September 3, 2023 Snack - at Padron Market. Lunch - A Casa dos Martinez
We ate more today and traveled more than usual.
We awakened at 8:00 and I ate the palmier I bought last night with a cup of tea.
Then we drove to Padron for its market day. Padron had the largest market we have been to. It stretched for at least a mile through the center of the city and included its massive market hall that was three blocks long.
There were lots of clothing booths, but lots of food vendors. When we arrived around 10:00 lots of folks were buying churros and chocolate dipped churros from the churreria stands. We walked for a while until I became tired and wanted to sit and read and we were lucky to find three restaurants in large dining tents with grills in the street area and boiling pots of octopus. We stopped at the tent that had racks of pork ribs grilling and found a table at around 11:00 and ordered beers, water, a rack of ribs, and bread.
I sat and read while Suzette went clothes shopping and found two dresses.
Suzette then returned and ate several ribs and drank a beer.
We had lunch reservations at Casa dos Martinez at 2:00, so around 12:30 we walked north toward the restaurant until we heard music. We found the musicians in a small square and listened to their traditions Galician songs and music played with drums and bagpipes for an hour, sitting at a small cafe. Suzette drank a vermouth and I drank a coffee with whipped milk.
We then walked to the restaurant but were about 10 minutes early, so we walked the old church that originally housed the head of St. James before it was moved to Santiago de Compostella.
We then returned to the restaurant at 2:00 and were welcomed by Senor Martinez. It soon became apparent that the restaurant was essentially a one man show which is remarkable for a Michelin recommended restaurant.
He is a photographer and he showed us to boards with pictures of each of the eight dishes offered today.
We chose a tomato salad with smoked anchovies and a bowl of marinated shelled mussels and razor clams, a shrimp and potato salad and a rice with cuttlefish and passed on another rice dish and an entrecôte.
He asked us whether we wanted red of white wine and then answered his own question and brought us a white wine that was a Ribeiro blend of Godella and Treixadura grapes that was a solid wine with great depth of flavor.
The Treixadura grape
This is Galicia’s second white grape, the principal one in the Ribeiro area and the third one in terms of production in the Monterrei, Rías Baixas and Ribeira Sacra areas, although in last case with much less production. It is one of the oldest varieties in Galicia, with the earliest historical reference dating back to the 18th century.
Then he brought the first two dishes, the mussels and razor clams in vinaigrette and the tomato and anchovy salad. We did not get the extremely strong feeling we got from the tomato salad at Cafe Santa and the mussels and razor clams were just that, nothing special.
The tomato salad with anchovies and the marinated mussels and razor clams
We ate some of the tomatoes and then Martinez brought the order two dishes the shrimp with potato salad and the rice with cuttlefish.
Suzette would barely touch these two dishes. I ate most of the potato salad because it reminded me of the wonderful shrimp with Italian salad I used to eat in Copenhagen in 1968, but this salad was much more potato dominant, which detracted from its freshness and light mayonnaise texture. I ate some of the rice with cuttlefish but it was not to my liking. The only good thing I can say about the food was that it relied on its own sauce and seasonings instead of salt to flavor the food.
The bill was 98€ and we had to pay in cash, perhaps so Martinez could skim some.
When Martinez asked about dessert and I said yes, he asked one or two and I replied one, fearing the worst.
But dessert was the best dish of the meal and the only creative one. It was a slice of almond cake on the bottom and cheese cake on the top served with a large scoop of lemon ice cream in a puddle of almond cream that was fabulous. We could not stop eating it.
My conclusion after eating at two Michelin recommended restaurants is that they tend to serve solid conservative traditional cuisine with little or no creativity.
That may be why the Nove group formed; to take traditional Galician cuisine in a new creative direction.
When we finished at 4:00 we decided to drive to Santiago Compostella, because we knew we could not face our friends and admit we did not go to the most famous city in Galicia. Santiago de Compostela is the theoretical repository of the head of Saint James and capital of Galicia.
Here is the history: for more history check
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela
According to medieval legend, the remains of the apostle James, son of Zebedee were brought to Galicia for burial, where they were lost. Eight hundred years later the light of a bright star guided a shepherd, Pelagius the Hermit, who was watching his flock at night to the burial site in Santiago de Compostela.[4] This site was originally called Mount Libredon [gl] and its physical topography leads prevalent sea borne winds to clear the cloud deck immediately overhead.[5] The shepherd quickly reported his discovery to the bishop of Iria, Theodemir.[4] The bishop declared that the remains were those of the apostle James and immediately notified King Alfonso II in Oviedo.[4] To honour St. James, the cathedral was built on the spot where his remains were said to have been found. The legend, which included numerous miraculous events, enabled the Catholic faithful to bolster support for their stronghold in northern Spain during the Christian crusades against the Moors, but also led to the growth and development of the city.
We drove up the hills until we thought we were near the church and found a parking garage and parked and walked about 1/2 mile to the church and huge central plaza filled with tourists and tired pilgrims resting on their packs on the flagstones of the plaza.
We took a picture of the bronze marker celebrating the Pilgrimage Primativo that Willy walked from Lugo to Santiago Compostela.
Then we went into the museum in the large cathedral you see behind us, which is a gothic style church and looked at the original carvings from 1188. And then we found copies of the 1929 murals that were painted by a painter named Juan Luis ???
We went to the other side of the church and climbed four sets of stairs to see a 1920 tryptic by him and then walked back to the car and drove home.
It was a long day and we had walked over 3 miles but worth the effort.
We could not eat or drink anything after our huge lunch, so went to bed after seeing another amazing sunset.
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