This post is undoubtedly going to be a long one, but I will try and break it up so that you can pick the dishes and pieces of the meal that you prefer to read about. This was most certainly the best meal I had in Spain and definitely on my top five of all time, so it’s worth reading, I promise.
It was called Casa Solla, after the chef Pepe Solla. We drove 30 minutes from Moana to San Salvador de Poio outside of Pontevedra. Casa Solla is a locally known and celebrated restaurant that has served Galician style food for over half a century. Chef Pepe Solla says his cuisine is his own recipe creations inspired by the Galician kitchen.
When we pulled into the parking lot, I thought we were coming in to the back entrance: the kitchen door was open and there was no particular indication to the front door. But once we peered inside the doorway, we knew we were in the right place. The entranceway was pretty and sophisticated and my eyes immediately went to the dining room, which was a gorgeous, open room almost entirely surrounded by large windows and glass doorways. The glass surrounding half of the dining room looked out over a fantastic view of the area. As we followed the hostess ‘round the corner into the dining room, here were even more windows into the kitchen, which was immaculate and pristine I might add, where all patrons could see every part of the creation process in the kitchen. We had extremely polite, responsive and attentive wait staff, but not overly so: they weren’t interrupting our experience or conversation. We found out later during the meal that our waiter was indeed Chef Pepe Solla, Gasp!!
The wine we ordered was an Albarino grape of the Rias Baxias region that was actually made very nearby as Chef informed us:
Leirana Albarino
A Escusa 2008
Chef Pepe told us the story of this particular wine: it is made with a special fermentation process called malolactica (Malolactic fermentation or MLF a.k.a. malo) when malic acid present in the grapes is turned into lactic acid giving it more acid and more sugar, which is perfect to have with food. It’s almost spicy if you let it sit on your tongue for a moment. This particular wine was created by accident and for that reason there are only 2000 bottles on the market.
We boldly ordered “El menu express” with an addition or two. They were delightfully open to slight changes and accommodations to the prefix menu. Ahh what a joy, flexibility on the part of a chef is something I greatly admire, but certainly don’t expect. So let us go through the meal course-by-course.
