Food

This was our first full day in Sevilla and we had a reservation at a place called Aponiente, which is about 1.5 hours to the south, on the southern coast of Spain. If you wanted to, you could catch a boat over to Morocco. But we had places to be, plankton to eat.

I want to start off by saying that if we had properly researched this place, we never ever would have gone here. Ever. But it turned out quite well/interesting. The chef, Angel Leon, is known for his use of sustainable seafood and food from the region.

Aponiente is in the smallish fishing town of El Puerto de Santa Maria, and it has a Michelin star. This day was hot, and so as we were a bit early we found a little place and had some tinto de verano (summer wine) which is basically majorly watered and soft drinked down red wine with ice. After chilling here for a bit we headed to our 2 pm reservation.

First off, this restaurant was fancy. All the guys were in suits (it was about 35C out) and there were 6 guys for the 25 seat dining room - which we ended up having to ourselves for an hour until other people started arriving.

We went for the degustation menu, having no idea what we would have but by this point had determined it was a seafood restaurant (we aren’t big seafood eaters).

We started off with some pickled vegetables that were crunchy with a faint hint of curry.

Then the obligatory bread (which they charged for! who charges for bread over here?!?) of pistachio and plain.

Then our first course, which looked harmless enough - salami selection. But no, all of these had a fishy taste to them, but were still cool.

The picture of the next dish really doesn’t do it justice. It is a oyster covered with algae and plankton- and it was strange.

Next was slightly cured tuna which was quite delicious and not fishy.

Then sardines on toast, which was quite a production. They brought over a table, had a stone bbq with smoke coming out of it which the sardines sat on top of, which he then served up to Ben and myself. We both generally avoid sardines but these were fresh and tasty.

Then was some cooked fish, covered in microalgae topped with cheese - which was surprisingly delicious. What the picture fail to show is how green these dishes actually are - once you start eating them. We had green lips and teeth after every algal based portion.

Then was a delicious soup of prawns, green (no way??) flying fish eggs with green soup. This was actually delicious, with the fish eggs being quite sweet and tiny.

Then was our next green dish - risotto. This dish was hot in the green bits and cold in the white bits - the fish. The green makes it look bad, but if you closed your eyes you would never know that this is another algal based dish. It also had some seafood chunks in the risotto to give it a bit more texture.

I didn’t take a photo of my main fish course was, but it was seabass and it was good.

Then it was time for our dessert - green tea sorbet in melon soup. This was delightfully refreshing and was really crisp and clean.

And shockingly, a non-green dessert - who does that? It was a light sponge cake with vanilla sorbet? which almost tasted like very thin light bread.

Our petit fours were short bread and a pistachio square, both were nice.

By this point (about 3.30pm) a few other tables had begun to arrive, so the place was livening up a bit. Overall the service was good, but crazy. Usually 2 or 3 guys organising things to serve us both at the same time, giving us new cutlery, watching and waiting to steal Ben’s wine glasses when he finished them (he had the wine pairing) but it was done in a way that was not intrusive and obviously well practiced.

Would we come back here again? Probably not. Were we happy we came? Definitely.

It was one of those crazy yet delicious meals that you know you will probably not have ever again, but still enjoyable.

Time to head back to the car for the drive home. But first, a stop off at a sinking boat :)

After heading back to Sevilla and having an afternoon siesta, we headed out for dinner/drinks. It was fairly hot still at 9.30pm when we headed out, and we decided to go to a place called Bar Las Teresas and work our way back towards our hotel.

Bar Las Teresas is a cool little old style tapas bar, with lots of jamons hanging from the roof.

We had veal with onions and potatos in whisky, with some tinto de verano to go along with it.

It was a cool place, but we wanted to check out a few more, so we moved on.

We walked past the Cathedral of Saint Mary, which was built in the 1500’s, build to shown Sevilla’s wealth. It is pretty huge and looks awesome at night. There were a lot of photographers out and about, but my iPhone takes pretty nice photos anyway.

We looked in on a couple of other places that were on our list, but by this time it was getting late, and they were packed so we headed back to last nights place, Zelai, as we knew the deal (and it was air conditioned). It was pretty packed here, but I am adept at stalking people, so got us a bar seat, right in front of the kitchen prep area after about 20 mins (and 2 tinto de veranos). We had a couple of new things, mushroom risotto and kobe burgers and another couple of drinks. Both were awesome again, and it was cool looking into the kitchen and seeing the controlled chaos within.

The guys that work here are really friendly, and remembered us from last night. All the bar/serving staff seem to be happy and helpful, while moving around very quickly. Our bill again was about 30 E which was crazy considering how awesomely tasty the food was. There was a mistake in our bill (they didn’t charge us for enough tinto de veranos) and seemed quite surprised when we corrected them and gave us a couple of shots that we really didn’t need, but it was a nice gesture anyways.

We will probably head back there again lol.

We wandered back to our hotel, to sleep, and prepare for tomorrows adventures.