Local Gastronomy

 

The North of Spain is famous for its good food. Apart from serving excellent home cooking at Hotel Posada Del Valle, we provide information on the best restaurants in the area. The hotel is in a unique position with two restaurants each with a Michelin star at 2 kilometres from the hotel. The chefs at both restaurants have in the course of their careers won the award "Champion Cook of Asturias". There are also good seafood restaurants, in the nearby fishing villages of Ribadesella, Llanes and Tazones.

 

As well as excellent meat and fish the local produce includes an amazing array of pulses, with the famous bean stew or "fabada" made from an Asturian variety of large butter beans and sausages. Other versions of this dish are made with wild boar and on the coast with clams. There is an excellent selection of specialist cheeses and the region boasts to have one of the largest varieties of specialist cheeses of any area in Europe! In this mountainous region with its excellent pastures, there has historically been farming of goats, sheep and cows. The lack of communication between these traditional mountain communities has given rise to many different ways of making cheese from the different milks, thus producing such a large variety of cheeses. Probably the most famous is the "Cabrales" cheese, a strong blue cheese from the region of Cabrales. It is possible to visit traditional cheese producers, and the caves where some of these cheeses are stored to mature. At Hotel Posada del Valle we have a selection of some of the best specialist cheeses of the region.

 

The local drink is cider, with its own specific culture. The best places to drink cider is in a cider bar and watch the cider being poured from a height, breaking against the glass so as to introduce a slight sparkle and open its flavour. There is also a cider museum in Nava that pays homage to this drink and the associated culture. Excellent Spanish wines from the different regions are also available in the area.