62 NATGEOTRAVEL.COM
This is a meal I could eat nowhere else, it occurs to me around
the seventh course. I’m in the mountains of Asturias, and I’ve
been served a dish of sea urchin and ham that unites the coast
and peaks of this northern Spanish province in a single bite.
Two tables away, I see José Antelo raise his fork in triumph.
Antelo works as an air traffic controller in Barcelona. His
brother, Luis, is a superior court judge in Madrid. They live in
two of Europe’s top restaurant cities; they can enjoy memorable
meals night after night without ever boarding a plane. But three
or four times a year, they meet to eat in Asturias.
Asturias? This autonomous region of Spain lying along the
Bay of Biscay, dense with trees that run up hillsides, dotted
by wild marshland, and scalloped with tidy beaches, isn’t located
between Madrid and Barcelona. It’s hundreds of miles from
either. When I mention that, José laughs. “I’m sure you know
why we come,” he says. “Nowhere else in Spain can you find so
many flavors, such incredible variety, in such a small area. It is
like an entire country.”
We’re dining at Casa Marcial. Housed in an old mansion,
or casona, decorated with window boxes and topped by a
barrel-tiled roof, the restaurant sits at the top of a winding road
in La Salgar, a mountain village that smells of pine. The coast
is six miles to the north, as the Asturian wood pigeon flies. But
La Salgar remains so deeply embedded in the hilly, heavily for-
ested interior of the region that, I’m told, many of its residents
The medieval town of Llanes is one of the top summer destinations in
Asturias. Previous pages, from left: Sunrise warms the Picos de Europa,
part of the Cordillera Cantábrica range that secludes Asturias from the
rest of Spain. The coastal region’s rich seafood tops menus at acclaimed
restaurants such as Güeyu Mar, in Ribadesella.
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