Gastronomic Asturias & Cantabria - Spain’s hidden paradise on the Emerald Coast

With the spectacular Picos de Europa as backdrop, the undulating foothills roll out their green carpet down to the Atlantic beaches and fishing ports. From Oviedo across to Santander, the gastronomy of both Asturias and Cantabria talks ‘product’, purity and honesty. There is the mythic Cabrales cheese matured in mountain caves – a flavour bomb – and at Santoña the world’s finest anchovies: sweet, salty, deceptively fruity, prepared for us there and then – totally unique. In Asturias cider is king, but in recent years the tiny mountainside denominación of Cangas del Narcea – just eight ‘heroic’ producers braving the vertiginous slopes – has been producing prizewinning wines of wonderful depth and complexity.

Asturias, never subdued by the Moors, is Spain’s Ur region – its heart and soul – where Covadonga is celebrated as the site of the first Christian victory over the Moors in 722. We visit the shrine and move on to Casa Marcial’s mountaintop two Michelin star restaurant, where Nacho Manzano and his sisters Esther, Olga and Sandra take us on an amazing journey through Asturian cuisine in their family home.

Outside Gijón at Casa Gerardo, the father and son team of Pedro and Marcos Moran deliver a masterclass in rethinking iconic dishes like the mythic Fabada Asturiana, transforming the ubiquitous one pot stew into a miraculous expression of nature’s bounty pared back to its essence – there is nowhere to hide, and no need to.

Down on the coast the freshly landed shellfish mariscada is a hands-on cornucopia of clams, crabs, the sweetest of prawns and lobster washed down with spritzy fresh wine. This is the land of luxury villas built by the 19th-century Indianos – the nouveau riche returning from Habana showing off their wealth; most notably in Comillas, where Gaudí was employed to build the hedonistic El Capricho.

Our tour celebrates the creativity of Asturias and Cantabria’s extraordinary people. At Santoña a group of friends got together to create a unique bar to celebrate their God – the anchovy. Close to Santander there are vineyard visits, producers obsessed with detail, daring innovation and thinking outside the box. In Santander’s market, cheesemaker Jose Maria Alonso, one time MP in Spain’s Cortes and President of Spain’s artisan producers, leads a special tasting interspersed with a visit to the museum of pre-history in the basement below. 

The complex thread of product and technique, new world ingredients versus ancient ways is crafted into a brilliant finale by Jesús Sanchéz at his three-star Cenador de Amos, arguably the most beautiful restaurant in the world.