things we eat and drink, at home and out and about
We went to València last week and… it is definitely a place where you can eat well!
Big Zuu recently visited the city and surrounding area for his programme called “12 Dishes in 12 Hours”; he did a great job of tasting what the area has to offer, and here is our version, I suppose. Though we haven’t counted the number of dishes and this is more like a week… anyway, to the food!
Continue reading “Valencia, February 2023”
This was the second birthday surprise for my mum! Lunch at the famous Casa Julio in Fontanars.
The story goes that it was a traditional restaurant, then got an ambitious chef, they did really well, so well they got a Michelin star at some point, then got really stressed about the implications of having the star, and then gave it up and went back to just serving nice food but without the added stress of being in the Michelin guide.
Star or no star, we did want to go both for the first time and also back again—some of us thought we had been there before in one of the pre-star incarnations. But weren’t really sure, as when restaurants are “traditional” it’s sometimes hard to distinguish between them, specially when that visit was many years ago. Had we been there? Did it really matter? No!
Continue reading “Casa Julio (Fontanars dels Alforins)”
We visited this winery on the same week that we went to Pago de Tharsys.
How often do you pack two winery visits in a week? Very rarely, I’d say! But it was really insightful as we still had the previous experience fresh in our minds, and it was easy to compare styles between the two.
There are plenty of similarities: both are based in the Valencia province. Both are inland, in mountainous areas, way above 500 m over sea level. They’re independent (not owned by a big group), and they offer various types of products, from entry level to premium wines.
Judging by that, you could expect the second visit to be predictable, samey, boring… but it couldn’t have been any more different!
Continue reading “A visit to Bodegas Arráez (La Font de la Figuera, Valencia)”
(Continuing our Requena trip – read part 1 here).
After our copious lunch, we walked, rather than taking a taxi, to the next stop in our journey: Pago de Tharsys, a winery.
I had initially tried to book a taxi to drive us there, but the driver that picked us in the morning swore that this would be a really nice and quiet walk, and it would be very good to help with the digestion after lunch.
We visited Requena last month. Why not? It’s good to do something different and get out of our Russafa capsule!
Plus it has something that we’re deeply interested in: wines, and we got to try the new high speed train line from Valencia—or, new to us at least, as it’s been running for a while now. Double bonus!
Continue reading “A visit to Requena”