Wined, dined and rested.

As I was saying, there we were in Cádiz and my goodness I’d go back like a shot, for both the lovely city and also for the fabulous food. On the first night we went to Ultramar&nos (clever….), chosen after some research and booking in advance. Gosh, another excellent find! Chalk it up, plus one for us…. It claims to have interesting tapas from fresh ingredients, all in a modern bar environment inside an old building on the Plaza de Minas.

OK, so we’ve heard that all before, most eateries now claim that. But the ambience felt good, we had a very friendly welcome and so we dived into the interesting part of the menu and splashed around happily for a while, trying to choose a few dishes to share.
We ordered first of all ceviche con patacón – I could eat that ALL DAY LONG. Ceviche, as you probably know, is fish ‘cooked’ (i.e. marinated until it changes colour) in lemon or lime juice, and to this one they had added some coconut milk, some chile and herbs. Patacón is from Venezuela and Central America and is basically a twice fried plantain which has been squashed between the two fryings and ends up in a sort of, well, squashed shape. This is what the whole dish looked like:

The flavours just run around your mouth like a hyper active chihuahua setting off little taste explosions as it goes. I’m going to try to make this when I get back.
Then we had “saam de pescado”, whose English translation said it was “Thai fishcakes”. As you can see from the picture, they didn’t look like the fishcakes one would expect, i.e. round and flat. However the flavour was excellent, and the texture was light and fluffy – what a joy.

After that we had decided to try a dish that for me is the make or break for a restaurant – cuttlefish (choco in this part of Spain). When it’s overcooked (which it so often is) it’s rubbery and chewy. There are some places in Spain that do it really well because they understand that it requires minimal input from the kitchen, but I’m always a little wary in case I end up eating something with the texture of 5 year old bathroom sealant. Well rest assured, Ultramar&nos has got this one covered. What’s more, I really like the presentation.

Until a few years ago I was confused about the difference between the various Spanish terms calamar, jibia, choco, sepia…. I knew that pulpo was octopus, but was a bit hazy about the others. I then learned that calamar is what we call squid in English, the one with the clear thin ‘bone’ in the middle when you prepare it. To an English person, the word cuttlefish conjures up a budgerigar’s cage which can make it difficult to take it seriously when served as food! However, the white bone so beloved of Great Aunt Freda’s budgie is only the bone of a cuttlefish. The flesh is what we eat, and it’s slightly meatier than squid because the fish in question is a little smaller but stockier. A cuttlefish in Spanish can be called jibia, choco or sepia. One other useful piece of information for a pub quiz one day – cuttlefish and squid have 10 tentacles (well, strictly 8 tentacles plus two ‘arms’).
We were pretty full by now, but as ever we had over-ordered so we slowed down a little in preparation for our final dish, boned chicken piri piri. We ordered another bottle of that delicious local red wine, Garum, and  savoured that, chatting and enjoying the atmosphere  while we waited a short time.

The service at this little restaurant is excellent, neither too fast nor too slow, and the comments and recommendations from our waitress were truly useful. So, at just the right time, our chicken arrived.

The flavours were well-rounded and delicious; to our chile-jaded palates it maybe was not quite “picantón” (= spicy) enough, but I think for most people the little spring in its step would be sufficient, and the flavours of the citrusy scrub used to roast it made up for that. It’s hard to make chicken really interesting, but this was a very effective way of doing it.
So four of us had eaten our fill of a series of delicious shared dishes, we had drunk two bottles of the lovely Garum plus one glass of white wine and some fizzy water between us. We had eaten at a leisurely pace, enjoying conversation with each other and with the delightful waitresses, and when we finally asked for the bill we were presented with this, which I am reproducing here because even I find it hard to credit:

I do hope they are charging enough to remain in business, because I will definitely be returning.