I am sure many of you reading this column will occasionally go off exploring the local sights, well guess where we’ve been recently… No… No… Do you want a clue? It’s subterranean and involves a type of light… Got it? Yes... You are correct the ‘Coves del Canelobre’ or in English the Candelabra Caves. Just twenty or so kilometres inland from Alicante. If you’ve not been then do make the effort it’s amazing, this is a huge cavern. And now I have somewhere for you to grab lunch just down the road in the village of Busot.

 

This sightseeing trip is really only a half-day excursion so you may want to take lunch before or after the trip. I’d recommend after, especially if you take my advice and visit La Casa Restaurante in Busot. Since we managed to while away two and a half hours over lunch that was superb, which if you went before visiting the caves would not leave you much time to enjoy their splendor. Chef John Chubb and his wife Christine opened La Casa Restaurante last Christmas time, having been head chef at another restaurant in Alicante. Chef’s view is that great food can be served imaginatively at sensible prices.

 

Incidentally while in Busot do take time to walk around the village the views from calle de Xixona over the surrounding countryside to the coast are breathtaking in themselves. Anyway I digress, we were six up on this jaunt, when we found our way via the village car park into the rear entrance of Casa Restaurante. Not the most auspicious way to enter this or for that matter any other restaurant. However once inside the main dining room was buzzing with a lunchtime throng of both local Spanish and expats.

 

There’s a choice of a la carte or menu del dia on offer here, we decided to try the menu del dia at €15.90 for four courses plus a half bottle of wine each. While looking at the menu we were given the usual bread and aioli, at this point we were not aware that this restaurant was run by an English couple, since our waitress was Spanish and a little nervous of using her English. She needn’t have worried it was very good, certainly better than my Spanish I’m ashamed to say.

 

Between us we managed to ordered four of the five available starters, baked goat’s cheese, Tandoori chicken salad with a mint dressing, couscous salad with lamb patties and Russian salad with Boquerones. Mine was the couscous salad with lamb patties, this turned out to be a real pleaser. Everyone had a little mouthful, an excellent choice! In fact we were all impressed with our chosen starters both in presentation and of course flavour.

 

Once again for the second course we selected between us three of the four possible choices, vegetable soup, spaghetti carbonara and calamari with onion and herbs. The calamari was good, a little harder than I like but since the onion with herbs was such an understatement I had no complaints. There’s something very appealing to me about onions when they are just on the verge of caramelizing and mixed with this array of herbs it was ecstasy! The wine was flowing by now, we had both white and red wines on the table but dear reader I’m sorry to say I failed to take note of what we had chosen. The mind not being as sharp as it was this information is now lost forever! I can remember that none of us had a complaint.

 

From the six mains we had between us the lamb, pork, chicken and fish. All of which were presented beautifully and left no disappointment when placed in the mouth. The point about this meal and John’s cooking is that you could easily have paid forty to fifty euros a head for this meal and I’ve not even mentioned the desserts. So to have this kind of meal put in front of you for just €15.90, well it can only be described as perfect!

 

We had only popped in for a lunchtime snack and here we were sated and content, so much so that we scrubbed plans for dinner that evening and settled for cheese and biscuits on the terrace. We mean to go back to Casa Restaurante and sample their a la carte, I thoroughly recommend you look this place up when you are next in the area. Thank you John, Christine and team for a fantastic lunch!

Plaza Del Ayuntamiento, Busot. Tel. No. 965 699 681

 

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