Day 9: Asturias continued

Today’s route continues along the Asturian coast, and then up into the Picos de Europa mountains.

La Huertona

It’s too cold and rainy for the hike I had in mind today, so fine, I guess I’ll just have to eat at another world class restaurant. La Huertona is next to a cow pasture outside the town of Ribadesella.

Starter snacks: smoked salmon, whitefish, some sort of garlicky soup

Prawns and grilled clams. The clams were great. The prawns looked nice, but were kind of a lot of work without much payoff.

Carabinero prawn grilled over oak — biggest shrimp I’ve ever seen, came with a steak knife to eat it.

Rey de Costa — king of the coast, also known as virrey. The photo on the right is actually from D’Berto, but that’s the type of fish it is. Maybe the tastiest fish I’ve had.

Perfectly cooked aged ribeye. Possibly from the cow pasture next door.

Trio of deserts: arroz con leche, a sort of deconstructed blueberry cheesecake, and an ice cream charlota

Cheese cave

Side trip to a former cheese cave turned into a museum. These caves are where they age Cabrales cheese, a traditional very strong blue cheese. The tour was in spanish, but I got the gist of it through airpod live translation. It was pretty interesting to see how the cheese is made and aged. And of course got to try some.

Cangas de Onís

Spent the night in Cangas de Onís, a town up in the mountains. Dinner was another Asturian classic, chachopo — a fried veal cutlet stuffed with ham and cheese. (I ate half of it and took the rest to go).