Sunday, April 6, 2014

Yesterday the temperature reached 85 degrees and a repeat performance is promised for today. It has been, for the most part a rather uneventful week in terms of activity outside of the home. I spent a good part of the week proofreading the last third of the publisher’s edit of Juan Tamariz’s revised and expanded version of The Magic Way. As I have mentioned in another post, I have done proofreading before, but at a less risky level. It was less risky because there were others involved at that level and all those corrections were applied to the original translation. Now I was working alone hoping to find wisps of mistakes before the book went to press. It was a challenging, but worthwhile, task.

Gurrea, Gioco and I took a field trip to the town of Alzira to visit Alzimagic in search of effects that we could add to our repertoire. We had an enjoyable visit with the owner, Paco de Cerca, and we did purchase a few items and that made everyone happy. When we returned to Valencia a little after 9:00, we stopped off at one of our usual watering holes and had a sandwich and a beer.

We received a message from Mike and Santi of the now defunct The Ginger Loft that they were taking over Mood Food for the next two weekends while Carlos was on vacation. We were hoping to have lunch with them yesterday but, as it turned out, they were only going to be open in the evening. That being the case, we decided to explore a bit.

Zahava had told Susan that Josep Quintana, former owner of Torrijos, a one star Michelin restaurant, had opened a new restaurant close by the Mercado de Colón. Rumor has it that the restaurant, owned by Quintana and his wife, closed because the couple divorced. Quintana then went on to open a small restaurant in the Russafa neighborhood, which has since changed hands. He next went off to Asia to do some consulting work and has returned to Valencia. The warmth of the sun enhanced the twenty-minute walk from our house and we found the restaurant rather easily.

The restaurant is has both a very attractive exterior and interior. There were only a few diners when we arrived a little after 3:00 and we were shown to a side table for two. Over a beer for me and a glass of wine for Susan we studied the menu. We decided on a couple of Croquetas Crujientes de Arroz al Horno, Ensaladilla “Quintana” con sorpresa de Mar. For her entrée Susan chose the Cochinillo Crujiente con Tartar de Mango, berros y calabaza and I opted for the Solomillo de Bonito con queso de cabra y berenjena a la llama. Dessert was a deconstructed version of a tarte tartin. Every dish was attractively presented and absolutely delicious. Our bill was a bit more than we usually spend. In addition to the dishes we sampled we also consumed a beer, three glasses of wine, a bottle of water and two coffees. The final damage was 85 Euros, which we felt was well worth the experience. We shall return another day.

After lunch we made our way to Cines Babel to see “The Hotel Budapest”. It was a fun flick and we enjoyed it. We took a cab back to the house and settled in for the evening. We watched another episode of Sherlock and before we knew it, it was 1:00 in the morning so we shut off the TV and the lights and went to sleep.

The last eightphotos are from Josep Quintana.  The others are from other adventures in the past ten days.