[ Jan.2023 ] In Ávila, a historic town in Castile and Leon, Spain, we had a reservation at a restaurant called Meson El Rastro at 2 o’clock.
We try to make lunch the main meal of the day.
Speaking of 2 o’clock, it’s quite late for lunch, but when we arrived a little earlier than that, there was no customers.
I was a little worried.
The restaurant is listed in our guidebook and my husband had checked that it was well received online, though.
We were the only customers for a long time, and then people came in one after another, and when we left, it was almost full.
This is a common experience in Spain, where people have both lunch and dinner very late.
It is a nice old fashioned restaurant.
It is a long-established place founded in 1881.
It seemed that they also have a hotel attached to the restaurant.
It was a cold day, so we had soup as a starter, which was unusual for us.
My husband’s is called Sopa Castellana and it’s rich with eggs.
Vegetables such as cabbage are also included, but it looked a greasy soup.
Mine is the lightest consommé.
It was normal.
The main course was meat for both of us.
My husband’s beef was so huge that it was enough for two people.
It’s soft and well-grilled, and the salt works perfectly.
However, it was really too big, and I tried to help him, but we couldn’t eat it all.
My main was beef escalope.
I thought I ordered sirloin, but I chose it from the English menu, and it seemed the waiter misread it.
But I did not complain because I did not want another huge meat like my husband’s, so I was glad having this escalope which was not too big.
This was the beef version of Cotoletta alla Milanese.
It had a heavier taste than the veal I’m used to, but it was still delicious.
We also took grilled vegetables to solve our recent lack of vegetables, and we both were full by the end of our main course, but I could not resist cream caramel on the menu, so I took one.
It was described as “according to the basic recipe of 1880“, and I was happy that it turned out to be the cream caramel I was looking for.
In Spain and Portugal, there are a lot of dense and heavy cream caramels, but this was the kind that I used to eat at some restaurants in Japanese department stores when I was a kid.
I give a perfect score of 100.
Adding a bottle of Toledo wine, the total was reasonable at €83.50.
