* * * * *
Kay and I left Bilbao on the morning of Monday, July 22, after the Hemingway Society Conference that took place in San Sebastián and Bilbao from July 14 - 20. My plan was to show her the spectacular fishing ports of the Basque Coast and have lunch in a seaside restaurante in one of them -- Bermeo, Lekeitio, Mundaka and Deba. We even had a reservation at Hotel El Puerto in Mundaka, as it turned out, the wrong date.
Every place we stopped was so packed with people that we would spend up to half hour fruitlessly looked for a place to park the car. At Bermeo, I gave up. Lekeitio, the same. At Mundaka, the situation was so impossible that I was glad that I messed up the reservation. The 100-Euro loss was worth not having to deal with that situation.
Every place we stopped was so packed with people that we would spend up to half hour fruitlessly looked for a place to park the car. At Bermeo, I gave up. Lekeitio, the same. At Mundaka, the situation was so impossible that I was glad that I messed up the reservation. The 100-Euro loss was worth not having to deal with that situation.
Espinal (Navarra).
Finally, I gave up and decided to head for the mountains. I booked us in into a hostal in Espinal on the pilgrim's Camino de Santiago. It was a wise move. More on Espinal soon, but one of the places we visited was the bakery, Pandería-Okindegia Erburu, that Jim Michener wrote about in Iberia.
"The success of our picnic was assured by the fine tins Patter had bought and by the rare site I had selected, but insurance was taken out when Bob Daley, fearing that we didn’t have enough food, stopped in the town of Espinal, and while we seven studied the fine modernistic church, quite radical in its architecture, he bought an extra loaf of bread, and in doing so, acquired a culinary masterpiece: it was round and flat, about the size of a large chair cushion and not more than two inches thick, so that it was practically all crust, and better crust was never baked. . .
Bread at Pandería-Okindegia Erburu, Espinal (Navarra).
. . . For some hours we wandered along the rivulets and talked of the feria at Pamplona. One group of trees had strange knees that protruded to make fine chairs, and in them we sat as we discussed the bullfighters, the disappointments they had caused and the near-tragedies that had occurred at the running of the bulls. As we ate, and relished the bread from Espinal, John Fulton told of the American military personnel in Spain who had planeloads of American bread, white, gooey, lacking in everything except chemicals, flown across the Atlantic to the PX’s “so that our children can grow up knowing what real bread is.” The idea was so fascinating that no one could think of any comment."--James A. Michener, Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections (p. 624). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Flowers on the Camino de Santiago in Espinal (Navarra).
* * * * *
(Available
at Amazon, Despana (NYC), LaTienda.com, La Boca Restaurant (Santa Fe,
NM) and at Kitchen Arts & Letters bookstore (NYC).
Comments are welcome and encouraged.
Text and photographs
copyright by Gerry Dawes©2021. Using photographs without crediting Gerry Dawes©2021 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?
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
"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
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
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