Fuerteventura, The Canary Islands
We have changed islands now, leaving Lanzarote on the ferry. We are on Fuerteventura for five days, and that turns out to be a good deal as you will see.
We were heading to dinner and Gail ducked into a shop called Zalt and Peppa. Clever. But inside she fell in love with, and bought sandals from a Dutch company called Sinners.
So she got some Sinners, As I Am.
Once again I picked up some totally random recommendation of a place to eat, called La Bodega de Jandia. It is reservation only. There are five outside tables, maybe three inside.
You don’t get “dinner,” it is tapas only.
You can pick and choose, or trust the owner, Ramón, to make the selections for you at a cost of €17 each.
So we just went for it and never looked back.
He has fantastic house wines by the liter, and when the evening was over we were full, happy, made new friends and had a great time.
We sat outside on a pretty little pedestrian street, with beautiful red-flowered trees running up the middle. There was a gas flame heater next to our table, which Gail appreciated.
Ramón came out, bubbling over with enthusiasm. His personality alone is large enough to fill the restaurant, the outside seating area and spill over into the surrounding shops. He plonked down two menus, asked if we preferred German or English (because my Español is just soooo great you know…)
Anyway, we have the choice of picking random tapas, for €3-6 each, or allowing him to make the selection of “His Favorites” for €17. To me, this is a no-brainer, and we just smiled and said, “You pick!”
“This is my house,” he said dramatically, “and Ramón will not disappoint!” And he immediately changed our seating one table over to a larger table.
This is when we both realized that maybe we were biting off more than we could chew, so to speak.
But the die is cast.
We order water, Gail a half liter of house white (dry) and me a half liter of the better house red.
And then the food started to arrive.
Now, in the meantime, the entire place is filled up. We were the second to arrive at 19:30, and by 20:00 the tables were filled. On both sides of us were Italians, we started talking with the couple to my left.
And with the amount of food we were served, we had a long time to sit and talk. She is reading the book "Wild" and they would like to walk the PCT. And... we live close to over 200 miles of the trail!
New friends.
Meanwhile, Ramón is running around, taking photos of us all, talking up a storm to everyone.
Back to the food. In no particular order we ate:
Apricot pork cheeks with mashed potatoes.
Stuffed sweet peppers, voted the “Best tapa in Spain" for two years in a row (and he can prove it). It was wonderful.
Bread with cream cheese and bacon. Gail really loved this one.
Prawn stuffed mushrooms. Gail hated this so lucky me!
Fried peppers. Simple, green, fried peppers. Delicious combined with some of the other tapas, or good alone.
Local cheese, one of which was hard and fantastic (almost like a parmesan).
Some sort of tuna salad with bacon, on steroids.
And finally, the dish I was hoping we would get:
HELL!
Little chorizo sausages, sizzling in oil with very hot peppers… except that I happen to like really spicy food, and so to me the burn was totally acceptable. But whatever. I ate Hell and loved it. And amazing to me: Gail just raved about them!
The Hell reminded me of one of my favorite Spanish/Portuguese dishes: Gambas Pil-Pil. Ramón agreed with my assessment.
So we had a taste of Hell and it was great!
We ate slow, enjoying them all, and compared notes with the Italians. They are the same age as our daughter; she is a cardiologist and he is a history-philosophy teacher, and their dream is to visit California.
Invited!
We wrapped up with dessert of some sort of cheesecake with berries, and then all of us were comped a slug of Ron (Rum) or Scotch (me).
We kept talking, the hours and other customers slipped away and soon it was 23:30 (a four hour dinner!) and everyone needed to get home.
Gail loved her wine so much that she wanted to buy a bottle from Ramón, but he would have none of it and simply gave it to her as a gift.
So here is the fortunate part about being on Fuerteventura for five days:
We have a reservation to return on Friday night!
We returned a second night, and it was just as great.
This time we ordered two tapas from last time, but a whole bunch of new ones that included:
Eggplant with salmotejo.
Mussels in vinaigrette.
Fried Camembert with cranberry jelly.
Garlic prawns.
Skewer chicken with sweet sour sauce.
Breaded prawns with red mojo sauce.
and the best new one of the night...
Foie with Apple jam, caramelized onions and Iberian ham.
Prawn stuffed mushrooms. (repeat from other night)
Ham and cream cheese bread. (repeat)
We met two German guys sitting next to us, and as we ate (another three hour meal) we discovered they live in from Düsseldorf and work in Neuss. Wait till we tell Angelika and Ralph.
Ramón gave Gail a "coffee" to end the meal, and I got to compare three different Scotch whiskeys.