To take the highway towards the sea is very good to get a tan during the four seasons. The interior, however, awaits impatient and silent for those who are still looking for authentic redoubts.
It is necessary to get up early to take advantage of Jaén. An easy task until the GPS invites us to leave the highway and enter a demanding route surrounded, yes, by an imposing landscape of olive trees. They have been dressing this land is unknown, a hundred years witnesses of the orography of Jaén at a time huge and devoid of spotlights and paraphernalia.
Before settling in Baeza, a stop in the capital.
And the first stop, as logic dictates, is to climb to the Castle of Santa Catalina. Look at the churches that are discovered at your feet and even guess the Cathedral if you move to the cross of the hill. Beyond are exposed Sierra Morena, Sierra Magina, the valley of the Guadalquivir. A spectacle, a foretaste to slow down the pace.
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Coffee in Vander
There is a coffee reference in Jaén that needs no introduction and will delight this urban morning. Juanma Perez captains Vander, located at number 7 of the Maza passage. He serves you a fabled cold brew, talks about Van der Weyden, or takes you for a stroll through the streets of the city. Cicero, coffee spirit, an artist, if you will. And Vander, obligatory pause.
A brief walk through the center is enough to realize the lively warmth of its people. Groups of people hang out at bars and terraces in the midday sun.
One does the same and drops by the Hortelano, well of tapas and olives, before facing the main course, the gastronomic master of this land.
Bagá, emotion without labels
Bagá may be a kitchen-home, a restaurant-dining room, a laboratory, I don’t know. It is not the restaurant that you would recommend to everyone, although there is no restaurant in the world like this one.
Weeks before visiting this temple, I would hear Pedrito Sánchez in Auténtica Premium Food say that “cooking should have no limits” and that, perhaps, “to excite one person you have to piss off a few”.
How can we talk about the emotion that Pedro dynamites with his ideas, with his dishes, with this small salon of unbridled creativity, with this flag of his own that does not care about the precepts of haute cuisine.
How one talks about his caviar pine nut, a dish that modifies textures and looks at you like a circular Rothko. A panellets mazamorra, a buttery, gourmand, savory dessert, one of my favorites, at the zenith of the service.
Or his oxidized pear with smoked eel skin foam; the seaweed meunière or the mushroom with hake collagen that spills over like a cliff, an earthy precipice.
There is a small window to the right of Bagá’s kitchen through which a delicious light filters over dressings and sauces, dishes that look like ceramic shells and cutlery that come from the sea. A kitchen without a name, without a label.
Perhaps someone, other than Pedro, manages so much magic with so few gestures. I don’t think so.
From the Cathedral to the Arab baths
If the traveler has not already done so, an evening stroll is urgently needed to bring down the food and explore the untamed beauty of the Cathedral of the Assumption.
One of the great landmarks of the architect Andrés de Vandelvira, which in fact would serve as an example for the construction of the relative ones in Lima, Cuzco or Mexico City. From its imposing central nave to the Chapter House and the Sacristy to the upper galleries, the Jaén Cathedral is a cathedral to be enjoyed without haste, a masterpiece of the Renaissance.
The jewel in the crown is followed by other unmissable cultural spaces such as the Palace of Villardompardo, whose Arab baths nestle in the depths and are, at the time, the best preserved in Europe.
Hotel Puerta de la Luna: comfort and rural luxury in the heart of Baeza
For many, Baeza embodies all the goodness of a rural getaway and they are not wrong. The journey from Jaén is less uncomfortable and barely 30 minutes separate the two Renaissance destinations. Seas and seas of olive trees cut the landscape along this journey of a charm impossible to neglect.
In the labyrinthine streets that make up the historic center rises the imposing cathedral, plateresque buildings, churches and dozens of palaces, some of them open to the public, others, like the Hotel Puerta de la Luna, literally home to the public.
Hospitality, a historic location – the property occupies a 16th-century mansion with an extraordinary courtyard with a swimming pool and views – and suites that are an elegant journey through time make the stay a peremptory success.
Special accommodations, made of another paste, that offer us a window to the luxury that is to admire our heritage from the bed.
Staying within its walls is precisely that, almost a fetishism. To wake up contemplating the cathedral tower and the Renaissance courtyard, to listen to the murmur of the swimming pool and to indulge in a proverbial breakfast: olive oil, omelettes, ham, handmade sweets.
Acebuche, where France and Jaén meet.
The Puerta de la Luna, with all its facilities, also houses a restaurant to match the majesty of Baeza. During your stay you can, and should, drop by its gastronomic.
In Acebuche the virtues of the land are narrated with techniques, funds, sauces and French elaborations along with gestures and products of the Andalusian recipe book.
An embrace between Jaén and the neighboring country executed with mastery by Axel Guilbert and María López in the kitchen.
Their tasting menu starts with amusing appetizers -from pig’s trotters cromesqui to low temperature boiled egg with Mornay sauce and ochío crumbs-, a delicious shrimp from Motril with olive and cornezuelo sauce or one of the most formidable dishes of the dinner.
It is the foie micuit on a base of Torres cherry jam, veil of amontillado jelly and brioche bread. A dish that offers craft and recreation, the goodness of foie combined with the versatility and character of the Marco de Jerez.
And wine, by the way, is very important in this house. The pairing option offers vertical sparkling wines, local wines, small producers and even local references.
Other great dishes that mark the narrative of the restaurant are the Wellington of trout from Cazorla, meat with trout, spinach and mushrooms, delicate and exuberant at the same time; or the dessert that gives its name to the space.
Acebuche is built, as expected, around the oil. A sign of identity that contains EVOO jam, Breton sablé, quenelle blanc, textured milk with gelatin and drops of lemon thyme and mint flavored olive oil.
The menu includes other successful recipes such as pâté en croute or lamb segureño.
A well stocked wine cellar, a coherent and appealing menu and some outstanding dishes that you will take with you.
Vandelvira: a 16th century convent with a wealth of gastronomic talent.
And if we wanted to escape from this captivating bubble, there is no other place like Vandelvira to savor architecture and cuisine from the hand of this close and visionary genius that is Juan Carlos.
You have to be very unique to work without clumsiness, to be at the height of this spectacular Renaissance convent. They execute, however, with sensitivity and panache, a brilliant tasting menu free of corsets.
A promising restaurant that will continue to provoke rivers of ink in guides and media and that does justice to the memory of the architect and to this town overflowing with beauty.
At the beginning of the feast there is a squid that wanted to be ham, a beurre blanc chard and palodu or the unexpected veil of potato confit with kombu seaweed and vanilla.
Also dishes in which one would like to splash around shamelessly and which are, on the other hand, traps for the eye. The kokotxas, the pipirrana, the profuse flavors of the rabbit or its peculiar foie are first class.
Of manifest finesse, along the lines of Juan Carlos, is the sweet game.
Vandelvira is testimony to a cuisine with personality, dynamic and avant-garde as the team supports it.
A Machadian postcard
Bagá’s menu says the popular saying that I was skeptical of from the beginning – “A Jaén se entra llorando y se sale llorando”-. I see myself, however, on an autumn Sunday leaning on the trunk of the car looking at a Machadian postcard and feeling the first sketches of melancholy blooming.
From the Mirador del Obispo, not wanting to return to Seville and managing to get back soon, I evoke the words of the master:
Of the Moorish city
behind the old walls,
I contemplate the silent afternoon,
alone with my shadow and my sorrow.