have achieved rather more. I was also slightly uncomfortable with the fact that one of the main sponsors (indeed, I think the main sponsor) was ‘La Melonera’, a construction development near Ronda which is trying to sell luxury villas surrounded by their own vineyards, at €3 million a pop. Josep Lluis Perez is the consultant winemaker, and the idea, as far as I could understand it, is that these top winemakers who were at the conference, will make your wine for you and you can serve it to your well-heeled friends as ‘from your own vineyards’. I hope it runs again next year, however, and that we can really get down to some serious debate, but I have my doubts.
14-Apr-08 - Monday was an interview with J-C A-A (see below) at the building-site which was to become l’Ambassade. More on this in the August post. That night, however, was
another Greek Night at Food Restaurant in Worthing. New readers start here: Food is owned by Andy Sparsis who is a Greek Cypriot (declaration of interest - he sponsors my radio programme on
Splash FM) and we do a themed evening with dinner, wines and entertainment every couple of months. On this occasion we had a four-course Greek meal with Greek wines and entertainment from Nikos Savides and his band - see the pictures at splashfm.com.
13-Apr-08 - London, this time for the finals of the Livre Gourmand Awards. My latest book Cook España, Drink España! (co-authored with Mario Sandoval - above) had been shortlisted for the title of ‘Best Wine Book in the World’ (it had already won the European title last October) and, in the event, we won. No prixe money, sadly, but a nice plaque to hang on the wall. You can see all the results at
cookbookfair.com.
11-Apr-08 - I’d been invited to take part in the Challenge International du Vin (CIdV), which takes place in Bourg and Blaye, and has been going since 1976. Now, I go to a lot of these things: the Concours Mondiale de Bruxelles (CMdB) holds events all over the world (I’ve been to Maastricht, Lisbon, Salvador (Brazil) and Shanghai in the last five years) in which large numbers of professional tasters taste wines completely blind. I’m also the Spanish Chairman (co-Chairman from next year, as the category has expanded exponentially) of the Decanter World Wine Awards which are tasted blind but by country and region, so I’m used to the system. The CIdV is held along the lines of the CMdB and I expected the same. Indeed, there were some 1,000 tasters working through about 5,000 wines but, strangely, not us. We were a party of around a dozen or so journalists, and we were treated royally, put up in the best hotels, and fed extremely well, but we didn’t taste very many wines. I speak ‘adequate’ French which goes up to ‘good’ in a one-to-one conversation about matters to do with food and drink... But not when the conversation is coming from several different directions, and at machine-gun speed. As a result I was left out of most of what was going on. We visited the generic wine centres of Bourg and Blaye although I missed out on the second and retired to the hotel to catch up on e-mail. This was the Citadelle Vauban de Blaye and is an excellent place - a smart, modern hotel inside the ancient ramparts of the Citadelle with views over the river Gironde. We finally got to the tasting on the last day when we were asked to taste the grand total of eight wines, all fortified. Quite what the point of that was, I never found out, but I did get to do an interview with a charming American lady called Susan Mustacich - see
vininews or
challengeduvin.com (scroll down) for the video. They also provided a hefty lunch with speeches in machine-gun French before I was whisked off back to the airport, and home to LGW which is not (quite) the worst airport in the world (but close).
08-Apr-08 - Back to Lyon for more chef interviews: Auberge de l’Île de is a two-star Michelin place in an old monastery on l’Île Barbe, an island in the river Saône. The island declared itself an independent state in 1977, and the chef, Jean-Christophe Ansany-Alex (J-C A-A) is the honorary governor and he’s recently opened an ‘embassy’ - l’Ambassade de lÎle - in London (haven’t been there yet but am going in August). At the Auberge in Lyon sous-chef Sylvain Bouget-Lavine was cooking that night and the meal was outstanding: Breton langoustines, Fontaine salmon, saddle of lamb en croûte, dumplings of foie-gras and Lyonnais cheese. I was surprised that the restaurant hasn’t got its third star, given the quality of the cooking, but when you’re in the same town as Paul Bocuse the competition is strong. I stayed in a small hotel - Hotel de la Croix Rousse, €60 a night with the three Bs and wifi - and asked for directions to a local restaurant. One of the joys of travelling in France is that there’s nearly always somewhere decent to eat at a reasonable price, and there was. L’Assiette du Vin on the Rue Duviard (chef Dominique Aube) is heavily decorated with ceramics and offers a really warm and genuinely friendly welcome. They serve wine in ‘pots’ of varying sizes (good for when you’re dining alone). Lentil velouté with smoked duck followed by a Provençal pièce de boucher (steak) was simple food, well cooked and modestly priced - €54 including wine and a couple of large Bourbons afterwards.
Next day it was chef Philippe Gauvreau at Le Rotonde - a very glamorous grand hotel/restaurant/casino complex on the edge of town. He has to cope with diners who want to eat while they play roulette, as well as managing three restaurants and providing room service. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to stay for lunch but I hope to go back later in the summer. The reason was a mad dash to the airport to catch a flight to Bordeaux.
25-Mar-08 - It was back to Stansted (and the De Salis) for a flight to Valladolid to attend the 25th anniversary Congreso of the DO Ribera del Duero (RdD) in Aranda de Duero. While I was waiting to collect my luggage from the carousel the ’phone rang and it was Germán Muñoz, director of the Consejo Regulador. One of the guest speakers had dropped out, and could I do a presentation at the conference on the state of RdD wines in the UK? I have a standard reaction to requests such as this: first ‘is it for money?’ And second, if the answer is ‘yes’ - ‘well, I’m your man.’ And so it was, even though I had to spend most of the next three afternoons in my hotel room creating a PowerPoint presentation. But, another great place to stay: I first visited Finca Torremilanos in 1988 when it was just a wine-producing bodega. I went again in 1994 after speaking at another conference in Aranda, by which time it had become a restaurant as well, and this time it’s a very stylish and comfortable hotel with an excellent restaurant (steak again, I’m afraid, one of the best I’ve ever eaten). It’s a bit out of town though, if you fancy a tapas crawl before or after dinner. The conference was a great success and I met a lot of old friends.
17-Mar-08 - Off on another ingredients-and-restaurants trip, first to Lancashire (Northcote Manor for dinner with chef Nigel Haworth, and then his pub The Highwayman at Burrow, near Kirby Lonsdale (fabulous pub food and real chips fried in beef dripping - Benedicto Benedicatur!) Not to mention a large George H. Stagg after dinner - sublime. Then it was a mad dash to Stansted airport (outer spiral arm of the galaxy) for an overnight crash before a ridiculously early-morning flight to Lyon. I always stay at the De Salis Hotel at Elsenham - another cheap-and-cheerful (£65), comfortable place with the three Bs and free wifi access, as well as a half-decent curry or lasagne in the dining room, and £3 shuttle to the airport. We were in Lyon to interview Paul Bocuse (for YC!m), as he’s celebrating 40 years in the Guide Michelin with three stars. Paul gave us an interview and we feasted on his classic dishes - the soupe aux truffes noires he created for Giscard’d’Éstaing, the loup en croûte (fabulous!), the rouget barbet with the potato ‘scales’, and the volaille de Bresse en vessie - cooked sous-vide in a bag with the vegetables. Suffice it to say that I booked there and then for our anniversary in July. It was one of the finest meals I’ve ever eaten, in spite of the fact that I’d been to Paul Bocuse three times before.
Back to the UK late that night, with the weight of a ’phone call telling me that an old friend was on his deathbed. I was at school with Pete Wardle in the 1960s - he had become an accountant by day but a mad keen amateur racing driver by night and, well, weekends. Cancer hit him about ten years ago, and although it went into remission, it had crept up behind him again. I managed to get to see him again the following day - he lived in Cambridge - but he was dead ten days later. It’s a sobering thought that I’ve now lost five of my contemporaries from school and family, all my age or younger than me. Worrying? Yes. So why remain sober?
All material is copyright. Any comments or editorial enquiries please to john@johnradford.com
11-Mar-08 - Barcelona again, this time for Alimentaria, the biennial food and drink fair. In my never-ending quest for good-value accommodation I had made a reservation at the Hostal Hmb at c/Bonavista, 12 for €54.57 a night. This is not luxury accommodation: indeed it occupies the first floor of a tall building just off the Passeig de Gràcia. The lift is not for the claustrophobic and smelled of rotting cabbage on my visit, but they do share it with the rest of the building so you can hardly blame the hotel. The room was small but comfortable and had the three Radford essentials - bed, bath and bog, aka the three B’s. Apart from wifi internet access (also included free of charge) these are all I look for in a hotel room. I’m not interested in paying for glamorous suites with their own sitting room, jacuzzi, or pool (although to any travel editors who may be reading this, such generosity is always warmly welcomed). Carrer Bonavista has half a dozen excellent and value-for money restaurants and bars, but be warned: stray into the Passeig de Gracia (which has much of Barcelona’s most breathtaking architecture) and you’re in tourist-land. I was charged €21 for a brandy at a bar which I shall not name. The same brandy in Bonavista was €4. BTW if you’re there try El Toc de Gracia restaurant - lovely people, fab food.
The wine bit of Alimentaria is at the new exhibition centre on the Gran Vía, which is a steel and glass palace with enough room under cover for a small airport. This is rather appropriate as, when you go up the escalators from the main entrance (the loo is on your left. I notice these things) you’ll see an unmarked door on your right as you progress towards the exhibition area. Not many people know this but, beyond that door, there’s a walkway up to the roof where there are two helicopter landing pads - the very same from which we embarked during the Torres event in February. The exhibition itself is a bit of a marathon (if you’ve been to anything at ExCel in London you’ll know what I mean) but everybody was there and I was able to taste through wines from all over Spain. Particular memories are the range from Matarromera (declaration of interest - I have just written the Cigales chapter of their upcoming group book - Valdelosfrailes: cracking good wines), the Rueda and Toro wines from Dos Victorias (met them both, charming gels but, sadly, splitting up into red and white from this year). And lots of old chums, too many to mention. And the first chance to taste the new ‘low alcohol’ wine from Casa de la Ermita in Jumilla. You may have read about the rumblings over alcohol levels in wine. When I started in the trade wines would typically have 10.5% to about 12.5% alcohol, but nowadays it’s likely to be 14% or even 15%. It’s the result of the ‘new world’ boom - countries with wall-to-wall sunshine where they can ripen grapes to maximum sugar levels, effortlessly. Well, there’s been a backlash against high alcohol, and Casa de la Ermita have just launched Altos de Ermita at 6.5% abv to fulfil that demand. I tasted it at the show and, frankly, I think it’s on a hiding to nothing. The idea is that they make the wine normally (at around 13.5% abv) and then use what’s known as ‘spinning cone’ technology to extract excess alcohol. This has required new legislation from the EU, as drinks with this level of alcohol were not formerly allowed to call themselves ‘wine’. So they’re now ‘wine with reduced alcohol content’. It does have all the tasty bits of a full-strength wine, but the reduced alcohol makes it a bit ‘wimpy’. It’s like a big luxury car with a one-litre engine. It’ll get you there, but the journey may be rather tedious. If they’d dropped the strength to, say, 11% it might have been a goer... Oh, and it’s going to be about £12 a bottle on the UK market. Doomed, I’d say.
15-Feb-08 - Mendoza, in Argentina. The flight over the Andes only takes half an hour but the view of the snow-covered peaks is breathtaking. The O. Fournier winery here is brand new and state of the art, complete with its own restaurant, bordering a man-made lake. We ate under the stars (my first sighting of the Southern Cross) on decking by the lake: ricotta ice-cream, crispy sliced aubergine, grilled ribeye steak with sautéed vegetables and crushed ice watermelon. We drank the stunning white Urban Torrontés, then Clos de la Siete and Alfa Crux reds. The winery has a guest-house attached with a veranda looking right across to the Andes: breakfast the following morning was spectacular.
A similarly spectacular view was on offer at Séptima, which belongs to the Codorníu Cava group. This magnificent winery has a top-floor dining room with outside decking and yet another fabulous view of the Andes to the west. They were holding a ‘Master of Food and Wine Lunch’, and the main course was scallops. Sadly, I’m allergic to bivalves but the chef volunteered to rustle up a steak, Argentinian style (i.e. big and well-grilled). The wines were Syrah, Tempranillo and, of course, Malbec, and we tasted through the range after lunch.
But spectacular views of the snow-capped Andes (this part of the range is known as ‘La Plata’ - the ‘silver’ zone) come as standard in Mendoza. Our final visit was to Belasco de Baquedano in Cuyo, a winery owned by the family from La Navarra in Spain, perhaps best known for its production of Patxaran in Navarra. Their spanking new bodega has a high-ceilinged dining-room with the regulation views, and we enjoyed tortilla, melted cheese pies and squash and leek dumplings with Rosa de Argentina (pink) Malbec, Loan (it means ‘llama’) Malbec, Arguentota Malbec and Swinto (it means ‘crow’) Malbec, which is the bodega’s flagship wine. They only grow Malbec, as you may have noticed. We went on to olive and tomato bread, big steaks, potatoes and bacon rolls, goat’s cheese, and a pudding of roasted apple with quince jelly. It was quite a lunch, with wonderful wines.
One of our fondest memories of Mendoza had been a day shopping and eating in the city centre. Jill bought shoes, of course, as she always does, and they were astonishingly cheap, though not as cheap as the lunch we had at a small hotel off the main square: two steaks (no, since you ask, I never tire of steak), a salad, two bottles of wine, two coffees and two brandies, and change out of £19: amazing.
We finished our trip in Buenos Aires. Having wandered down the Avenida 9 de Julio, (the widest street in the world - some sources say nine lanes, others twelve. I counted them and there are twelve, in four groups of three, and the street is named after Argentina’s independence day) we had dinner at a pavement restaurant called Bernardo Café. It was simple, cheerful, and inexpensive - Argentineans are the most friendly people - and I realised when we got back to the hotel that I’d lost my mobile ’phone. We went back the next morning to see if they’d found it. They hadn’t, and I rang from a nearby call centre to have it shut down and, well, while we were there we thought we might as well have lunch. They’re big on gammon, too... I can recommend the NH Tower suites on the Calle Bolivar - luxurious accommodation within walking distance of the city centre. The only flummoxing thing on the trip was figuring out the difference between Chilean Pesos (then 960 to the pound) and Argentinian Pesos (then about 16 to the pound), and both written with the symbol $. Some places also invoice in American dollars, which are also listed as $, so check before you order - a bill for $1,000 could be £1.04, £164.57 or £500.
12-Feb-08 - Off to South America via Madrid, as the guest of wine producer José-Manuel Ortega of O. Fournier, who has wineries in the Maule Valley, Chile and the Uco Valley, Argentina as well as in the DO Ribera del Duero in Spain. The Chilean operation is based in a rambling old farmhouse surrounded by vines and an overgrown vegetable garden. This is summertime in Chile and the veranda behind the house was home to giant dragonflies, crazy rabbits and some brightly-coloured salamanders. The wines, Urban and Centauri, were excellent, served with dinner at a communal table in the old farmhouse. This is a new venture for José-Manuel and there’s still work to be done: the electrical supply out here in the sticks can be a bit unambitious, and large candles are always at hand. Water is pumped from wells locally by electricity, too, so you’re never quite sure if the loo will flush.
José-Manuel also arranged for us to visit the Torres winery in the Curicó Valley, just north of Maule. Torres was the first European wine company to invest in Chile - back in 1979 - and we tasted through the range of Santa Digna reds and whites and the excellent Brut Nature sparkler, in a beautiful glass-walled tasting room next to an indoor fountain. The range is, as with anything by Torres, excellent quality and well-represented on the UK market.
01-Feb-08 - Barcelona for the opening of the new Torres wine centre in Pacs del Penedès; In typically flambuoyant style, Miguel Torres had hired a fleet of helicopters to fly us over his vineyards in Penedès, Priorat and Conca de Barberà, followed by dinner catered by El Bulli (excellent!).
21-Jan-08 - Madrid for Madrid-Fusion: the spectacle of food and drink with presentations from a dozen of the world’s leading chefs, and investigative journalism for a major feature in
YES CHEF! magazine (YC!m - spring 2008) - restaurants Botín (the world’s oldest restaurant, in continuous service since 1725) with traditional roast suckling pig and baby lamb; Realcafé Bernabéu at the Real Madrid ground for a trendy post-show dinner featuring coca of cigalas, seabass and lychees, candied oranges and blue London gin (no, honest); then Coque in Humanes de Madrid, whose chef is my co-author Mario Sandoval (see below) - 29 courses on the tasting menu, some of them the size of teaspoons, all of them delicious; then DiverXo in the Tetuán district whose chef David Muñoz is only 29, but on the road to stardom with off-the-wall, space-age coking: six, twelve or eighteen courses of astonishing creativity.
OK - my ‘other’ New Year’s resolution has finally materialised: the blog. All material is copyright. Any comments or editorial enquiries please to john@johnradford.com
