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Gastronomy - our review of where to eat, with a little
help from guest columnist Krimo Bouabda |
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KRIMO writes,
As the owner of three restaurants in Hartlepool specializing in
Mediterranean and Algerian cuisine, including my new 'Casa del Mar', I was
delighted to accept the invitation to contribute to this review. I’ve always
fancied my own column especially writing about the eateries around my second
home near San Miguel de Salinas, which I visit with my wife Karen about once a
month. Plus, this is a great website, and we can pride ourselves with the fact
that we are qualified to give our reviews!
Bistro Orquidea - new review 22 September
2009
Pam Wells, regular website visitor writes,
As a frequent visitor to SMdS and our apartment at Eagles Nest I decided that as I love Spanish food I would buy a Tapas Book and convert all my friends back in England to these mouth-watering titbits. As luck would have it at Alicante airport I found a book entitled 100 best Tapas recipes. "Just the job", I thought. |
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A party was duly planned in the UK for some of my friends and I sat down and decided which recipes to cook. I read 'take 4 laurel leaves'…now I may not be an expert but I think laurel is poisonous. Next ‘take a marrow’…now for a little chilled salad dish this seemed a bit excessive and out of season. Having planed my menu there were no heating instructions i.e. cooker or hob and also very little in the way of quantities and when there were quantities they were totally alien to me.
Eventually I decided that laurel leaves should read bay leaves and marrow, courgette! The cooking instructions were a little bit more difficult. However with some imagination I managed to produce about 12 dishes and we sat in our floodlit garden to eat. Well no one was poisoned and everyone thought the food was wonderful, and asked for the recipes!
Perhaps not! Their interpretations might not be so forgiving. Interesting English translation though!
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SMdS says thanks for the picture and your efforts to create tapas for your friends in an English Country Garden - it's a complicated, though simple, cuisine
and we'll try and bring you some typical and authentic SMdS tapas
recipes!
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Then and now at Bar Borrascas, firstly, from the collection of Joaquín Martínez Albaladejo
- Corrina, in our heritage photos, and secondly, as now with Mariano and
Kath the current owners of Bar Borrascas, possibly the oldest bar in the
Pueblo. |
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| That’s me…so what about San Miguel de Salinas? Well, driving around the Pueblo, one does not realize that there
are so many cafes, bars, restaurants hiding away below shops, in side streets
and strangely enough… in caves! I feature the hard to find Las Cuevas
Restaurant in our reviews.
I have added a couple of new reviews and would comment that those of us that have either been living here or visiting for several years now are beginning to realize that there is a gap in the market.
Most of the ex-pats are just using their favourites, which means they are aiming for the tried and tested stuff.
Even then these restaurants are just falling short of people's expectations especially when they are charging premium prices.
My numerous visits to restaurants on the
Costa Blanca have not yet unearthed a gem which I could recommend without fear
of disappointing. Karen and I have visited many of our own customers’
recommendations including La Casa del Reloj in San Pedro del Pinatar,
Restaurante Rebate and The Vegetarian Restaurant in Torrevieja to name a few, since purchasing our property in Spain and I will include all
these in my future reviews.
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| My editor and I shall be reporting about food and restaurants in and around San Miguel de Salinas. If
you happen to have enjoyed a meal out lately, please do not hesitate to
email
us to
let us know. We shall be pleased to try it and give it a rating. And we’ll be
telling you about our rating system too.
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| You can also follow this link to some simple but
tasty recipes from around The
Mediterranean for you to try. |
| Editor's Note - Thanks Krimo! We have to remind you, because
we occasionally get comments from the restaurants themselves, we are
qualified to give our comments. As the editor I have a degree in Hotel
Management, I was a 5 star trained chef at Ealing Hotel School, albeit
in the late 1960s, and I was a Director of Tourism in Newquay, Cornwall.
pictured is staff at
Meson El Prado
one of the favourite haunts in San Miguel de Salinas. |
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