It took a bit of finding, as it is tucked away next to the piscinas municipales (public swimming pool), which is beside the river with some playing fields around. It doesn't advertise itself much, and from the outside looks like a typical small "chiringuito" by a pool.
A small brass plaque by the door confirms that it is indeed Restaurante Las Piscinas.
They are famous for their steaks, from their own farms in the Valle de Pás, but there is a lot of other meat & some fish on the menu. Green things are not to be seen anywhere, not even the usual artichokes. You know what you are getting into when you see an enormous portion of callos (from wagyu beef) being eaten as a first course!
We had gone to eat steak, so that is what we had. There were dishes off the menu and we heard something about a salad. So I jumped on that as a light starter.
A big pintxo arrived on a piece of bread. That was the complementary appetizer.
Salad arrived.Thickly sliced smoked salmon, over pan-fried melon & covered with lightly ...fried? jamón. An enormous platter, & no green in sight.
It was delicious. But if that is the lightest thing they have....
The steak (shared one) came, very lightly cooked and cut, with a heatedcast iron plate to cook it to your liking. This cast-iron plate was changed halfway through when the first one cooled down.
Served with real chips and red-peppers.
It weighed 1,300kg.
They had some excellent sounding home-made ice.creams and we had 1 cinnamon and one dark chocolate. Very nice, very creamy, lots of flavour.
Their one page wine list had some Spanish wines from unknown regions, apart of the usual Rioja/Ribeira de Duero.
Upon query the friendly and very knowledgeable guy waiting on us told us he had over 300 Spanish wines in his cellar, but didn't/hasn't actually get round to putting them on a list (don't ask!)
So we were bold and for once left him to surprise us with a wine of his choice. So we had HUNO, an extraordinary wine from Extremadura. With a price tag of 13 euros at the end, totally recommendable.
What we had:
Salad (Melón a la plancha/Smoked Salmon/Jamón)
Old Steak (1.3 kg)
Ice-cream
HUNO
Coffees
Price a la carté, about 40/pp including wine and coffee.
There was also an excellent looking Menu de día for 13 euros being eaten by many people on their lunch break.
Their callos (tripe) is actually sourced from a Wagyu herd reared in Burgos. Cows that get a daily "massage" & in the final few months are given a litre of organic wine a day (in lieu of the beer given in Japan).
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| The restaurant |
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| The wine: excellent & unusual |
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| And very reasonably priced at 13 euros |
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| The "salad" |
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| The steak (the last of) |
