Adventure in Sevilla, April, 2025. With my best amigo Manolo Esquivias Fedriani at Cafetería Donald with Jake Myers, Matador Henry Higgins, Kenneth Tynan and Jim Myers and at Puebla del Río with Fandango Singer Pepe Ventura and Family

 

* * * * * 

 

 Gerry Dawes and owner Mariano García at Cafetería-Restaurante Donald in Sevilla.

 

April 10, 2025, after our splendid luncheon at El Manijero in Sevilla, my soul brother Sevillano Manolo Esquivias and I walked over to Restaurante Donald, officially Cafetería Donald, a full-service restaurant frequented by everybody who is anybody in Sevilla. Through Manolo Esquivias, I have known owner Mariano García for several years. We went there to meet up with Manolo’s and his wife Mari Carmen Onrubia’s eldest daughter Carmen and her daughter Alegria, a sweetheart of a little girl who was born with Down's Syndrome. 

 

 Manolo Esquivias and his wife Mari Carmen Onrubia’s eldest daughter Carmen and her daughter Alegria, a sweetheart of a little girl who was born with Down's Syndrome.

 

Mariano García--who coincidentally has the same name as one of my best friends, Spain's most revered winemaker Mariano Garcia*--was there and sat down with us.   Restaurante Donald is also a hangout for top bullfighters.

 

 Mariano García,  owner of Restaurante Donald, officially Cafetería Donald, a full-service restaurant frequented by everybody who is anybody in Sevilla. 

 

I don’t know how it came up, but he brought out a book, the biography of Henry Higgins, To Be a Matador, a book that I had not seen since the 1970s, when it was published. Henry wrote the book back in the 1970s with an acquaintance of mine, Jim Myers, and the Foreword was written by the great Kenneth Tynan, whom I also knew and with whom I had a couple of adventures in Ronda and in Jerez in the early 1970s. In fact, Ken Tynan wrote a wonderful letter introducing me to the great Gerald Brennan, then a hero of mine and the author of such influential books as South From Granada, The Face of Spain and The Spanish Labyrinth. 

 

 

 

I had met Henry Higgins a couple of times with American Matador John Fulton and I knew Jim Myers but had lost track of him. Higgins died in a hang gliding accident in Mojácar (Almeria) in 1978 and Tynan died in 1980 of pulmonary emphysema, a condition he aggravated by chain smoking. So two of the men on the title page had passed from among us, but as I was soon to find, Jim Myers is still very much alive and living in Montreal. 

 

I told Mariano García that I had known all three of the men on the title page and he told us that Jim Myers’ son Jake lived in an apartment nearby, so he called him. Jake Myers soon appeared, and we began a conversation about his father, which turned into a phone call to Montreal, which reconnected me with Jim. Unbelievable. 

 

 Jake Myers.

 

Mariano told me that Jake was a movie producer, but did not elaborate. I would find out later that he is Jake Myers, Executive Producer of Mission Impossible: Fallout, the Jack Reacher series and numerous other major films. Jake sent me e-mails for both him and his father, so I sent then both the pdf of my book Sunset in a Glass: Adventures of a Food and Wine Road Warrior in Spain.

 

My adventures in Spain continue. 

 

Friday I spent the whole afternoon in La Puebla del Río with Manolo and my long-time friend Pepe Ventura, the great Flamenco singer who is a specialist in fandangos de Huelva, my favorite Flamenco genre. 

 

 

 

We had lunch at his son Juan Pablo’s restaurant El Cine, in the center of La Puebla. Juan Pablo is as handsome as his father and has a lovely wife and two very attractive children, a boy and a baby girl. Besides being the owner of the restaurant, he is a picador for Spain’s top artistic Matador, the legendary Morante de la Puebla. 

 

But, more about that adventure Later, probably with yet another milestone adventure to relate.

 

And, at Donald, I had some more salpicon de mariscos.

 

 

 

 Salpicon de mariscos, Cafetería-Restaurante Donald, Sevilla.

*With one of my oldest and dearest friends, now coming up on forty years, Mariano García (coincidentally with the same name as Mariano García, owner of Cafetería Donald), who for thirty years was the winemaker at Vega Sicilia, and for the past 20 years has been considered Spain´s greatest winemaker. At Verdura y Brasa Restaurante in Madrid, we are wearing bibs because we are eating grilled calçots (large green onions; foreground), with romesco sauce.  

 

Photo of winemaker Mariano García and me by a friend Carmen Ruíz.

 

Gerry Dawes, author of Sunset in a Glass:  Adventures of a Food and Wine Road Warrior in Spain Volume I (Available on Amazon (Fuck Jeff Bezos!); Volume II coming in the fall of 2025.)  

 

The SECOND EDITION of Sunset in a Glass: Adventures of a Food and Wine Road Warrior Enhanced Photography Edition Volume I (of IV) has some new photographs and text, The book is a collection of non-fiction stories about the adventures of recognized Spanish food, wine and travel authority Gerry Dawes, recipient of the prestigious Spanish National Gastronomy Prize.  Sunset in a Glass is illustrated with more than 160 color and black-and-white photographs chronicling adventures from decades of living and traveling in Spain. The Foreword by star Chef José Andrés. The First Edition has 50 Five-star reviews on Amazon..

The stories in Sunset in a Glass are distilled from decades of crisscrossing Spain accumulating adventures with the likes of José Andrés, Anthony Bourdain, James Earl Jones, Kenneth Tynan, Keith Hernandez, Thomas Keller, Ferran Adria, top chefs and restaurateurs, star winemakers and artisan wine producers, professional Ibérico ham carvers, bullfighters, flamenco artists, friends of Ernest Hemingway and a wonderful collection of women in Spain.

“Gerry Dawes, the unbridled Spanish food and wine enthusiast cum expert whose writing, photography, and countless crisscrossings of the peninsula have done the most to introduce Americans—and especially American food professionals—to my country’s culinary life. He has connected with all manner of people working at every level and in every corner of Spain. You can step into a restaurant in the smallest town in Spain, and it turns out they know Gerry somehow.”—José Andrés, chef-restaurateur-humanitarian, Nobel Prize nominee.

 

Comments are welcome and encouraged.

 

Text and photographs copyright by Gerry Dawes©2025.  Using photographs without crediting Gerry Dawes©2025 on Facebook.  Publication without my written permission is not authorized.

* * * * *

  Shall deeds of Caesar or Napoleon ring
More true than Don Quixote's vapouring?
Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod
Than Rocinante stumbling up to God?

 

Poem by Archer M. Huntington inscribed under the Don Quixote on his horse Rocinante bas-relief sculpture by his wife, Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington,

in the courtyard of the Hispanic Society of America’s incredible museum at 613 W. 155th Street, New York City.

 _______________________________________________________________________________________________

 

In 2019, again ranked in the Top 50 Gastronomy Blogs and Websites for Gastronomists & Gastronomes in 2019 by Feedspot. (Last Updated Oct 23, 2019) 

"The Best Gastronomy blogs selected from thousands of Food blogs, Culture blogs and Food Science blogs in our index using search and social metrics. We’ve carefully selected these websites because they are actively working to educate, inspire, and empower their readers with frequent updates and high-quality information."  

36. Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel

 
About Gerry Dawes

My good friend Gerry Dawes, the unbridled Spanish food and wine enthusiast cum expert whose writing, photography, and countless crisscrossings of the peninsula have done the most to introduce Americans—and especially American food professionals—to my country's culinary life." -- Chef-restaurateur-humanitarian José Andrés, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and Oscar Presenter 2019

Gerry Dawes is the Producer and Program Host of Gerry Dawes & Friends, a weekly radio progam on Pawling Public Radio in Pawling, New York (streaming live and archived at www.pawlingpublicradio.org and at www.beatofthevalley.com.)

Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià. 

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés. 

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009. 

 

Pilot for a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
 

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain  

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com