Years ago, a senior European diplomat shared with me a theory as to why the food is better in France and Spain. He says food is part of the class system in Britain. A worker eats in a different style than his boss. This is not the case in France and Spain.
As I celebrated the new year in Galicia in northern Spain, I thought about this. The most rustic street cafe serves amazing plates of fresh seafood cooked to perfection in garlic and pimento sauces and glasses of local white wine. Octopus, a national dish, is always served on a small wooden plate everywhere.
It is also served at the Parador Hotel in the small fishing village of Cambados. Parador is a national hotel chain. The Spaniards do not have the ideological fear of the nation that sadly pervades Britain.
This means you can consciously work to benefit the local economy by specializing in local food and wine. Parador Costa da Morte, for example, opened in 2021 on Galicia’s west coast, just outside the fishing village of Muxía, as part of a plan to revive the local economy after the disastrous Prestige oil spill in 2002.
Paradors are often found in fine old buildings. In Cambados, his large 17th-century mansion, owned by a wealthy family, was gifted to the town in the 1960s by the last two sisters of the family, who sold it to the Parador Group . However, this building had structural problems, so it was demolished and rebuilt exactly like the original building.
Cambados’ central square is home to a 15th-century church and a 16th-century palace, and the coast is dotted with pools, islands, coves, and vast rock pools. It’s a wonderful place. In the winter, it is unaffected by modern society, but in the height of the summer (or so I heard) it is crowded with tourists. General de Gaulle stayed at the Parador in 1970, five months before his death, when he visited the cathedral in nearby Santiago. De Gaulle was also a gourmand.
So the New Year’s Eve dinner promised to be gourmet. The five-course meal, served undignified by a man and a woman who happily joked with customers as they worked, began with half a lobster accompanied by a glass of local Albariño.
And then came the main event. Thick and tender steak, medium rare, pink inside as it should be, no more. Not many restaurants can cook steaks for 120 people and fulfill each order with precision. Only white wine is made locally, so the steak was accompanied by a strong and smooth Ribera del Duero from far away in Castile.
Spaniards are slow eaters. By the time dessert arrived it was getting dangerously close to midnight. A small pack placed on each chair turned out to contain a pointy paper hat and a small plastic horn, and on the TV in the corner he watched two excited presenters appear. I did. Unfortunately, neither was the famous Cristina Pedroche. Her New Year’s Eve dress choice has been the subject of speculation in the Spanish press for weeks. The dresses are typically quite revealing, but on this night it was considered a little too risqué for the respectable middle-aged guests. Management chose another channel.
Instead of singing Auld Lang Syne, eat grapes at midnight while listening to the 12 bongs blaring from Madrid’s Puerta del Sol. Everyone has 12 bunches of grapes. Eat one in each bong and one for each of the next 12 months. Puerta del Sol looked like it could run faster than Big Ben. I was left behind at 5 o’clock in Bonn.
After midnight, we all went dancing.
Determined to never eat more than this for the rest of our lives, we wandered out for a short time and found a small bar full of people drinking wine and beer. We randomly stopped in for coffee and heard people ordering octopus and other seafood plates. You can eat delicious food in Galicia.