The world in a village
If he wanted his restaurant to be Mexican, it would be among the best in Spain. The same would be true if he declared it Indian or Thai. But he doesn't aspire to be. Diego Fernández simply combines three cuisines he has mastered and fuses them into a unique model, with its own personality, that defies labels.
We're in Regueiro, a restaurant in western Asturias, in the small village of Tox, very close to Puerto de Vega. It's taken Diego years to achieve recognition for his work, so different from anything else in the area, in the rest of Asturias, or even in Spain, but finally this season he's enjoying the success that cuisine of this caliber deserves. It's well worth traveling the hundred kilometers from Oviedo or Gijón to experience this restaurant and its cuisine.
His work with corn, which he has been doing for years, is fundamental. He has gone to great lengths to achieve special varieties that are now cultivated by a cousin and ground by him on a metate brought from Mexico (he will soon have a specific mill also being sent from there). He then nixtamalizes the corn to obtain tortillas that are reminiscent of the best we have tasted in that country. Among them are the blue corn tortillas that accompany a fantastic black mole madre, which he makes with 37 ingredients and which takes more than six months to prepare.
Mole, to which they add stewed beans and wild boar jus in a clever fusion. A fusion further enhanced by adding shiso leaves to the tortillas, replacing the Mexican hoja santa and providing greater depth of flavor. These tortillas and this mole alone justify the trip to Tox. But there's more. Indian roti bread, baked in a tandoor oven, accompanies beef curry from northern Thailand; chicken, also tandoor-roasted, with butter tikka masala sauce; or a quesadilla filled with chicken stew and chipotle. A journey around the world from a small Asturian village.
