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What can you eat at the jury restaurants of MasterChef

The contest changes the life of« El Bohio&raquo ;, the house of Pepe Rodriguez in Illescas (Toledo): from a half-empty room to full newspapers and autographs

The things of television.In El Bohio it has been many years since He eats very well.In fact, he earned his Michelin star no less than in 1999.Gastronomes and experts have long considered him as the best restaurant in Castilla-La Mancha and one of the best in Spain .And yet it has had to be a television program, Master Chef, which has popularized this house that opened its doors in Illescas there by 1935 on the old road that linked Madrid with Toledo.The presence of chef Pepe Rodriguez Rey As a jury in that television program, he has made some semi-empty dining rooms until very recently are now full daily, with advance reservations. Everyone, whole families in some cases, wants to see the chef , photograph yourself with him and ask for an au Tografo: A kind of lottery for Pepe and for his brother Diego, owners of El Bohio, who are thus rewarded, unexpectedly, the good work of so many years.Eating, eats the same.Or what is the same, magnificently.The difference is in that new clientele that discovers, thanks to its presence on television, the kitchen of a great professional.

El Bohio is in Illescas, about 40km from Madrid Just 20 minutes by car on the highway of Toledo.The restaurant is located in an old road inn quite renovated, although retaining many signs of its past.On the top floor is the main dining room opened last year, much more luminous and pleasant than the primitive one, which is kept in operation on the ground floor.Diego Rodriguez Rey, Pepe's brother, is professionally occupied with the collaboration of a competent sommelier, Jose Carlos de la Fuerte.I will offer you a letter of vi We, because of its volume, is more an encyclopedia.Alli are all the Manchego wines that are worthwhile and many others of very different origins, both national and foreign.

Prices

Following a trend that prevails in many restaurants of current cuisine, in El Bohio there is no menu. Only three very different menus to satisfy any type of customer. Logically, The one that best reflects the creative work of the chef, his personal way of understanding the traditional Manchego cookbook and taking advantage of the products of the region, is the tasting menu, at the price of 95 euros. It consists of Eight starter snacks, eight main courses and two desserts, to end with some sweet snacks to accompany the coffee, but if it seems too expensive, or too long, or too modern, there are two other options, more affordable and simpler.one side, the « Summer Menu&raquo ;, for 49 euros , which includes some of the chef's best dishes of the last few years, now converted into classics.This menu includes some welcome snacks; cauliflower soup with herring and corn; old clothes with cooked broth (the coolest dish that Pepe Rodriguez Rey has created from a very popular recipe); fried cod with marinade juice; roast lamb with mashed potatoes and olives; a dessert of rice pudding with mango and coconut; and truffles for coffee.

And if even this seems too« modern&raquo ;, or expensive, there is still a third possibility: the so-called menu of the day, for 37 euros. Dishes of traditional cuisine for the most part.Includes these welcome snacks, continue with anchovies with cheese and beets, then a gazpacho with a touch of anchovies and olive oil, and a main course of your choice between homemade meatballs or corns.The latter are among the best we have ever had.Absolutely recommended.It closes with a dessert of chocolate and coffee, and truffles as auction.In addition, this menu includes local wine. Very accessible prices if we take into account that we are talking about a Michelin-starred restaurant.

The Pepe Rodriguez tasting menu

But if you really want to enjoy, you have to Get carried away to the tasting menu, which marks the category of the restaurant and the chef.After the eight snacks, complete appetizer, two very dishes arrive refreshing: frozen almond, shrimp and sesame juice ; and shrimp, green apple salad, leaves and wasabi.Originalisimo, then, the vegetable dish of the stew in salad, summer interpretation of the popular stew in which turnip, tomato and white sausage take center stage.Excellent egg with cocochas , potatoes and piparras, in a peculiar and tasty contrast of flavors and textures.

But the best has not yet come.It's the pigeon and foie gras cookie, spiced mortar and fruits. Another of the great dishes that the Illescas chef has created.Pure reinterpreted Manchego tradition, with a temperature contrast between the frozen content of the cookie and the hot mortar.Tradition that is prolonged in the revision of the potato stew with ribs and in the modern version of cod and spinach stew, a dish that everyone wants to try because « is that of the TV» .If the waiter serves it with pride, it seems , I present it in one of the programs you love for the contestants to do it.Without hardly anyone having tried it, it is already the most popular in El Bohio.The salty part of the menu is closed with an impeccable roasted pigeon that, in a Mexican guino, is completed with a crust taco of pork, what in that country they know as chicharrones.

Two desserts as closing.First one light based on sugar flakes, yogurt and white chocolate, with citrus touches that They make it fresher.Then, rice with milk with mango and coconut.Also with coffee arrive a small portion of lemon and yogurt cake and other sweet snacks to achieve complete satisfaction.Pepe Rodriguez Rey's kitchen transmits as much or more that the role he plays as a jury in Master Chef.

ABAC, the house of Jordi Cruz

The familiar air and old road inn that is breathed in El Bohio completely changes when you visit Abac, the restaurant where Jordi Cruz, the other Master Chef jury .Ab ac is in a modern city hotel opened just five years ago in the upper area of ​​Barcelona.Fifteen luxury rooms surround the restaurant, which is the axis of the project, backed by two Michelin stars since November 2011.Beautiful location, with large Windows that overlook the garden.Unlike El Bohio, here there is a letter, which is completed with two tasting menus. Prices much more severe than those of the Illlescas restaurant, as corresponds to a luxury space , in the noble part of Barcelona and with two stars.So, in the menu, the cheapest entrees are at 42 euros, and some fish dishes such as crayfish and prawns in two services, roasted eggplant textures, tea from trumpets of death, rabito and tear iberica with curry bread, reach 56.As you can see, more expensive dishes and with much more historical names.

Important differences in the tasting menus of the restaurant barcelones.Tanto in price as in esti the kitchen. The Abac menu, ten dishes, including three appetizers, one of them a welcome nitro cocktail, and two desserts, costs 135 euros .And the great Abac , longer, reaches 155.Both allow you to discover the cuisine of Jordi Cruz, who at 35 years of age has marked his own line of work, between classic haute cuisine and the avant-garde , always very respectful with the product but without giving up funny guinos towards the diner.Cruz is a good representative of the new generation of chefs who is taking over to keep the Spanish kitchen bar high.

On the menu most recent great Abac highlights the Parmesan noches with raw mushrooms ; the foie gras with figs and fig leaf ice cream; the smoked tartare steak with alpine veal snow, cooked yolk and mustard veil; Palamos shrimp with coral tea; fried mullet with citronella aioli; or the three veal cooks with their tendons and eat lemon thyme.And two desserts, yuzu sorbet with yogurt, basil and citrus skins, or asadao sponge cake with banana, coffee, vanilla and bourbon.

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