Second of our three day-trips to three UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the vicinity of Madrid. In sheer luck we chanced upon a 500-year-old academic ceremony at one of Spain's oldest university campuses, yet our most memorable highlights all had to do with the town's lip-smacking cuisine.
Best known as the birthplace of one of the world's oldest universities, Alcala de Henares is a convenient 40 minutes ride on suburban Cercanias trains from Madrid Atocha. While the main campus is a good 10 minute walk from the station, academic buildings such as the stylish, Moorish-inspired Palacete de Laredo serve to guide first-time visitors along the route.
For ourselves though, the prestigious university campus would first take a backseat to the allure of Alcala's most famous culinary invention.
PASTELERIA LUPE (Alcala de Henares)
Location Map
Why on earth would we pick this dusty bakery situated at a busy intersection next to a gas station? Because this tiny pasteleria is rumoured to be one of two that still holds the original recipe to one of Madrid's best-loved pastries, the celebrated Rosquilla de Alcala.
Behold my favorite bakery item anywhere in Spain, an impossibly crumbly piece of puff pastry shaped like a donut but tasting a hundred times better -- made of fermented dough but light as feather, dipped in egg yolk but not heavy, sugar-glazed but not overly sweet. Don't flinch at the price of 24 euros/kg -- it's worth that and more.
Bill for Two Persons
| Rosquillas de Alcala x 2 | |
| Palmera | |
| TOTAL | 4 Euros (CAD$6) |
After breakfast we arrived at the medieval campus where the University of Complutense was founded more than 700 years ago, bearing the Latin name of this ancient Roman town. This is also the venue for the annual presentation of Cervantes Prize, the equivalence of Pulitzer Prize for literary achievement in the Spanish-speaking world.
By chance we arrived on the first day of the academic year when all classrooms were filled with returning students, typing away on their laptops while centuries of predecessors, immortalized in oil paintings all over this 500-year-old building, watched on.
Opening day also comes with the 500-year-old procession in which a hundreds professors, all dressed in the academic gown representing their individual faculties, marched from the Cathedral towards the University Rectorate through the old town's cobblestone streets. Unfortunately for us it also meant that guided tours of Capilla de San Ildefonso and the historic Paraninfo were called off for the day.
Part of Alcala's distinctive scenery is the pervasiveness of massive nests atop the town's bell towers and warm chimneys, occupied most of the year by resident white storks often seen feeding at the flat marshes of Henares River to the immediate south of the suburban town.
Linking the university campus with the Alcala's gothic cathedral is the medieval, almost Italianate thoroughfare of Calle Mayor, lined with blocks of covered porticoes reminiscent of Bologna but even more antiquated and comparatively down-to-earth in its collection of shops. This is a town of money-pinching university students after all.
Crown jewel of the medieval town is a massive 15th century cathedral with an uncharacteristically austere interior due to damages suffered during the Spanish Civil War. Despite its historic importance as a major stop on the Camino de Santiago, the most impressive part of the cathedral nowadays is the photogenic spiral staircase leading to a 60m tall belfry towering above anything else in the old town.
How do storks cope with the deafening thumps from these enormous copper bells atop the tower? My observation from Gengenbach, Germany is that they possess such accurate biological clocks that they will learn to vacate their nests moments before the striking of the first bells of the morning before returning at nightfall.
The end of the strenuous climb led to a panoramic view of Alcala's three-storey terracotta skyline, stretching beyond the university and over the Castillan foothills towards Guadalajara. While the cool breeze was a welcomed relief on this sweltering day, we made sure to hurry down before the next clock strike at 13:00.
One block to the north stands a lesser-known but arguably more influential site, the Archbishop's Palace where Columbus first presented King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella with his ambitious seafaring proposal that led to the discovery of the Americas. At this point lunchtime was coming up, and frankly I was a little nervous about the prospects here in a university town.
Let me start off with the disclosure that I usually have low expectations for food at college towns, and I don't think I'm alone in having subpar experience with cheap, uninspiring eateries catering to students' demands for oversized portions and questionable quality.
RESTAURANTE AMBIGU (Alcala de Henares)
Location Map
But this is Spain. And this is a sizeable city of 200,000 residents who outnumber the student body and surely demand better food than 100 Montaditos. We ended up the fashionable Restaurante Ambigu -- sister establishment to the upscale Restaurante Casino -- featuring a 3-course Menu del Dia with wine for an astoundingly cheap price that I won't reveal just yet.
And it turned out to be the best lunch deal of our 16-day trip. First up was my wife's choice of an outstanding gazpacho with just the perfect splash of grated watermelon, offering its sweet fruitiness without diluting the refreshing acidity of the tomato base. It was a godsend on this hot September afternoon.
My choice for appetizer was the classic Revuelto de Setas, which came out not quite as traditional as expected as the smallish dish of soft scrambled eggs was granted an Asian touch with some light-flavored Shimeji and Shiitake mushrooms.
Both of our main courses turned out excellent for the meager price we paid, starting with this flavorsome Arroz Marinero -- not a Spanish paella mind you, but a related dish repatriated from Spain's former Latin American colonies. For the generous amount of shelled mussels, shrimps, calamari and scallops buried inside the creamy simmered rice, I would have gladly paid the price of the entire Menu del Dia just for this one dish.
But that's not even my favorite dish.
The best dish was the pescado del día según mercado, or catch of the day, which turned out to be a half sea bream, topped with a layer of creamy crab salad and oven-broiled to perfection. The freshness of the sea bream was delightful enough, but my favorite was the baked surimi salad that elevated the dish to an unanticipated level of refinement, especially in 3-course set lunch at an impossibly cheap price.
The choice of four dessert were relatively simpler but still delicious. The pictured Arroz con Leche -- a soft rice pudding with sweetened milk and cinnamon -- turned out to be the better of our two picks, though the creamy Panna Cotta wasn't bad either.
And the mystery price you ask? Just 12.5 Euros per person.
12.5 euros for an outstanding 3-course lunch, including bread and a glass of wine, not at some remote corner of Andalusia but in the vicinity of Madrid! Now that's definitely the best price-to-quality ratio we encountered on our 16-day trip. And this -- along with its scrumptious recipe for Rosquilla -- made Alcala de Henares worthwhile for us, with or without the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Bill for Two Persons
| Menu del Dia x 2 | 25 Euros |
| TOTAL | 25 Euros (CAD$37.5) |
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