Eating Catalonia

Dali was absent, nevertheless it was still exciting to be sleeping in the room he always stayed in (room 101) when visiting Hotel Duran, in Figueres, Spain. Those two weeks in Hotel Duran were time well spent and extremely memorable for us as my artist wife was using the room as a temporary art studio. Her exhibition was later to be hung at the cafe/restaurant Dalicatessen, in Figueres, known for its speciality of anchovies from Roses on the Catalan coast. 

The Durans had been great friends of Salvador Dali, schoolmates, friends and patient chefs too, acceding to Dali’s often eccentric tastes in both food and art materials. Rumour has it that as well as ordering a variety of birds to feast upon - thrushes, larks and terns, Dali once ordered an octopus, but not for eating - for use as a brush for painting. Another gem tells that Dali was in the habit of drawing on the hotel’s tablecloths, which were subsequently sent for laundering. You might wonder just how many millions of Euros those tablecloths could be worth on the current art markets of the world if they had been saved from laundering.

In Figueres nearly everything is Dali. The town has made great use of its connection to that great Surrealist painter, especially after Dali made inroads to construct his teatro museo de salvador dali (Dalí Theatre and Museum) there, in 1974. At times the sheer weight of commercialism does tend to cloy. You can only see so many badly made Dali watches (as key rings) or buy so many posters of his work before the excitement wears off. But, and there is a big but, when you come face to face with his actual works (in the Museum) you are frequently awestruck. Well, I was, and that does not happen to many times these days.

Hotel Duran was a sheer delight. Yes, the hotel did make its connection to Salvador Dali clear, but in an understated, subtle way. Photos on the wall showed generations of Durans with Dali, or Dali and his classmates both at school and at the art school in Madrid. Other photos were of Gala and Dali, but they were all outdone by original Dali lithographs hanging in reception and all dinning areas of that hotel. Hotel Duran is a treasure trove for lovers of Dali’s work and, incidentally provides some of the best accommodation and food to be found in Figueres, as we (my Dali struck wife and I) were to discover on the last night.

Breakfast at the hotel was the usual European fare, with lashings of cold meats and cheeses, not to mention gallons of Nespresso coffee to wash down the rolls, croissants and chocolate croissants. Tea infusions nestled against each other for comfort and the odd pyramid of Lipton’s Earl Grey tea waited for this odd Englishman to purloin. We never lunched at the hotel. Daylight meant us traipsing off to Cadaques, Port Lligat, Roses, Girona, L’Escala or Besalu (a medieval Spanish town famed for its Romanesque bridge).

Lunch was grabbed on the fly, and where we could, along bus or train routes. Sometimes it was green tea with fresh orange drink and later gelato ice cream (an Italian import) in Girona. There was zarzuela (Catalan fish stew) in Roses, washed down with sangria, after visiting a local famers’ market and buying chorizo (Spanish sausage). Other times Middle-Eastern cous cous in Cadaques, taken down some ancient lane laden with bougainvillea, accompanied by Damm Lemon 6-4 (cold lemon cerveza - the Spanish equivalent of British shandy), or simply gazpacho (cold, spicy, tomato soup) taken with local Catalan bread smeared with garlic and rubbed with tomatoes in the Spanish way, while we were on our way.

Generally we steered clear of the tapas bars. Tapas (Spanish appetisers similar to the Middle Eastern mezze or Hong Kong Dim Sum) are a great way to sample Spanish food, but are renowned for cost, not per single dish but as an accumulation over the evening, like in Sushi bars. Tapas simply was not in our meagre budget, travelling, as we were, from the Far East and having to convert from Malaysian Ringgit to the more expensive Euro.

We made plans to meet up with Hotel Duran owner Lluis and his beautiful and most charming wife Joaquina, for dinner, on our final evening at Hotel Duran. Admittedly I had fantastic notions of being served the head and feet of terns, or sea urchins, thrushes, if in season of course, and finished off with garnatcha, which is a sweet local wine. The actuality of that meal was no less fantastic than my imagination had been moments beforehand. 

It was Hotel Duran’s Degustation Menu - a careful, appreciative tasting of various foods and focusing on the gustatory system, the senses, high culinary art and good company (according to Wikipedia). The wine was rioja, not garnatcha, but local and tasty. The appetiser was gin and tonic iced lime foam, which immediately send me back to my pre-hippy days a young mod pretending to be all Ray Davies and ultra sophisticated. I had been introduced to frozen margaritas, in Cambodia, by one wealthy American and here was being introduced to a frozen G & T by a wealthy Spaniard - is there a connection between wealth and frozen alcohol, I idly wondered. That drink of fantasy and memories came accompanied by a cracker (biscuit), brandishing cold meat, foie-gras and one troublesome small fried egg. Why was the egg troublesome? I stared and stared and thought - how on earth did they manage to reduce that egg in size, then it hit me - it was a fried quail egg, duh!

The salad was a carpaccio of wild mushrooms, local prawns and mixed lettuce in black truffle oil, wrapped with toasted bread. The soup was cold. It was meant to be cold, and green, with leaves of lettuce shredded, almonds and paper-thin baked wraps to dip into the soup. The fish dish was wild fish grilled to perfection, as opposed to tame fish perhaps, with steamed cauliflower, broccoli, courgette and cherry tomatoes, and the meat dish was a succulent centre steak with a buttery, creamy idiazabal (Basque) cheese sauce and scalloped potatoes, with a fruit drizzle. Just when we had surrendered, on came the dessert. An Ascot hat on a white plate appeared before me. The hat’s feathers were solidified sugar twists, its brim was three different coloured and flavoured sauces - including a freshly and properly prepared vanilla cream, while its mainstay was the tatin (jelly) of fresh fruit.

What a send off. The airline foods, on the flights back, were a pale comparison to those we experienced in Catalonia, northern Spain. But, there again we were happy to be returning to the gastronomic hub of Asia - Malaysia, home of Durian, nasi lemak and teh tarik. We flew home to the children, writing and painting, glad to be back after two weeks away in our Surrealistic fantasy, but with very fond memories of Hotel Duran and all the amazing people we met on our travels.