Category Archives: restaurants

ispal – new chef, new menu

04 Thursday Oct 2018

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This week (on October 4) I was invited, along with other journalists, bloggers and regular commentators, to the presentation of this season’s tasting menu at Restaurante Ispal. Ispal has been the dream of Pedro Sánchez-Cuerda Rodríguez (director of Grupo La Raza) for the past 15 years, and together with Antonio Bort (his executive chef), and Ispal’s new head chef Rubén García Chacón, Pedro’s dream has now been realised.

The objective of Ispal, which opened a year ago, is to showcase the traditional cooking of Sevilla, using indigenous products and providing support for local family businesses, and then reinterpreting these popular dishes by elevating them to haute cuisine. This, by definition, involves the use of the highest quality ingredients, meticulously prepared and presented.

The local ingredients include salt from the salt flats of Utrera, cheeses from Castilblanco de los Arroyos, the famous tomatoes of Los Palacios, goat kid from Los Corrales, fish from La Puebla del Río, wines from Sierra Norte de Sevilla, Ronda, and sherry wines from Jerez.

The tasting menu, which you can see below, was spectacular. Many thanks to Fernando Huibrodo for the invitation, and to the entire Ispal team, including maître Alonso Reche and sommelier Cisco Nuñez.

Pedro Sanchez-Cuerda Rodriguez – director of Grupo La Raza
Antonio Bort – executive chef of Grupo La Raza
Rubén Chacón – head chef at Ispal
Fernando Huidobro – president of Andalucía Academy of Gastronomy & Tourism

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orio

03 Wednesday Oct 2018

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The new Restaurant Orio has been open for a few weeks, but the official inauguration for a select group of press and hospitality professionals was held this week (October 3), and I was fortunate enough to be invited.

The Sagardi group also has Orio locations in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, which are aimed at a more day to day market, incorporating a Basque style pintxo bar (Sagardi was founded in the Basque country) as well as a restaurant featuring traditional Basque cuisine.

The front of the premises is a spacious pintxo bar opening onto Calle Santo Tomas, with a terrace facing the Archivos de India, and the bar itself on one side, with a very appetising array of Basque style pinxos so typical in Bilbao and San Sebastián, but something of a novelty in Sevilla. We got to try a few as an appetiser, my favourite being the chistorras (small spicy sausages).

Beyond the bar are two dining rooms leading out to a second terrace on Calle Miguel Mañara, with space for around thirty diners. Decoration is minimalist, but with lots of wood, and a big mural of a fisherman.

Lunch was a nine course tasting menu (including dessert), starting with oysters and working through a prawn carpaccio, salad, monkfish, and roasted piquillo peppers to the grilled beef finale. The quality was excellent throughout, and it looks like Orio will be a welcome addition to dining out in Sevilla. Check out the photos below (but only if you’re not hungry!)

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on being pig headed

15 Saturday Sep 2018

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WARNING: Look away now vegetarians!

Some people think that meat-eaters should have to either hunt their own food or watch animals being slaughtered in order to pass some sort of “carnivore test”. I am not one of these people. But while I am normally not squeamish about eating meat, I have to admit that I wouldn’t really enjoy tucking into this guy’s crispy roasted face, even though I am sure it is delicious. How about you?

tribeca-cañabota dream team

27 Friday Jul 2018

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I came back a day early from my Málaga Getaway this week because I had been invited to a gastronomy event on Tuesday that I simply couldn’t miss, featuring the dream team of Tribeca and Cañabota cooking together. It was to be one of the most unforgettable meals of my life … but I am getting ahead of myself. I’ve known Cañabota since its inception two years ago, when Juanlu Fernández joined forces with Pablo Giménez and Eduardo Guardiola from Tribeca. The latter I finally got to know in person when friends invited me to join them there for dinner earlier this year. So I was very keen to see – and taste – what they would come up with together.

The event was held at Tribeca and when I arrived with the other lucky guests, we were taken downstairs to see the various fish and seafood that were to become our lunch, and were given a lecture on the sustainability of fishing by Eduardo. Then it was back upstairs for a masterclass in the breaking down of a fish, in this case a 15.2 kilo grouper, showing how every piece is used and nothing is wasted. And then it was time to eat!

The menu was a bit like a “showdown” with both teams creating different dishes using the same main ingredient (prawns, sea anemone, squid, grouper, skate…) along with a couple of joint efforts. Each dish was paired with well-chosen wines, including two manzanilla sherries to start off with, then two white wines (Albariño & Priorat), and moving on to two reds, dry (Mallorca) and sweet (Alicante).

The food was spectacular, and my only complaint was that there was just too much of it to comfortably finish all the dishes (luckily a friend sitting next to me was happy to help out). And while I appreciated the more clever and complex dishes, my personal favourites were the ones that were the most simply prepared, either lightly steamed or chargrilled. But it was all wonderful. Of course the service was  impeccable and the overall experience was one I will always remember.

Many thanks to Fernando Huidrobo for the invitation, and to the fabulous Tribeca and Cañabota teams. Photos below…

Tribeca
Chaves Nogales 3
Tel 954 42 60 00

Cañabota
Orfila 3
Tel 954 870 298 / 690 876 523

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turísmo & gastronomía

13 Friday Jul 2018

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On Thursday (July 12) I was fortunate enough to be one of the invitees to the Hi Southern Tourism Meeting session on Tourism and Gastronomy (quite an honour, as I was, as far as I know, the only non-Spanish person present), a recognition of the growing importance of food tourism to both these sectors.

The venue was in what is now the Carriage Museum (since 1999), which was built during the 16-17th centuries as a Carmelite convent, and later served as the seat of the Spanish-Cuban Institute of History. Once a landmark, it was overshadowed by the apartment blocks of Los Remedios in the 1940s.

The event was hosted by local newspaper, the ABC, and introductions were made by editor Javier Rubio. The first presentation was given by Marcos Tarancón, of the Fundación Cruzcampo, showing their project to convert the old Cruzcampo factory in Nervión into a new tourist attraction for the city with cafés, restaurants and a large open garden space. The second was by Irene de Castro for Gonzalez Byass and the V Tio Pepe Festival, coming up in August at their bodega in Jerez.

This was followed by two round table discussions chaired by Isabel Aguilar of GURME.es, the first featuring local restauranteurs Juanlu Dorado (Cañabota), Juan Gómez (La Azotea), and Gonzalo Jurado (Tradevo) on the challenges of operating in a city with large numbers of tourists, and the second with Benjamin Lana of Madrid Fusión and Iñigo Iribarnegaray of San Sebastián Gastronómika, two cities that have become well known for food tourism.

Afterwards there was an opportunity to meet some of the participants, and other friends in the hospitality industry, over snacks and coffee.

Thanks as always to ABC Sevilla and sponsors of the event (CaixaBank, City Expert, CitySightseeing, Fundación Cruzcampo, MA Abogados) for a useful and interesting morning.

Also posted on Azahar Sevilla