Spain’s Best-Kept Secret
THIS IS A meal I could eat nowhere else, it occurs to me around the seventh course. I’m in the mountains of Asturias, and I’ve been served a dish of sea urchin and ham that unites the coast and peaks of this northern Spanish province in one bite. Two tables away, I see José Antelo raise his fork in triumph. Antelo is an air traffic controller in Barcelona. His brother, Luis, is a judge in Madrid. They live in two of Europe’s top restaurant cities; they can enjoy memorable meals night after night. But three or four times a year, they meet to eat in Asturias.
Asturias? This autonomous region of Spain lying along the Bay of Biscay, dense with trees that run up hillsides, dotted by wild marshland, and scalloped with tidy beaches, is hundreds of miles from both those cities. “Nowhere else in Spain can you find so many flavours, such incredible variety, in such a small area,” says José. “It is like an entire country.”
We’re dining at Casa Marcial. Housed in an old mansion, or , decorated with window boxes and topped by a barrel-tiled
