* * * * *
View of la Calle de Alcalá, the longest street in Madrid, from the Palacio de Cibeles restaurant, where participants on the Commonwealth Club Taste of Spain Tour 2013 had dinner.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2013 / gerrydawes@aol.com. Canon 5D Mark III / Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS USM.
Slide show of The Commonwealth Club Taste of Spain Tour
First Days in Madrid, Oct. 9 & 10, 2013
(Click on image to enlarge and see slide show with captions.)
* * * * *
About Gerry Dawes
Writing, Photography, & Specialized Tours of Spain & Tour Advice
For custom-designed tours of Spain, organized and
lead by Gerry Dawes, and custom-planned Spanish wine, food, cultural and photographic itineraries, send inquiries to gerrydawes@aol.com.
I
have
planned and led tours for such culinary stars as Chefs Thomas Keller,
Mark Miller, Mark Kiffin, Michael Lomonaco and Michael Chiarello and
such personalities as baseball great Keith Hernandez and led on shorter
excursions and have given
detailed travel advice to many other well-known chefs and personalities
such as Drew Nieporent, Norman Van Aken, Karen Page and Andrew
Dornenberg, Christopher Gross, Rick Moonen, James Campbell Caruso and many others.
* * * * *
“The American writer and town crier for all good Spanish things Gerry
Dawes . . . the American connoisseur of all things Spanish . . .” Michael Paterniti, The
Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge and The World’s Greatest
Piece of Cheese
* * * * *
"Gerry Dawes, I can't thank you enough for opening up Spain to
me." -- Michael Chiarello on Twitter.
"Chiarello embarked on a crash course by traveling to Spain for 10 days in 2011 with Food Arts
contributing authority Gerry Dawes, a noted expert on Spanish food and wine.
Coqueta's (Chiarello's new restaurant at Pier Five, San Francisco) chef
de cuisine, Ryan McIlwraith, later joined Dawes for his own two week
excursion, as well. Sampling both old and new, they visited wineries and
marketplaces, as well as some of Spain's most revered dining
establishments, including the Michelin three-star Arzak, Etxebarri, the
temple to live fire-grilling; Tickets, the playful Barcelona tapas bar
run by Ferran Adrià and his brother, Albert; and ABaC, where Catalan cooking goes avant-garde." - - Carolyn Jung, Food Arts, May 2013.
* * * * *
"In
his nearly thirty years of wandering the back roads of Spain," Gerry
Dawes has built up a much stronger bank of experiences than I had to
rely on when I started writing Iberia...His adventures far exceeded mine
in both width and depth..." -- James A. Michener, author of Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections
* * * * *
Gerry
Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía
(National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on
Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural
tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's
Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava
Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004,
was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles
& Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the
2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature
in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about
Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.
In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés.
". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran
Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow
narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish
correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food
journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a
self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again
brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane
Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher,
Food Arts, October 2009.
* * * * *
Trailer-pilot for a reality television series
on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.