Literary Lunches

I always find it rather interesting to read a novel set in a place that I have visited. When I read Iain Banks’s "The Crow Road" I was amused to find that the story took place in Lochgilphead, a small place in Scotland where we once spent a summer holiday. Donna Leon sets her detective stories in Venice, a place I love but would hesitate to say I know well. Such presumptuousness might lead you to fall into a canal.

So it was an extra bonus when I read Domingo Villar’s "Ojos de Agua" to find his hero strolling along Príncipe and visiting places I recognised in and around Vigo. One of the favourite haunts of detective Leo Caldas is a restaurant called El Eligio, made to sound so enticing that I decided to investigate it. After some hunting around, I found it tucked away in Travesía de la Aurora, just behind Príncipe, small and unassuming. I’ve not seen it mentioned in any guide books but then I get the impression that the restaurant critics didn’t stray far from the port and I suppose El Eligio is a bit off the beaten track.

Opened in the 1920s by Eligio himself, I understand that the restaurant initially served little more than octopus, meatballs and pimientos de Padrón washed down with ribeiro wine. The writer Valle Inclán is said to have eaten there and many local painters such as Lodeiro, Barreiro and Laxeiro made it their meeting place. It went on to become something of a centre of cultural life in Vigo, especially in the 60s, 70s and 80s, rather like the more famous restaurant Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona. In 1985 it was taken over by Eligio’s son-in-law Carlos Álvarez who, as far I know, still runs it, serving a range of tapas by all accounts. The artist Barreiro still frequents it when he is in Vigo, apparently.

Naturally enough, having found out all this, I wanted to go and eat there. So today we went along at lunchtime, only to find it shut. The friendly lady who was locking the kitchen door informed us that the owner was lunching with friends elsewhere and so the place was closed this lunchtime. I told her what had led us there and she let us take a peep inside before she finished locking up. It is open in the evening so we promised to return some time in the near future to try out its culinary delights.

This left us with a dilemma: where to go for lunch. There is no shortage of eating places in Vigo but we were rather set on trying somewhere new and different. Our problem was quickly solved though and once again thanks to Mr. Villar and his detective story. Our hero, Leo Caldas, arrives late for lunch with his father one day at a restaurant at the end of El Arenal, a place called El Puerto which we have passed many times but never at lunchtime. So off we went to try it out.

We definitely made the right decision. It turned out to be one of the few places we have found with a PROHIBIDO FUMAR sign in the window and it was full of local people having lunch, always a good sign. In this no-nonsense place with its plain decor and checked tablecloths we enjoyed zamburiñas, ensalada mixta and pescados variados, a plateful of assorted fish which, according to what I read in Mr. Villar’s book, should have been freshly caught in the ría and certainly tasted as if they had.

Now, Domingo Villar has recently published the second of his Leo Caldas detective stories. Maybe if he continues to develop this into a series a new kind of Vigo tourism will spring up: The Leo Caldas Trail. It could be a more enjoyable gastronomic alternative to eating in Compo’s Cafe in Last of the Summer Wine’s Holmfirth or something like visiting Wordsworth’s Lake District or Hardy’s Wessex but with better weather on the whole.