Eating in Garganta la Olla: Restaurante La Fragua

Restaurante La Fragua is a good option for eating in Garganta la Olla. This small family-run restaurant is located just off Garganta’s main square and offers a good choice of traditional meals at a fair price. Don’t expect anything pretentious. The decoration is pretty simple, but food is good and so are prices. We went for a daily menu (starter, main, dessert/coffee, bread and water) for €15 each. A pretty good deal, I’d say.

If you visit big cities like Madrid or Barcelona or more touristic places in the coast you won’t have any issues finding a restaurant at almost any time of the day. That’s because they are tourist-oriented and keep doors open to people of many nationalities who are used to eat at different times than Spaniards do.

In Extremadura restaurants and bars have more traditional working hours. That means most kitchens open at 13:00 and start serving lunch from 13:30 onwards, although people are usually expected to arrive only after 14:00. This explains why the place was almost empty when we got there at 13:30. It became full at about 14:30.

The same goes for dinner. Kitchens usually open at 21:00, so don’t go before that time. If you get hungry you can always have a drink or two at the bar to kill time!

Back to Restaurante La Fragua now. These were the courses we ordered:

Starters

Ensalada rin-ran

Refreshing salad with a kick made of well-ripened tomatos, onion, green peppers, olive oil and paprika.

Mains

Secreto ibérico

Grilled Iberian pork cut (from the shoulder blaze and the head of the loin), served with peppers salad and homemade chips.

Desserts

Semifrío de queso con mermelada de frambuesa

A creamy dessert made of soft cheese on a biscuits base and served with raspberry jam.

Tarta de la casa

This dessert is quite hard to describe and it’s the restaurant’s special. The taste is somewhere similar to that of custard, but it has a spongy texture and poppy seeds.

Comments

• The starter went down really well after a walk in the heat. I recommend it for a hot summer day, as it’s very refreshing.
• The main was just good. Nothing special. Just good grilled pork.
• The desserts were definitely the main highlight, specially the soft-cheese one (semifrío de queso)
• The staff were polite and attentive
• It was very noisy when full, so it would be a good idea to arrive between 13:30 and 14:00 to enjoy some quiet time.