Then up a side street, I saw a sign that said "Ostras (oysters) - Bar Pintos" and pointed in the direction of the restaurant. Down the street a hundred feet was a nondescript building of recent vintage, but the cooking smells emitting from the spot and the sounds of diners inside sounded promising.
Bar Pintos in Santo Tomé, the ancient fishing port barrio of Cambados (Pontevedra), Galicia.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.
I climbed the half-flight of stairs and entered a simple, clean dining room with a few tables filled. I was seated by Mari Carmen one of the two sisters--MariaTeresa is the other--and given a plastic covered menu that consisted mostly of quite inexpensive seafood items.
Oysters, Galicia.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.
Of course, I had to try a half-dozen raw oysters with the house's (and only) own Albariño, then a square of tuna empanada and a vieira (a baked scallop with onion and bread crumbs). Mari Carmen and Maria Tere took me into their kitchen and showed me plates of beberechos (cockles), navajas (razor clams), nécoras (small crabs), camarones (small shrimp) and zamburiñas (small scallops, still with their coral).
Maria Tere y Mari Carmen Pintos DaPorta at Bar Pintos, Barrio de Santo Tomé, Cambados,
with a lineup of the day's specialties: cigalas, beberechos, zamburiñas, navajas, nécoras, and camarones.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.
Tomorrow, I thought this would be the perfect casual place to introduce Chefs Chiarello and McIlwaith, both just off long plane trips from California. They will be tired, but hungry. An inexpensive, but delicious lunch at Bar Pintos, then a siesta at Casa Rosita would be the best way to get them started. I paid the bill and drove back to Casa Rosita, where I decided to have their salpicón de mariscos and a beer before heading up for my own siesta. They wouldn't sell me a half ración, even though I was booked into the hotel for three nights, so I opted for a whole portion, ate about half of it and went up for a nap. I have had many other better versions of this dish (one of my favorites), most notably at Casa Rafa in Madrid and at Restaurante Mirador de Doñana and Casa Bigote, both in Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
Salpicón de mariscos seafood melange in a vinaigrette), Casa Rosita Hotel Restaurante.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.
A couple of hours later, I awoke to go to the bathroom and either a bad oyster and something in the salpicón--the lukewarm oysters, number three of six I suspect as the culprit--hit me full force and I spent the better part of the next three hours worshipping off-and-on, off-and-on at the ivory throne, sometimes clinging to cold porcelain projective vomiting and telling myself how glad I was to be back in Spain again.
But a bad piece of shellfish was not going to stop me. I still planned to take Chiarello and McIlwiath to Casa Pintos the next day. I just didn't intend to eat oysters or let them eat them. Why would I go back to Casa Pintos? Because a bad oyster is a bad oyster. I got one in a oyster dish once at Sign of the Dove in New York (That was an adventure involving the George Washington Bridge and the woods off the Palisades Parkway in New Jersey!). My ex-wife got one at the Oyster Bar at Grand Central and I got a bad piece of shellfish at one of my favorite restaurants in Sanlúcar de Barrameda and something worse in Burgundy. This happens during the course of in-depth gastronomic research and it can be Hell, but as they say "somebody has to do it." Mercifully, over more than forty years of traveling, eating and drinking in Spain, it has not happened that often.
Stay tuned, this was just Day Zero!
* * * * *
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.
________________________________________________________________________
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's Spain selected as
#38/50 Top Gastronomy Blogs
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.
Photo by Hernan Ronnie Rodriguez, JBF Awards 2014.
".
. .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.
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