Where and What to Eat in Luanco

 

All of the tables were full outside, but when we walked into the Bar el Muelle in Luanco, the old men playing dominoes and cards were clearly annoyed. It was 8:30 pm, dinner wouldn’t be served at the restaurants for another two or three hours, and this was the only place where people seemed to be eating. Everywhere else, only cups of café con leche or big bottles of sidra were being consumed, but here, everyone was attacking plates piled high with grilled, fresh sardines or tiny bígaros (little sea snails called winkles in the UK) or dishes of sliced chorizo simmered in more sidra.

Sidra is a potent cider specific to northern Spain that tastes nothing like the hard cider or applejack we have in the US. Its flavor is more reminiscent of flat beer or maybe the warm, unfizzy bitter they serve in England. It lacks all the sweetness of apples and the taste you eventually acquire for it is more one of toleration than true appreciation. The reason to drink sidra, really, is the fun of pouring it. You hold the bottle high and the glass low, and what winds up in the glass has been mellowed by the oxygen it picks up during its trip on the way down. Its mild carbonation has been activated too, and you drink it off in a swallow and start the whole process over again. The most astonishing sight is the waiters and longtime sidra drinkers who can hold their fragile, thin-walled glasses behind their backs and pour the sidra over their shoulders without missing--much.

We, apparently, signaled an invasion to the old men, who swept up their clacking dominoes, exchanged euros and coins with each other (they play strictly for money), and finished off their beer or sidra. Once their tables were vacated, new, younger customers poured in and the real eating began.

 

The problem with tapas, like dim sum, is that it’s very easy to overestimate how much you really can eat and almost impossible to remember that you’re going to have a full dinner in a couple of hours. Obviously, you can make a meal of tapas alone, but then, you’d miss all the other wonderful dishes of northern  Spain, like fabada or fabes con almejas, full of fat, creamy white beans, which are served only in restaurants. So, if you’re like me, you’ll end up with plates of half-eaten grilled shrimp, sweet and salty, with the heads still on, or baskets of crumbled bread, or that one lone crusty, grilled sardine that can’t quite tempt you anymore with its smoky allure.

 

We came in looking for percebes (Northern Atlantic goose barnacles) which look as if someone chopped off the fingers of a dozen or so witches, complete with pointy, blackened nails, and piled them on a plate, but settled instead for a dish of bigaros, the tiny sea snails I mentioned earlier. Their insides bounce out like a little spring and you pop them in your mouth with the pin and take a swallow of sidra to enhance their addictive brininess. It’s easy to absent-mindedly eat a whole plate of them while talking and drinking, and you’ll find yourself poking inside empty shells twice over in the hopes of finding one bigaro that might have been missed.

The sun won’t set until at least 10:30 pm, so like the rest of the town, you’ll roam the narrow streets and peer into shop windows, or perhaps stop for another drink and stand outside on the sidewalk with your glass (all the tables will be taken by now) in your hand until it’s finally time to eat again. Once you see other people starting to go into the restaurants, you’ll look for the most crowded (always an indication of good food in Spain), and hope there will be a table overlooked in the corner, ready and waiting just for you.

 

More photos after the jump . . .

Comments

[cyril lichtensteiger]

Hi Brandon: great show on email. I loved your pictures and the comments about Luanco, I always thought that MY FATHER IN LAW said Luarca. Shows that I am human too! We, some of us anyway, look forward to going to España next year, 2008. See you there? Love and kisses to you, your significant only and the two great señoritas that follow you around. Cyril, husband of the real spaniard Dolores. cirilo.

[Brandon]

Hey Cyril! Thanks for reading! Actually, there's a port town named LUARCA too--and it's only about a half an hour from LUANCO. We visited Luarca on our last trip, and I spent all of this trip calling Luanco, naturally, Luarca. I even misspelled it here (I think I corrected all the times I did that). I love Spain, but trying to keep those two names straight almost killed me.