 Carmona's restaurant "Mesón la Cueva" is tucked into ancient caves beneath the city. I first visited Carmona with an accident-prone friend, the kind of guy who pratfalls his way through life. Once I watched him bend down to pet a puppy while a bull was charging across the field in his direction. Everyone screamed warnings but somehow they went unheard. My friend ambled out of the field, smiling, and shut the gate behind him with seconds to spare. Other times he wasn’t so fortunate. Once, crossing the street, he plummeted into an open manhole. Another time he crashed through a shower stall, although to be fair, he blamed that on a shove from a poltergeist. He was the kind of guy who, if he said, “What a lovely day,” you instantly looked up to see if an anvil was about to fall on his head. It was like hanging out with the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote. My principle memory of visiting Carmona with him was in the ancient Roman cemetery. My friend jumped out of the car and scampered up a pile of rubble exclaiming happily, “Oye, ¿qué crees que hay aquí?” (Hey, what do you think’s up here?). His wife, Rich, and I all leapt forward and grabbed his coattails to keep him from tumbling into a 2000-year-old tomb.  At the Tomb of Servillia, and elsewhere in Carmona's Roman Necropolis, railings have now been added to keep people like my friend from tumbling in. Of course, 2000 years is a mere a blip on Carmona’s timeline; it’s one of Europe’s oldest settlements, nicknamed “the dawn star of Europe.” Over the past 30,000 years, this broad, flat, easily defended plateau has attracted protohumans, Tartessos, Phoenicians, Romans, Moors, and Spaniards — including our old friend, King Pedro the Cruel (Pedro the Just to his friends) in the 14th century. Carmona is only 20 miles from Seville — an easy three hours by horse — and King Pedro visited often. It made a pleasant getaway from the burdens of state, the pomp and circumstance of court, and the hostility of his father’s many noble bastards, who were constantly trying to usurp his power and, if possible, slit his throat. Carmona’s congenial setting inspired Pedro to build himself a vacation castle — which was doomed almost from the start.  The Alcázar del Rey Don Pedro “Talk about bad karma,” I said to Rich, skimming a history of the Alcázar del Rey Don Pedro. “The king imprisoned his father’s old mistress there for a while; no wonder his bastard half-brothers wanted him dead." Henry, the one who finally killed the king, seized the Carmona castle, where Pedro’s widow, kids, and chief steward were hiding out with the royal treasury. Henry took everything and tore the castle down. “But wait, there’s more,” I said. “A century later the castle was rebuilt and occupied by various war lords who made Pedro the Cruel look like Mother Teresa. Eventually a mob of irate citizens stormed the castle and demolished it in just four days. The remaining stones were shaken to dust by the earthquake of 1504 and then again in 1755.” “The Universe sending a message?” suggested Rich. “Yep. In 1871 it became a bullring, and by 1976 it was a parador.” (These are state-owned luxury hotels.) “They say guests report hearing noises in the walls. It’s got to be haunted. Shall we go take a look? Fancy lunch out in Carmona?” We went last Friday, and I could see why Pedro wanted a castle-away-from-castle there. Wandering out of the parador and down through the narrow streets, we happened upon the convent of St Claire. Built in 1460, the sprawling complex now houses just fourteen nuns, who pray and serve as witnesses of hope in the world (something we could all use a little more of today!). In their spare time the nuns run a famous bakery with a torno, a revolving wooden box that allows sweets and money to be exchanged while keeping the cloistered nuns invisible. In these more progressive times, the nuns serve you face to face via a pass-through. To be honest, it took a bit of the romance out of the transaction. I ordered the city’s signature torta inglesa (English cake): sponge cake, “angel’s hair” (pumpkin jam), puff pastry, and powdered sugar marked with lines of cinnamon said to reflect the British flag. This was a nod to the cake’s biggest fan, English amateur archologist George Bonsor who, with his partner Juan Fernández López, excavated Carmona’s Roman Necropolis in the 19th century. Bonsor liked cake for breakfast, and a local baker adapted an old Moorish recipe to suit the archologist’s tastes. The rest is culinary history. Will it sound ghoulish if I tell you we decided to enjoy our torta inglesa in the Roman Necropolis? I felt George Bonsor would have appreciated the gesture. The open tombs and tiny museum were amazing; those old Romans knew how to give someone a proper sendoff. Of course, having seen the movie Poltergeist, I’m well aware that disturbing the dead is never a wise idea, but I didn’t sense any menacing specters hanging around. Which is more than can be said for the Devil’s Monastery a few miles outside of town. I knew from the start we wouldn't have time to visit, and there’s little to see now, but the story still raises goosebumps. One morning in 1680 a Dominican monk woke to eerie silence, made his way to the kitchen, and discovered all his fellow monks dead, hanging from hooks, and — gruesomely — being eaten by demons and engulfed in flames. Needless to say inexplicable phenomena occurred during the investigations and the monks’ funeral. Incredibly, the monastic community continued there until the 1940s. Today, daredevils visit the ruins to leave graffiti.  The Devil's Monastery is in ruins now. Rich and I felt our time would be better spent enjoying a leisurely lunch at the Antigua tapas bar. The day’s special was migas (breadcrumbs), a dish invented by Spanish shepherds who fried cubes or crumbs of stale bread in plenty of fat, adding random leftovers such as chorizo. When villages hold a matanza (communal butchering of a pig, sheep, or goat), migas is served with a stew of curdled blood, liver, kidneys, and worse. Luckily Antigua favored the chorizo version. Perched on an old wooden chair, I took the first bite. Marvelous. To me, the combination of warm bread and olive oil is always heavenly; chorizo puts it over the top. As the bar filled up with the lunch-hour crowd, I listened to the happy hum of conversations all around me and decided life really was pretty wonderful. As a new year staggers towards us, I don’t doubt it’ll include moments when, like my accident-prone friend or that monk in 1680, I’ll find myself suddenly catapulted into catastrophe. But with luck, there will also be plenty of times like this one, when I’m warm, well-fed, surrounded by congenial souls, and counting my blessings: Rich, family, friends, my readers, and migas mercifully free of curdled blood, liver, and kidneys. Perfection? No. But it’ll do.  The bus was supposed to take more than an hour, but in fact was more like 45 minutes. Cost: €2.45 ($2.70) per person each way. THIS IS MY LAST POST OF 2023 I figure over the next two weeks you'll all be too busy with the rush of holiday celebrations to fit in much reading, so look for another post around January 8. HAPPY TIMES, AMIGOS! WANT MORE OUT TO LUNCH POSTS? This story is part of my ongoing series about visiting offbeat towns in the city and province of Seville, seeking cultural curiosities and great food. DISCOVER MORE PLACES TO EAT IN & AROUND SEVILLE LEARN MORE ABOUT MY 2023 NUTTERS' WORLD TOUR AND DON'T MISS THE GREAT MEDITERRANEAN COMFORT FOOD TOUR Now an award-winning Amazon best seller WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so you'll receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] Be sure to check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Yes, it really is the best in the city. “I took a sip and it practically blew my eyeballs out,” Rich said, glaring at the glass in my hand. ‘It’s not that bad,” I said, taking another cautious swallow of the wine. One vlogger had called it “rough as guts,” but that seemed a trifle harsh. I shrugged. “It’s no worse than the house whites we drank all through Sicily, the kind sold in two-liter bottles for three euros in the street market." Rich just rolled his eyes and drank more beer. We were paying a long overdue return visit to Bodega Mateos Ruíz, a tapas bar on a tiny back street near Seville’s Mercado de Feria (Feria Market). Three generations of Ruiz men have become famous for their low-cost wine (currently about $1.50 for a generous glass), and their bacalao frito, rumored to be the most delectable batter-fried codfish in a city known for its seafood connoisseurs.  The old tile sign shows a splayed dried codfish. I’d never given cod much thought until I moved to Seville, but Spanish friends soon explained how salt-dried cod had sustained sailors from Vikings to New World explorers and soon found favor with the folks back home as well. By 1550, a hefty 60% of all fish eaten in Europe was cod, and not surprisingly its name morphed into racy Medieval slang. “For something that began as food for good Catholics on the days they were to abstain from sex,” wrote Mark Kurlansky in Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, “it is not clear why, in several languages, the words for salt cod have come to have sexual connotations … In Middle English, cod meant 'a bag or sack,' or by inference, 'a scrotum,' which is why the outrageous purse that 16th-century men wore at their crotch to give the appearance of enormous and decorative genitals was called a codpiece.”  A 16th-century codpiece; incredibly, this look is no longer fashionable today. Puritanical New Englanders were equally fond of cod but preferred to present theirs surrounded by a glow of sanctity. They claimed it was the fish Jesus used to feed the multitudes in the miracle of the loaves and fishes, suggesting the markings were imprints of his divine fingers and dubbing it “sacred cod.”  Are those miraculous fingerprints or just random stripes? "Sacred cod" is probably the inspiration for the word “scrod,” a totally made-up fish invented by a maître d’ at Boston’s Parker House Hotel because he needed to preprint his menus and couldn’t always predict whether the catch of the day would be cod, haddock, or pollack. Soon scrod was appearing on menus all over town. And that, of course, gave rise to the grammar joke beloved by writers and English majors throughout New England; when I lived in Boston, I heard it on countless occasions. A guy visits Boston for the first time on a business trip and wants to try some of the local cuisine. He climbs into a taxi at the airport and asks the driver, "Where can I get scrod?" The driver turns to look at him and replies, "You know, I’ve been asked that question many times and in many ways, but never before in the past pluperfect subjunctive." (And for those of you who weren’t English majors, he’s referring to the past pluperfect subjunctive of the word “screwed.”)  The Boston hotel where scrod and Parker House rolls were invented. My point — and I do have one — is that cod has been an important part of the global economy and gastronomy — to say nothing of the humor industry — for more than a thousand years. No doubt there’s one that starts, “These two Vikings walk into a mead hall …” Unfortunately, all those years of planet-wide popularity haven’t done the cod population any favors. I was aghast to learn this week that cod is on the endangered list and may soon become as non-existent as genuine scrod. Clearly I'd be wise get some while I still could. And there's no place I'd rather get cod — sacred or otherwise — than Bodega Mateo Ruíz. This small, old-fashioned tapas bar, founded in 1918, is dimly lit and furnished with dark wood and old wine barrels. It fills up fast, so Rich and I went early, arriving shortly after they opened at 12:30. A handful of customers stood at the bar, nursing beers and talking quietly. Such a subdued noise level is highly unusual in Seville, where even two amigos can create enough boisterous hullabaloo to fill the typical tavern. Possibly voices were lowered out of respect for Mateos Ruíz, the founder’s son and current owner, who is deaf and an expert lip reader, and Mateos's son, who is partially deaf and takes most of the orders now. I watched Mateo haul in a large plastic container of cod pieces. (No, not codpieces! Get your minds out of the gutter, people. I am of course talking about chunks of fish.) It looked like salt-cured cod, which is said to have a more robust flavor than fresh with scarcely any loss of nutrients. How nutritious is cod? It's low in fat, full of protein, and — once you sluice off all the salt — remarkably good for your blood pressure, heart, cardiovascular system, brain, cholesterol, bone, and teeth. So yeah, pretty nutritious. Getting rid of all the salt requires soaking the cod for 24 to 48 hours, during which you repeatedly drain off the water and replace it with fresh. As I looked on with interest, Mateo poured the water from the tub one last time and set it beside the stove. He then prepared my bacalao in the traditional manner: dipping bite-sized chunks into a batter of flour, milk, baking powder, and salt, then deep frying the pieces in olive oil. OK, I’ll admit the deep fat frying may offset some of the healthy properties, but still. I’m delighted to report that fried cod was every bit as delicious as I remembered it from previous visits. The bacalao frito (also known as bacalao rebozado, breaded cod) was golden and crispy on the outside, tender yet toothy inside. They say the secret is medium heat, so it has time to cook thorough properly. (Here’s a recipe if you want to try it at home.) If you're inspired to make it while in Seville, you can pick up the ingredients at the nearby Mercado de Feria This is Sevilla profunda, the real deal, the oldest market in the city, which been supplying the neighborhood with cod and other comestibles since the 18th century.  The Mercado de Feria is a filled with small, family-run stalls like this one. Still worrying about the declining cod population? You might want to pop into the city’s oldest church, conveniently located right next door to the Mercado de Feria. Since 1249 Omnium Sanctorum, the Church of All Saints, has been inviting the faithful to drop in, light a candle, and say a prayer for whatever’s on their minds. This might be a good time to give thanks that you were lucky enough to live during an era when people could still go to a local tapas bar and enjoy a plate of bacalao frito, a glass of wine costing $1.50, and the quiet companionship of congenial and respectful neighbors.  Candles of petition and gratitude in Omnium Sanctorum church  Bodega Mateos Ruíz is just a ten-minute walk north from the Setas (Plaza de la Encarnación) and 20 minutes from the cathedral. WANT MORE OUT TO LUNCH POSTS? This story is part of my ongoing series about visiting offbeat towns in the city and province of Seville, seeking cultural curiosities and great food. DISCOVER MORE PLACES TO EAT IN & AROUND SEVILLE LEARN MORE ABOUT MY 2023 NUTTERS' WORLD TOUR AND DON'T MISS THE GREAT MEDITERRANEAN COMFORT FOOD TOUR Now an award-winning Amazon best seller WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so you'll receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] Be sure to check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Rich goes undercover to investigate rumors new owners are modernizing Triana's Bar Santa Ana. If you ever happen to be down on your matrimonial luck, you’ll be glad to know that Íñigo Lopes is standing by to help. Well, not exactly standing, as he’s been dead for 520 years, but Sevillano friends tell me that if you kick the side of his tomb, you’ll be married within the year. How Íñigo became associated with marriage and good fortune is anyone’s guess. The guy was, as far as I can discover, not only single but singularly unlucky, and his final resting place has suffered a series of what I can only call grave misfortunes. It all started in 1493 when Christopher Columbus was leaving Puerto Rico and asked the king to give him, as a tribute, a young man to serve as his “assistant” (meaning slave). The king, possibly misreading the nature of the position, gave him Íñigo, his own son. Back in Spain, the young man was baptized a Christian, acquired a nobleman as his godfather, and entered Seville’s San Francisco convent to become a friar. Later the nobleman invited Íñigo to live with him, showered him with gifts, then made advances of a very frisky nature. Íñigo objected strenuously, and the nobleman killed him. Yikes! Like I said, not a lucky guy. In a fit of remorse, the nobleman had Íñigo buried in a magnificent but secret tomb in Santa Ana, the main church of Triana, then a separate city but now part of Seville. Three centuries later workmen discovered the tomb, and the church put it on display. In no time a legend sprang up that if you kicked the tomb you’d soon be wed. As you can imagine, the ancient tiles have taken quite a beating. Eventually, exasperated church officials installed a low railing — but placed it just close enough that if you really stretched, your toes could still make contact. I’ve never actually kicked Íñigo’s tomb myself — one husband is enough for me! — but I drop by occasionally to admire the tilework. On a recent visit, I was shocked to discover the grave has been moved from the wall to the floor and given a thick plexiglass cover and painted base. Another token barrier has been installed, but as you can see from the orange chip in the black paint, that hasn’t deterred local hopefuls.  Church officials are getting more serious about protecting Íñigo Lopes' tomb. This shrine makes a weird kind of sense in Santa Ana’s church. Ana was Jesus’ grandmother, Mary’s mother, and is the patron saint of unmarried women, those hoping to get pregnant, moms, housewives, and grandmothers. Her enormous church is filled with statues of holy females, from Ana to medieval martyrs to Seville’s own Saint Angela of the Cross, canonized in 2003. Some say the remarkable amount of respect for females can be traced back to the city’s legendary founder, Mesopotamian goddess Astarte, who for 3000 years represented Mother Nature, fertility, and carnal pleasures.  As a fertility goddess, Astarte is often shown naked. The saints in Santa Ana's church are far less risqué, of course, but the cult of the sacred female is remarkably vivid there. Maybe that’s one reason the church is so popular. In these secular times, 72% of Spanish Catholics rarely attend mass. But Santa Ana still draws crowds, not only for Sunday services but as the launch point for activities such as Holy Week processions and the spring pilgrimage known as the Rocio. Another reason people flock to the church of Santa Ana is that it has its own bar.  At left is Santa Ana's 13th century church; to the right is the Bar Santa Ana. OK, it’s not officially part of the church, but Bar Santa Ana stands directly across the street, serving those going to, coming from, and avoiding religious worship. Everyone meets there, often to celebrate milestones, and during its 110 years, the photos on the wall have become the family album of Triana. For nearly 60 years José Cárdenas stood at the bar, serving up classic dishes such as colo del toro (tail of the bull), tortilla de españa (potato omelets), and thinly sliced jamón (ham) along with ice cold beer and a friendly smile.  José Cárdenas congratulates a couple on their wedding day, 2015. So you can imagine my shock and horror when I read last week that the bar was sold to a hospitality company from the city of Cadiz and had been “tastefully redecorated.” “Is nothing sacred?” I exclaimed upon hearing the news. “What can we expect now? Chrome chairs, plastic menus, and avocado toast?” Downtown Seville has all too many soulless corporate eateries serving 27-euro hamburgers and refusing to provide tap water by claiming it’s unsafe (no it’s not!) in order to make customers pay for bottled beverages. To think this blight could spread to the heart of Triana was almost too much to bear. Fearing the worst, Rich and I dragged ourselves across the river to check out the “improved” Bar Santa Ana. We could not have been more overjoyed at what we found. The new owners are a lively young couple, María from Barcelona and American-British Benjamin, who hired a Sevillano named Saul as manager.  Manager Saul Cruz Palomino with owners María Sanz de Acedo and Benjamin Dalton. “The papers got all the facts wrong,” María confided cheerfully as she placed a couple of cold Cruzcampo draft beers on our table. She and her husband have carefully preserved the character of the bar and happily showed me around the old photos. “This one’s from the 1940s,” Benjamin said. “You see the boy at the right? He’s around seven. That same guy was just in here. He’s a bit older now, of course.”  Bar Santa Ana in the 1940s The former owner, José, lives across the street and drops in often; I saw him collecting a drink from the bar when I arrived. The atmosphere is as welcoming as ever, but naturally, the new proprietors have made changes. The bathrooms had their first comprehensive makeover since they were spruced up for Seville’s 1992 World Expo. The false ceiling is gone, revealing a wonderful crazy-quilt of old wooden slats high overhead. And while sticking to classic dishes, the menu now features more fresh ingredients. Rich and I felt we owed it to my readers to do a taste test and ordered a local delicacy called carrilladas. These are pig or beef cheeks that have been lightly braised then simmered for hours in port wine with onions, peppers, thyme, and bay leaves. “Carrillada is a melt in your mouth, get up and dance, and smack yourself in the head for not having eaten this earlier type of food,” says my friend Lauren on her recipe blog Spanish Sabores. “Yes, it is that good.”  Carrilladas arrived on Seville's culinary scene in the 1970s and became an instant classic. Lauren is so right, and I have to say, having sampled carrilladas all over Spain, the beef cheeks at Bar Santa Ana are the best I’ve ever tasted, tender enough to cut with a fork and bursting with flavor. Far from being ruined, the bar is better than ever. Whew! Luckless Íñigo Lopes may not be allowed to spend eternity in peace, but I am sleeping a little easier these days, knowing Triana’s iconic bar hasn’t been sacrificed to the modern gods of tourism and globalization. Do we have St. Anne to thank? Maybe Astarte is still keeping an eye on her city, making sure we pay homage to life’s sensual delights, starting with hot carrilladas and ice-cold beer. Whoever deserves the credit, I say amen!  The walk to the church and bar of Santa Ana from downtown takes around 18 minutes. WANT MORE OUT TO LUNCH POSTS? This story is part of my ongoing series about visiting offbeat towns in the city and province of Seville, seeking cultural curiosities and great food. DISCOVER MORE PLACES TO EAT IN SEVILLE LEARN MORE ABOUT MY 2023 NUTTERS' WORLD TOUR AND THE GREAT MEDITERRAEAN COMFORT FOOD TOUR Now an award-winning Amazon best seller WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so you'll receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] Be sure to check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? 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