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From Wine & Spirits: December 2006
By Victor de la Serna

"Alto Moderno: The Best of Rioja’s New Restaurants"

A few years ago some juicy roast lamb on the communal, refectory-style tables at Terete, the endearing old tavern in Haro, would have been considered the epitome of dining excellence in the Rioja region of Spain. The alternative was the curiously named restaurants Beethoven I and II in the same wine-producing town – there, the choice of specialties was more varied, with such dishes as breaded frogs legs or piquillo peppers stuffed with wild mushrooms. Add the opulent but short-lived La Merced in Logroño, the regional capital, and that was the extent of the gastronomic experience in Spain’s most important wine country.

While the old Haro standbys are still going strong, the restaurant scene in Rioja has changed dramatically, and for the better, over the past decade, with seriously interesting restaurants springing up everywhere while old, traditional houses discover renewed ambitions. Though new, cutting-edge techniques are appearing everywhere, as is the case throughout Spain – this is El Bulli’s land, after all – there is a strong common bond between Rioja eateries, classic or modern: The chefs show a steadfast affection for traditional products and dishes from this rich agricultural region. Lamb, pork, the small and fine kidney beans called caparrones, fresh vegetables grown along the banks of the Ebro River, including borage, asparagus, artichokes and chards – they can still be found everywhere, thankfully, albeit in much more varied guises than in the old days.

No one personifies this new, vibrant Rioja scene better than Francis Paniego, the chef at El Portal in the Hostal Echaurren, a country hotel in Excaray – a quietly beautiful mountainside village – which has a separate dining room where his mother, Marisa, offers her extraordinary and perfectly traditional Riojan cuisine. Paniego is free to innovate, but does so with a keen eye and palate for the best regional products.

Although already a seasoned pro at 38, Francis is still “the baby” to many fans who remember him as a very young boy in awe of the cooking prowess of his mother (a winner of the Spanish Gastronamy Academy’s Chef of the year Award) and older brother Luis, who was tabbed as one of the next great chefs of Spain in the late 1980s. Luis’s death in a car accident in 1987 forced his brother to take on a heavy responsibility when he was only 20. Paniego didn’t flinch, and, with some years’ experience, including stints at El Bulli and Arzak, he blossomed into a star. In addition to his main job at El Portal, he is now the super-visiting chef at the fancy new hotel-restaurant that Frank Gehry designed for the Marqués de Riscal bodega in Elciego.

“I love such modern techniques as low-temperature sous vide cooking, and I use them constantly,” says Paniego. “But I love the tastes and textures of Rioja more than anything else.”

Paniego likes to extract the liquid from fresh tomatoes and use it to flavor dished, whether based on albacore tuna or lychees; he offers a simple but delicate carpaccio of new potatoes and black truffles (another great Rioja staple); he sautées a perfect, fat langoustine and places it on a bed of Ibérico ham jelly and ham slices, with an artichoke-and-almond cream; he slowly cooks a thick trunk of hake at 113 ° F. and serves it with roasted piquillo peppers and a rice soup. But he is also keen to use some of his mother’s recipes for simple delights such as ham croquetas – his are the best in Spain. An admirably simple and balanced offer overall. And a terrific cellar to boot – surprisingly rich in non-Rioja wines!

But when it comes to a dish like the carpaccio, Paniego recommends a high-toned traditional red with good acidity like López de Heredia’s 1998 Rioja Reserva Viña Tondonia; with the hake, a delicate, fragrant viura-based white such as Sortes 2005, made in Valdeorras by Riojan winemaker Rafa Palacios.

Today, while he remains the most acclaimed chef in the region, Paneigo is hardly an isolated case, as he is surrounded by talented and dedicated colleagues who have established Rioja as a gourmet destination, which it certainly wasn’t in the past.

In nearby historic Santo Domingo de la Calzada, El Rincón de Emilio is a good example of an old traditional restaurant doing classic dished perfectly and adding a few newer ones. The terrific codfish fritters, the baked baby lamb and the Rioja-style menestra are just perfect. The menestra is the great vegetable stew of northern Spain (sometimes served with ham morsels). Boiled artichokes and chard stalks are lightly fried in batter and placed in an earthenware dish with raw green beans, peas and carrots, then slowly stewed together. Another high point in the menu is the cocido (boiled dinner) made with caparrón beans, onions, carrots, bacon and chorizo sausages, slowly stewed for hours. But beef filet mignon, cooked perfectly rare and topped with rich duck foie gras and served with a gratin dauphinois, will be just as competently made.

Down in vineyard country, the Asador Alameda at Fuenmayor is a wonderful conservatory of traditions: Tomás Álvarez buys the finest turbots, soles and sea breams, and Esther cooks the simple but brilliant specialties: ham croquetas, of course, but also a steamed lobster with a lobster vinaigrette, a “double” dish of kokatxas (hake cheeks, half of them coated in batter and fried, the rest cooked at low temperature), or kid’s trotters Rioja-style on a sauce of tomatoes, bell peppers and chorizo.

Nearby at Casalarreina, the Vieja Bodega is housed in a 17 th-century cellar lovingly rebuilt by Angel Pérez Aguilar. The dishes include a house salad with fried lambs sweet-breads, pine nuts and raisins; a Riojan pisto (ratatouille) with codfish slivers; a fine roast lamb; from the grill, everything from cutlet of milk-fed veal to a splendid chunk of monkfish. There is some more elaborate cuisine as well, such as the Atlantic sea bass on a bed of wild mushrooms and the low-temperature suckling pig with vermouth sauce.

In San Vicente de la Sonsierra, right under the imposing Sierra Cantabria cliffs, chef Chuchi Sáez of Casa Toni is a regional institution whose pinto beans with chorizo, blood sausage and pork ribs are revered. So are the more modern codfish slivers with hake cheeks on mashed potatoes and a green sauce, the boned dove with thyme, cèpes and a hazelnut vinaigrette or his passion fruit-stuffed mango ravioli for dessert.

Las Duelas , now relocated to the Los Agustinos Hotel in Haro, showcases Juan Nales’s ambitious, prudently modern cuisine, which displays a rather cosmopolitan outlook (mushroom risotto with parmesan foam), but still includes some fiercely regional fare (veal tripe and snout, Rioja-style) and lighter touches (cottage cheese ice cream with a granite of tempranillo grapes).

Mayor de Migueloa in Languardia, the spectacular, medieval capital of Rioja Alavesa, is simultaneously a wonderful old building, a working bodega, a nice rustic hotel and a restaurant with solid regional fare. A mile out-side Languardia, in Páganos, Héctor Oribe, an Arzak pupil, serves rich fare such as hake stuffed with wild mushrooms and shrimp.

A fine newcomer in Languardia is El Médoc Alavés in the Hotel Villa de Languardia, where Jokin de Agirre and Juan Antonio Gómes really cook up a storm: try the calamari and fennel bulb salad, or a fruffled foie gras terrine with a tempranillo jelly on toasted walnut bread, or the grilled yellowfin tuna on pisto and Ibérico bacon.

La Chatilla de San Agustín , a newish (but traditional-looking) restaurant in Logroño, has become one of the favorites in the regional capitol. Don’t miss Fernando Andrés’s salad of wild Iregua River trout or his baked Ibérico pork loin stuffed with goat’s cheese, served with grape sauce.

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