Enjoying a special restaurant in a cave: Miñanbres Cave Restaurant

Hi folks,

Today I am not going to present you a recipe, but I am going to introduce you to a very special restaurant with some tasty dishes that I enjoyed a few weeks ago with a colleague.

The caves as restaurants in Valdevimbre

Valdevimbre is a small village near León (Spain) with a traditional winemaking history and it is this winemaking tradition that leads us to the old caves used for the preservation of the grapes before pressing. Nowadays they are used as underground restaurants because nowadays these grapes are preserved in places refrigerated by electric energy instead of the traditional caves.

Miñambres Cave

When we parked in front of the restaurant, my partner and I, as you can see in the picture, did not see any kind of cave at first sight.

However, if you look at this side photograph, one can see how the roof of one of the buildings is covered with vegetation and, therefore, the whole restaurant is located under the ground of the small hill.

A real cave

After passing the main door of the restaurant, one understands that the use of the word cave in this type of restaurant is absolutely real, as one enters through a gallery literally dug into the rock in the form of a corridor.

Halfway down the corridor and before the cave forks, in the different rooms or sub-caves, there is a reception area which is actually a wine bar with a multitude of wines from the area and also from other regions of Spain.

After being welcomed by a friendly waitress, we were quickly seated in one of the sub-caves of the restaurant.

I was struck by the narrow holes in the ceiling which, if you look at the photo outside, are the sort of chimneys that can be seen in the photograph and which are in fact small ventilation ducts inside the cave and which already existed at the time when the cave was used to store and preserve the grapes before the wine was made in the area.

Menu and a carnivorous menu

A few minutes after we sat down at the table, the same waitress who seated us offered us the restaurant's menu, which has an elegant and distinguished touch and where the traditional dishes of the area abounded, dishes of pork sausages and beef cooked on the barbecue.

A menu to share, washed down with a local wine.

As a good lover of the local gastronomy, I ordered a glass of red wine, denomination of origin prieto picudo, produced in one of the local wineries, to accompany the dishes we ordered. Unfortunately, I had to drive afterwards and I only allowed myself one glass of wine for the whole meal.

A "salad" of cecina

Javier and I, hesitating about what to order to share, let ourselves be advised by the girls at the next table, who told us that the cecina salad accompanied by duck foie was spectacular.

However, we were very surprised to discover that the presence of vegetables in the salad was negligible, but the great flavour of the cecina (beef ham) accompanied by the duck foie more than made up for the initial surprise on seeing the dish and we had to thank our companions at the next table for advising us so well.

Premium beef chop

As it was a special day for Javier and I, having just completed a great training course in Castilla, we decided to go all out and order a premium beef chop at a price of 65 euros per kilogramme.

This cutlet was served to the point after its passage through the barbecue, but as Javier and I have different tastes in the point of the meat in order to give it an extra touch of cooking on the table itself, we were provided with a cooker with a cooking stone on top to finish cooking the meat to our liking.

In terms of flavour, I can tell you that it is the tastiest beef chop I have ever eaten in my life and despite many people seeing the meat so undercooked, I can tell you that it was real butter melting in your mouth with unforgettable aromas from the holm oak charcoal embers.

The end result, as you can see, was that only the bone of the cutlet was left, which was not very big, and therefore the 65 Euros/kg cutlet was not so expensive after all. Although in reality the piece we ate was 1.41Kg.

A dessert to top it all off

My companion Javier, who didn't have to drive after the meal, was still able to eat a homemade dessert similar to a chocolate and nougat mousse, which he told me was spectacular.

However, I didn't eat dessert so that I wouldn't get sleepy from eating too much, as we still had a 2 hour drive to get home.

A happy siesta

As you can see, my friend and companion was fully satisfied with eating in a cave, as in this photograph taken during the journey to our homes after the meal in the Miñambres cave.

Without a doubt, a pleasant surprise to have discovered that you can eat exceptionally well in a cave and if you are near the city of León, in Spain, do not hesitate to look for the village of Valdevimbre and discover its restaurants inside the old caves used to store grapes to make wine.

Best regards.