Gifts from the Spanish Sea
Eat your way from West to East on Andalucía’s coast
Friends, this is a list I have been waiting for SO LONG to share with you. Andalucía is so close to my heart for so many reasons, but of course the most important reason is because my beautiful wife Tichi is from this region (she is from Cádiz, a port town in the Southwestern part of Andalucía, close to Jerez). Over at Longer Tables, we talked about Cádiz, Jerez and Andalucía a few months ago when I shared some of the white wines of Southern Spain! But there is so much more to discover in Andalucía than wine—even though you of course will want to drink a lot of it if you go there.
Andalucía is a crossroads of history, culture, culinary influences, and of course it’s where the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea meet. Oh, and there are beautiful, majestic mountains everywhere. So much of what you might think of when you think of Spain—the amazing Moorish architecture, the mesmerizing moves of Flamenco, the refreshing gazpacho—is actually from Andalucía. And of course I love the architecture, the flamenco, and the cold soups…but people, there is so much more to the deep south!
Tichi is from here and she and I, along with our amazing daughters, have been coming back here for decades. We spend our summers in the town of Zahara de los Atunes, which is about as close to Morocco as you can get—on a clear day, you can look across the Straits of Gibraltar and see the continent of Africa. The summers there are very hot and very wonderful. When I close my eyes and think of Andalucía, I think of the pueblas blancas, the bright blue water…and of course the incredible fruits of the sea (and the ocean), which I will talk about in just a minute.
As a person who travels all the time, I feel a little bit at home everywhere in the world, but this little bit of the world is truly a second home for me. Come with me as I take you through a very special, VERY personal Chef’s List, to one of my favorite places in the world…Andalucía!