Eating on the Camino doing your own cooking

So, you have decided to go low-budget. It’s possible, but don’t underestimate it. First of all, you will be tired after a long day’s walk: maybe you won’t have the energy to cook a good meal, so chances are you’ll revert to easy cooking which is not always healthy (you can’t live on pasta with can sausages)… well you can, but that’s not the experience we would like you to have on the camino! Secondly, it’s not always cheaper; a lot of supermarket products are at the same prices they have in the rest of Europe (don’t bring the subject up when you talk with Spanish folks).
If you are sure you have the energy and you know your way in supermarket pricing, read on.

Supermercados

The first place you see in the morning that looks like a supermarket: charge! Bread, cheese, a big tomato and some fruit is all you need to get you through the walking part of the day. I remember eating a big tomato without slicing it, just like you would eat an apple. I was sitting on the remains of a small Roman wall looking over the fields, watching Peregrinos passing by. That was the best tomato I ever had and many followed during the rest of the walks! Eating on the camino can be an experience in itself!

Once you get closer to the place where you are going to stay, charge another supermercado and buy whatever you want to cook that evening. If you need to ask for directions: ‘Donde hay un supermercado o tienda?’ [Is there a supermarket or small shop?]

Pots, Pans and Sporks

A lot of die-hard pilgrims carry their own cooking gear and cutlery/silverware. There are albergues where they indeed do not have any utensils available in their kitchen. However, most of them have. You can either take your chances to be in a situation where you can’t cook nor borrow another pilgrim’s utensils (and go to a restaurant where the food is not expensive at all) or you can carry all that stuff with you to avoid the risk. Most albergues (also the Albergues Municipales) have a kitchen, utensils, cutlery, and even sometimes some food in stock and a microwave. Enjoy your microwave meal but don’t forget to read on… just in case, you know?

Besides walking, sleeping and wandering around in the realms of your mind during both, you’ll be spending some time on searching for places to eat and deciding what you are going to eat. During the day our advice would be to either walk only until lunch and have a big, nutritious lunch (and take a simple, easy digestible dinner), or walk all day and take your lunch with you in the form of bocadillos de queso y jamón (ham and cheese sandwiches) and then have a good dinner well before you lay down to sleep.

Along most of the caminos you’ll be bombarded with signs offering ‘Menu del Peregrino’. Just like any menu, it depends on the place whether it’s going to be a delicious meal or not. So, people telling you not to order from that menu probably had bad experiences with a particular restaurant. Although, I must say, in the more crowded areas of the Camino Francés those restaurant experiences are becoming less rare by the year. Which is a pitty, because eating on the Camino should be a feast!

Just like in a lot of other European restaurants, they will have day menu’s (menu del día), menu del peregrino (which is basically a menu del día but with a name that will appeal to the main tourists passing by: pilgrims), and most restaurants will also have a la carte, which basically lets you choose what you want to eat.
Marketing: based on making the choice easier, offering only three prices to choose from so you will be glad you ordered without language problems and do it fast (the sooner you order, the sooner you eat and the sooner you’ll clear the table for the next customer).

Having said that, food should be enjoyed, and it won’t be the first time that we see Spanish folks get angry at the waiter because they felt pushed and hurried during their meal. Be Spanish: take your time. Eating on the camino can be one of the experiences you will most brag about when you return home.

Ask for refills

You’ve had your portion of water to stay hydrated during the walk. Now that you’re done walking, you deserve some other taste. Go easy on the alcohol folks… 1 or 2 glasses is just fine, but come on, getting drunk on the camino can only hurt your and other’s experience.

An important fact not a lot of people know about, and when they leave a restaurant, they say ‘the food was nice but the service was bad, we had to ask for new drinks every time’.

In Spain (excluding maybe the touristic areas on the Mediterranean coast where they consider making money more important than good service) it is in general considered very impolite if the waiter keeps ‘bugging’ you with the question if you want more to drink.

So, there you have it: Spanish restaurant etiquette. They ask you what you want to drink once at the beginning. They serve you, and they will only bug you once during your dinner with the question whether you are enjoying your food and whether there is anything else they can do for you. They will be in constant watch of people raising their hand asking for their service at the table. That’s exactly what you need to do when your glass is empty; call the waiter and ask for a refill.

Spanish conclusion: the restaurant has a bad service if it takes too long to get the attention of a waiter.

Sweet and Salty

You’re walking, you still have a couple of K’s to go, it’s hot, and there is no store or bar around. You start to feel a bit dizzy or nauseous. Stop, take that small bag of peanuts or other nuts/chips out of your backpack and eat them. Same counts for sugar cravings. Charge those batteries! Just make sure you have a small amount of something salty and something sweet with you along the way even if you have just been eating on the camino in some fancy restaurant.

Top Galician food that you don’t want to miss on your way to Santiago

Food is important everywhere, but in Spain (like in many Mediterranean countries) it is one of the main moments of the day: to be eating on the camino, preferably in good company. Food is always influenced by culture, climate and history. There is a long food tradition in Galicia, and you’ll find the gastronomy very traditional, basic, but also very very tasty.

There are not that many spices or herbs used in Galician food. The taste of the main ingredients play a far more important role. It is amazing what you can do with garlic (ajo), olive oil (aceite de oliva), salt (sal), and parsley (perejil). A lot of traditional dishes find their origin in the times during the war. There was not a lot to spend, and people had to rely on what they could grow in their own garden, and the meat they could get from their own stock (1 cow and 1 pig if they were lucky). Nowadays it is still common to join with one or two other persons and buy a couple of piglets. Jointly, they nurture the piggy’s and when it’s time…. churrasco!

Not all menu’s come with nice pictures, so we have googled a bit around and took a selection of the main dishes you will find on the menu’s along the way.

Remember: if you order a-la-carte, and you stick to some of the cheaper dishes (usually they are also part of the ‘Menu del Peregrino’) there are a lot of places where you will eat better and cheaper as opposed to simply ordering the Menu del Peregrino for 10 Euros. Take a look at our selection below. We thought about vegetarians too by listing the non-meat dishes separately, so you are not disgusted with the looks of all the meat. We like meat very much, but we do understand and respect your point of view.