La Cuineta, Tarragona

Wednesday June 10

This was just a 15-euro set-menu lunch, but one of the most tasty and adventurous meals we had anywhere. La Cuineta (which I gather means the Kitchen in Catalan) was decorated in tableware - collages of forks, ladles, etc. Spotless tablecloths, several couples with child, and a keen-eyed waitress doing everything. Started with "Ensalada pensimentos de primavera," an absolutely fresh and delicious salad spiked with asparagus and edible flowers, with every leaf sparkling; and an "Empadrado," a cylinder of white bean, egg and tuna salad, topped with a layer of caviar, and a raspberry in the center - like a salty little chocolate cake.

Then the main courses: little bacony slices of cabrito - kid - on tender potatoes, and the amazing rabbit in chocolate - not mole, but real chocolate sauce - with fresh figs. The plates were exquisite. We should have had dessert, as I could see a raspberry tart like a Chardin painting on the sideboard, but we just couldn't.
Then Barbara got whisked off to a nearby quarry until dinnertime, at which point she called Holt and he came to meet her, her old X-Aphrodisias buddy, John, and his grad student, at El Llagut again. We cannot for the life of us remember what we had, and the copy of the bill is too faint to be read, but it may have been just mains, of fried calamari and Llobaro (sea bass); we photographed the latter in a mosaic at the local archaeological museum the very next day.