The final Gaudí stop is La Padrera by night, Gaudí’s last and most modernistic building. The building consists of four basic areas, each with its own staircase to the roof, which is a fantastical Disney World-looking area. All the structures on the roof are not only artistic, they’re fully functional as well. The building got its name, which means “quarry,” from the townspeople, due to the massive amounts of stone used in building it.
Now we begin the scrumptious food portion of this week’s adventure. Restaurante Can Pineda serves up Barcelona’s version of soul food, many of the dishes having the same ingredients as those found in the ‘down home’ restaurants in the US, but the Catalonian version, of course: chitlins, pig’s feet and chickpeas, but also langoustine. And for the same reason as they were made in the US by mostly slave, but also poor white families: economy. Also like soul food in the US, the original cooks who made these dishes before the better times came along are dying off, making the remaining ones in higher demand. And of course it wouldn’t be a European restaurant without wine and dessert.
Can Pineda is another of Barcelona’s externally “grey,” nondescript, easily overlooked places, where the interior, and especially the food, is breathtaking in comparison.
From here, the two guys head for the Basque country, specifically Ovieda, Asturias, and Covadonga, leaving Claudia behind in her hometown. This area, says the Iron Chef, is famous for its cidrerias, its cider producers. Cider was always considered the poor people’s drink, while now it’s everybody’s favorite. And speaking of favorites, Camilo de Blas is considered by many to be the best pastry shop in beautiful and beautifully maintained 8th-century Ovieda, which is also the third most-important Christian pilgrimage destination in Europe after Fatima and Lourdes.
After loading up with plenty of pastry provisions for their coming mountain trek, the guys take a behind-the-scenes kitchen tour, and then get on their way to their next stop, La Basílica de Covadonga, backdropped by the most famous mountain in Spain. A nearly 90-degree vertical climb is required to surmount it, and it was the scene of the opening battle in the Spanish version of “Custer’s Last Stand,” when the Spaniards were in the process of taking back their country from the Moors. In addition to the mountain, there’s the church and La Santa Cueva, the Sacred Cave, where a vision was supposed to have occurred. These goings-on at Covadonga in the former kingdom of Asturias are also the underpinnings of the Don Quixote story.
Article comments
1 - Victor
I'm afraid you're a bit confused about the Basque Country. It's not the hole region on the northern coast of Spain. It's just the eastern part of it. Asturias is another region (another "comunidad autonoma") and Cantabria is another one settled between Asturias and The Basque Country.
2 - Lou
I stand corrected! Thanks for the relearning experience - really. I used to know that at one time. Memory's the second thing to go!
3 - Christopher Rose
There's also Galicia, which is the west end of the north coast. Oh, and it is Oviedo, not Ovieda.
4 - ASTURIAN GUY
Just a clarification.............
PRINCIPALITY OF ASTURIAS IS NOT BASQUE COUNTRY, IT'S JUST ASTURIAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
P.D: Called AsturiEs in Asturian.......