Ca Les Senyoretes (Otos)
Otos is a lovely village, with an amazing collection of sun dials scattered around the walls of its houses.
It also has an interesting hotel/restaurant where you can dine in decadent splendour among the period furniture, while being looked down upon by some grim-looking ancestors.
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At first I thought we’d stumbled into some Mafia hangout as the faces staring down at me seemed to be daring me to send back the wine (something I would never do unless it was pure vinegar, and even then I’d be tormented).
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The whole Mafia/paranoia thing was confirmed by the presence of a shotgun hanging on one wall, and I expect that ‘doing a runner’ is not common practice around here.
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When the local vineyards were practically destroyed by a pest known as Phylloxera in the 1870s, entire families had to emigrate to South America just to survive.
If you read the story that goes with the photos, you find out that one such family eventually returned and the descendants opened Ca Les Senyoretes in their memory.
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I have said before that I find choice threatening, almost as much as great grandad up there disapproving of me, and so I love to be told what to eat and be served a variety of starters and only have to decide between two main dishes, which were oven rice (arroz del horno) and mountain rice (arroz de montaña).
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I would have liked the latter, which I don’t know, but was coerced by the group I was with and it was apparently a group, not an individual, choice.
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The starters were some very tasty cod croquettes and an unusual morcilla (blood or black pudding depending on your degree of sensibility), which contained walnuts, making it unexpectedly crunchy. Or maybe those were pig bones……
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Either way, they were accompanied by some very nice cheese and a well balanced salad (it didn’t fall off the plate; too much).
Pretending I know something about wine (apart from which end of the bottle to pour from) is always distressing, and so when we ordered a white and a red (in perfect French) I was triply happy in that they didn’t ask me to taste it, that the white was from the nearby Daniel Belda vineyards, his now classic Viura (sorry, a little bit of pretentiousness crept in) and that the red didn’t even have a label, a sure sign that the maitre is supremely confident and knows what he’s doing.
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All in all an excellent place for a weekend getaway. Book early to get a table in the first part of the restaurant, although there is a terrace at the back but without a nice view, and there is also a second dining room where children tend to congregate. But there is always that shotgun!!!
Calle Santo Cristo, 1, Otos,Valencia
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