August 8, 2024 Lunch - Restaurant Del Sol at the Delta, Espanola Dinner - Spiana in La Veta, Colorado.

August 8, 2024 Lunch - Restaurant Del Sol at the Delta, Espanola  Dinner - Spiana in La Veta, Colorado. 

We got up and packed up and left by 8:30. I got up at 6:30 and showered and dressed and then ate a pain au chocolates with a latte macchiato.

We drove to Espanola and crossed the River onto US 285 and soon came to Restaurant del Sol at the Delta, Apparently the delta where the Chana River meets the Rio Grande at the south end is Espanola.

The restaurant was huge with a huge banquet room.

We sat in the restaurant. We had a good waitress who tempted us with delicious choices. For example, she recommended the guacamole and we ordered it and it was just as creamy as that which we ate in Uruapan.  We shared an specialty of the house, a braised taco filled with BBQ and cheese and served with beef consommé, refried beans, and a Jalapeño and a habanero crema.

We enjoyed the dish but our stomachs reacted a bit a few hours later.

The refried beans were my favorite type, a mixture of whole cooked beans and creamy refried beans.

The waitress again got us to try the chocoflan, saying, “It is the best. You must try it.”

We ordered a slice. It was a moist chocolate cake with a layer of chungas type of flan on top. It was rather special K but we were full and could not enjoy it the way we should. I think chungas uses cream and in this case was baked either with or after the chocolate cake.  The chungas had a drier texture than regular flan that is a custard and probably had some flour added to it.

After lunch we drove to La Veta and when we turned onto Main Street a few minutes after 3:00, saw Elaine who directed us to the apartment.

The apartment was a high ceiling upstairs of a converted old commercial building with a lovely large living and dining area surrounded by three bedrooms.

 We talked and Suzette and I drank a beer to settle our stomachs. Willy arrived about 45 minutes after we arrived. We watched the Olympics and the news and Suzette and I each also took naps and at 7:00 we five walked to Spike Restaurant around the corner from the apartment in downtown La Veta. 

It was a newly remodeled property also connected to an old hotel. 

Our waitress was an animated person, who Billy guessed was an actress who combined waiting tables with her acting career. She described the dishes and specials vividly. We decided to share two appetizers for the table, the burrata plate and steamed mussels. Billy, Elaine, and I each ordered the duck breast special that was served on a plate of soft polenta and sautéed zucchini fingers sauced with a raspberry coulis, that sounded wonderful. Willy ordered the ribeye steak and Suzette ordered the canneli beans. 

We settled on a bottle of Italian Sangiovese from D. Majo Norante that had a 3.8 rating on Vinvino.

The burrata plate was served first and I immediately realized I was going to have a bad meal because the burrata was liberally seasoned with crushed black pepper and the sautéed bread was also dusted with black pepper.

I tried to take piece of burrata from the bottom but black pepper has permeated the sauce and caused me to gag.  I immediately went to a waitress and told her I was allergic to black pepper and she told the chef and he came out and we discussed the problem. He said he could leave the pepper off the duck breast but the zucchini sprinters were already dusted with black pepper and salt. I should have told him I wanted a different it no vegetable, but instead I said, “If the pepper is thoroughly cooked into the dish, I can usually eat it.” So my dish was served with the salt and pepper dusted zucchini.  When the dish arrived I saw that the zucchini had been coked correctly, lightly sautéed in butter, which did not alter the flavor of the salt or pepper. The duck breast was lovely and big and sautéed nicely and the polenta was soft and creamy and I loved the raspberry sauce on the duck but the dish was ruined for me by the liberal dusting of the zucchini with pepper. I tried to remove it but the pepper was so prolific, I could not. The waitress tried to ameliorate the situation by bringing me a small plate were I could try to surgically remove the pepper, but it was too late, because I had tried to remove the pepper on the main entree plate and it became mixed into the polenta and I had eaten some and it killed my taste buds.

The second appetizer of mussels was more successful. The mussels were served with the traditional Provencal medium of herbs and wine so I enjoyed them, but they were served with wedges of a lovely tall soda bread but with the same sautéed black pepper dusted bread as the burrata. The waitress initiated a fix and went to the kitchen to get the kitchen to sauté a wedge of bread without black pepper, but that took about ten minutes. When the un peppered bread came it was really delicious,but the mussels and broth had cooled. 

 Was amazed how our waitress recognized the problem and tried to fix it as best she could, but in a restaurant where the primary form of seasoning is salt and black pepper on almost everything, the meal could not be fixed adequately..

None of us ate our entire entree. Billy accurately opined ,”We filled up on appetizers.”

So our waitress brought lots of take out boxes and we boxed the food up for lunch tomorrow.

We were all impressed with the service and left a 20% tip which amounted to $55.00. We discussed the tip and everyone agreed on a liberal tip. I agreed because from what little I could tell my portfolio had had a monster day in the market with Apple going up $3.50, Nvidia going up $5.00, and Meta going up $20.00, to name a few notable stocks.  I figured that 3 more days like today and my portfolio would regain it high it has lady in the last few weeks, assuming there were no more monster loss days, as have occurred regularly in the last few weeks.

We walked back to the apartment and sat and talked and sipped Maison Serene cognac and nibbled Chocolate coated dried mandarin orange.