Category: restaurants

Fall In Love With Sevilla

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chef Jorge Manfredi with Pedro Sánchez-Cuerda, director of Grupo La Raza

Enamórate de Sevilla (Fall In Love with Sevilla) is the name of the latest tasting menu being offered at Ispal (Grupo La Raza) created by their new chef Jorge Manfredi. I had been invited to try the original tasting menu when Ispal first opened in 2018 and while they have kept about 30% of the previous chef’s menu, the rest is new by Manfredi. Also new is a much expanded wine list, which now boasts over 400 Andalusian wines.

It’s a “kilometre 0” menu, with locally sourced products and reinterpreted dishes that are based on traditional Sevilliano recipes, and is divided into four parts: Vamos de Tapeo!, Vámanos a la Feria, Paseo por Sevilla and Desserts. We started off with a vermouth cocktail and had some wonderful wine pairings throughout.

The tasting menu is 59€ per person, 89€ with wine pairing and 109€ with the premium wine pairing. For more information have a look at their website. Photos of the meal below…

Restaurante Ispal


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Restaurante Ispal – New Seasonal Menu

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This week (on October 4) I was invited, along with other journalists, bloggers and regular commentators, to the presentation of this season’s tasting menu at Restaurante Ispal. Ispal has been the dream of Pedro Sánchez-Cuerda Rodríguez (director of Grupo La Raza) for the past 15 years, and together with Antonio Bort (his executive chef), and Ispal’s new head chef Rubén García Chacón, Pedro’s dream has now been realised.

The objective of Ispal, which opened a year ago, is to showcase the traditional cooking of Sevilla, using indigenous products and providing support for local family businesses, and then reinterpreting these popular dishes by elevating them to haute cuisine. This, by definition, involves the use of the highest quality ingredients, meticulously prepared and presented.

The local ingredients include salt from the salt flats of Utrera, cheeses from Castilblanco de los Arroyos, the famous tomatoes of Los Palacios, goat kid from Los Corrales, fish from La Puebla del Río, wines from Sierra Norte de Sevilla, Ronda, and sherry wines from Jerez.

The tasting menu, which you can see below, was spectacular. Many thanks to Fernando Huibrodo for the invitation, and to the entire Ispal team, including maître Alonso Reche and sommelier Cisco Nuñez.

Pedro Sanchez-Cuerda Rodriguez – director of Grupo La Raza
Antonio Bort – executive chef of Grupo La Raza
Rubén Chacón – head chef at Ispal
Fernando Huidobro – president of Andalucía Academy of Gastronomy & Tourism

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Orio Basque Restaurant

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The new Restaurant Orio has been open for a few weeks, but the official inauguration for a select group of press and hospitality professionals was held this week (October 3), and I was fortunate enough to be invited.

The Sagardi group also has Orio locations in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, which are aimed at a more day to day market, incorporating a Basque style pintxo bar (Sagardi was founded in the Basque country) as well as a restaurant featuring Basque cuisine.

The front of the premises is a spacious pintxo bar opening onto Calle Santo Tomas, with a terrace facing the Archivos de India, and the bar itself on one side, with a very appetising array of Basque style pinxos so typical in Bilbao and San Sebastián, but something of a novelty in Sevilla. We got to try a few as an appetiser, my favourite being the chistorras (small spicy sausages).

Beyond the bar are two dining rooms leading out to a second terrace on Calle Miguel Mañara, with space for around thirty diners. Decoration is minimalist, but with lots of wood, and a big mural of a fisherman (Orio is the name of a Basque fishing village).

Lunch was a nine course tasting menu (including dessert), starting with oysters and working through a prawn carpaccio, salad, monkfish, and roasted piquillo peppers to the grilled beef finale. The quality was excellent throughout, and it looks like Orio will be a welcome addition to dining out in Sevilla. Check out the photos below (but only if you’re not hungry!)

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Tribeca & Cañabota Team Up

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I came back a day early from my Málaga Getaway because I had been invited to a gastronomy event that I simply couldn’t miss, featuring the dream team of Tribeca and Cañabota cooking together. It was to be one of the most unforgettable meals of my life … but I am getting ahead of myself. I’ve known Cañabota since its inception two years ago, when Juanlu Fernández joined forces with brothers Pablo Giménez and Eduardo Guardiola from Tribeca. The latter I finally got to know in person when friends invited me to join them there for dinner earlier this year. So I was very keen to see – and taste – what they would come up with together.

The event was held at Tribeca and when I arrived with the other lucky guests, we were taken downstairs to see the various fish and seafood that were to become our lunch, and were given a lecture on the sustainability of fishing by Eduardo. Then it was back upstairs to be given a masterclass in the breaking down of a fish, in this case a 15.2 kilo grouper, showing how every piece is used and nothing is wasted. And then it was time to eat!

The menu was a bit like a “showdown” with both teams creating different dishes using the same main ingredient (prawns, sea anemone, squid, grouper, skate…) along with a couple of joint efforts. Each dish was paired with well-chosen wines, including two manzanilla sherries to start off with, then two white wines (Albariño & Priorat), and moving on to two reds, dry (Mallorca) and sweet (Alicante).

The food was spectacular, and my only complaint was that there was just too much of it to comfortably finish all the dishes (luckily a friend sitting next to me was happy to help out). And while I appreciated the more clever and complex dishes, my personal favourites were the ones that were the most simply prepared, either lightly steamed or chargrilled. But it was all wonderful. Of course the service was impeccable and the overall experience was one I will fondly remember.

Many thanks to Fernando Huidrobo for the invitation, and to the fabulous Tribeca and Cañabota teams.

Tribeca
Chaves Nogales 3
Tel 954 42 60 00

Cañabota
Orfila 3
Tel 954 870 298 / 690 876 523

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