Post by Wynette: We are in the tiny town of San Cibrao. We ate lunch at A Bodega, the only place open serving a full lunch. The other restaurant is closed on Mondays.
For first course, we chose the xudias (green beans flavored with ham), and ensalada de pasta (pasta salad). For second course we had costilla (pork ribs) and pechuga de pollo (chicken breast). For desert we had tarta de abuela (grandma cake — a chocolate cream cake) and whiskey cake (turned out to be ice cream!).
We shared everything, as always. The ribs were tender and flavorful and had some yummy carrots and caramelized onions (not nearly enough) plus French fries (way too many and we tried to ignore them).
The green beans and chicken were quite good, too. We weren’t too crazy about the pasta salad.
Bread and bottled water and coffee also came with the 12 euro meal. The coffee was not good. Very watery.
Sorry about the coffee. I expected them to offer wine, not coffee, because I thought a bodega was a wine-oriented restaurant (maybe that is what it is in America, or maybe just New York), but Google translate says it is just a “store”.
And I discovered that “callos” is tripe, so I can see why you didn’t order it. And Google translate (and other sources) say that “lirios” are lilies. Hard to imagine that that was really a main course. You didn’t order it, but do you know what it is?
Yes we got lilies as a translation too and then I typed in “lirios de comer” into Google image search and found out it was some little fishes. Oftentimes these little fishes are what they call anchovies but I’ve never liked them. Even though I like the salty anchovies you put on pizzas. Wine was one of the options. You can always have wine instead of water in these menus, but we almost always choose water. We are not big wine drinkers. We even said to each other: “Wish we could just have a couple of sips of wine”, but we don’t want the whole bottle which is what they usually give you. Usually we have lunch shortly if we’ve been walking and we’re very thirsty for some good cold water.
Yes and you called it on the tripe. We rejected that option as soon as we looked it up.
PS. Henry, I did this post mainly for you because I know you like looking at these menus and it’s fun to talk about them with you.
They really give you nice, and varied, choices for these fixed price lunches. I’d probably passed on the tripe as well, but might have gone with the anchovies/sardines. Agree, mostly, on the water. It is what you want after walking. A glass of wine, what you get in France, might be nice too, but a whole bottle is way too much (and probably of low quality).