There aren’t a lot of tourist sites to visit in Arcos and there’s not a lot on the way of day-tripping adventures; however, the food in Arcos is fantastic and you could easily spend a day just moving from restaurant to restaurant to enjoy a meal and the view (or watch people trying to drive their cars through the tiny cobblestone streets).
Left is flan, which is the national dessert of Spain. It’s a caramel custard covered in whatever the chef sees fit. And, when they say caramel in Spain, they mean caramel (real sugar or maple sugar). It’s not corn syrup based. In fact, nowhere in Europe did we find a product that had corn starch/syrup in it. Apparently, this happens only in North America.
Above is some sort of cashew omelette that from the Don Fernando Restaurant: it’s egg wrapped around cheese and ham covered in cashew sauce. This little creation seemed so deceptively like it was breaded that I had to ask the chef how it was made.
Huevos revueltos are everywhere in Spain. In it’s simplest form, it’s scrambled eggs. I have to say that until Arcos, the huevos revueltos were just plain bad; eggs that were barely turned with a bit of salt and pepper. However, given the Spanish love for pastry/bread-based breakfasts, eggs are my only option.
Happily, we found good huevos revueltos at the Restaurante Torresoto. This is one of the places that got terrible reviews; we found it a bit hit and miss. When it was good it was really good… and vice versa.
On the same street as the Restaurante Torresoto, is an Italian restaurant that seemed quite new. Here we found very good traditionally baked pizza, risotto, and lasagne. Once again I managed to inhale all the olives in a relatively short period of time.
In searching food reviews on the internet, I was a bit surprised to see that the food in Arcos rated poorly because what we ate here was far better than what we experienced elsewhere in Spain. That said, maybe some of these reviews should be taken with a grain of salt given I also had a conversation with a woman in Sevilla who was ecstatic that she was “finally” in a town that had a Starbucks and a McDonald’s.
Corn syrup is only used in NA because there is a hugh corn farmer lobbyist group in Washington and most manufactured foods are made here by big American companies or subsidiaries thereof.