Cannibal Guides: The Path of Stars and Flavors

For over a thousand years, millions of men and women have crossed mountains, rivers, forests, and cities in pursuit of a star. Or perhaps, the memory of a star. Tradition tells that, at the beginning of the 9th century, the hermit Paio saw mysterious lights above the forest of Libredón. That glow led to the place where the remains of the Apostle were believed to have been found. From this arose one of the most beautiful etymologies a city could possess: Campus stellae, the field of the star. Modern philology prefers other explanations, but how difficult it is to abandon that one when walking towards Santiago behind a yellow arrow.

Julio Llamazares began his journey through Spanish cathedrals, The Stone Roses, right there. We propose to explore Galicia in a different way: by walking it, eating it, and drinking it.

From Tui to Santiago de Compostela is just over a hundred kilometers, enough to earn your Compostela certificate and also to discover that there are few better ways to understand a region than by sitting down to its food. We'll follow the Miño, the Verdugo, the Lérez, and the Sar rivers; we'll cross vineyards, plazas, bridges, and forests, but we'll stop where someone cooks that landscape and another manages to capture it in a bottle. Five gastronomic stops. Five wines. Galicia can also be explored with a fork and a glass.

Tui, the river that separates and embraces

Tui rises above the Minho River with the understated majesty of ancient cities. Its cathedral has something of a fortress and watchtower about it; below, the stone streets descend, and on the other side of the river, Valença seems so close that one immediately understands that borders are administrative conventions incapable of halting a landscape. The pilgrim crosses the international bridge, still carrying Portugal clinging to his shoes. Two countries pass the traveler from one hand to the other.

Our first stop is a double feature, almost adjacent to each other. Lúa Wine Bar & Tapas Tui is a small wine bar where wine is a pleasant accompaniment, but above all, it sparks conversation. Before setting off, it's worth knowing what we're talking about, and few things explain it better than what it produces to drink. A glass of wine, a gilda (a type of pintxo), a preserve, and behind every bottle, a plot of land, a winemaker, a story.

Just a few meters further on is Emma Gastrobar, the life adventure of Isaac Míguez Viana.

Isaac left for London without speaking English and with little experience in international cuisine. There he learned, worked, traveled, and accumulated a wealth of dishes in his mind until he decided to return. He came back to Tui with Emma, ​​his partner, and in 2022 opened a restaurant located, fittingly, on the Camino de Santiago.

Its cuisine speaks the contemporary language of revitalized taverns: locally sourced ingredients, dishes to share, Galician roots, and travel memories. A touch of London and a whole lot of Tui. Proof that returning never means coming back exactly the same.

For both tables, I opened an exceptional bottle: La Fillaboa 1898 2016. Its 100 Peñín points confirmed something more interesting than a rating: the extraordinary aging potential of Albariño. Six years on its lees have resulted in a deep, long, and serene wine, with ripe fruit, minerality, body, and an acidity that withstands the test of time. A wine that needed to wait to reach us. Like some great journeys.

Arcade, where the road learns to smell of the sea

After O Porriño and Redondela, the landscape changes. Soutomaior Castle, linked to the almost mythical figure of Pedro Madruga, watches over the Verdugo Valley from its hilltop perch. Below, the river flows through Ponte Sampaio and empties into the San Simón inlet.

Arcade already smells of the tide, of mussel rafts, of a small port. Galicia becomes amphibious.

The oyster reigns supreme among their offerings, that seemingly humble creature that holds within it an entire ocean. And at Restaurante Veiramar, Paco and Sofía have spent years practicing one of the most difficult professions in the kitchen: not to spoil the extraordinary bounty that arrives from the fish market.

Faced with a formidable langoustine, a lobster, a sole or a freshly opened oyster, the truly wise cook understands that his obligation is not to demonstrate how much he knows, but to ensure that the product does not forget where it comes from.

And then there's his unforgettable recipe: turbot "Paco style," stewed and served with noodles. Dish and landscape face to face.

To drink, an Albariño born practically on the same postcard: Noelia Bebelia.

Simón and Noelia planted nine thousand vines across three hectares of a hillside in Verdugo, driven by the desire to restore Soutomaior's historic Albariño wines. They produce wine exclusively from their own grapes. The result is vibrant, citrusy, floral, mineral, and with a salinity that seems to have risen from the estuary to the very roots.

Oyster and Albariño wine. Turbot and wine. Executioner and the Atlantic Ocean. Two ways of eating and drinking the same landscape.

Pontevedra, a city tailored to the steps

Arriving in Pontevedra is like stepping into a city designed on a human scale. A Leña, A Verdura, Méndez Núñez, A Ferrería, Teucro… The squares unfold like rooms in a single house. Arcades, churches, terraces, and that extraordinary feeling of a city that has rediscovered the sound of footsteps.

In A Ferrería, Marna appears, one of the tables that best explain the new gastronomic moment in Pontevedra and recognized in 2026 with a Repsol Sun.

At the helm of the project is Ismael López Tubío, seasoned for years at Casa Solla and deeply connected to the world of wine; in the kitchen, Marta García Justo. Marna plays precisely with these two territories: a winery that invites curiosity and a cuisine focused on quality ingredients that revives familiar flavors without turning tradition into a museum.

Product, wine, and good vibes. Behind that apparent simplicity lies a lot of skill.

Here we would open Zárate, one of the great names in Albariño wine. Eulogio Pomares works in Meaño, drawing on a family winemaking tradition spanning several generations. His wines possess that elegant austerity of the great Atlantic whites: citrus, stone, salt, acidity, and depth. An Albariño that, when it whispers, compels you to listen. Afterwards, it's time to return to the Camino: villages, wayside crosses, vines, moss-covered walls, and narrow paths where the shade of the trees seems to have been waiting for centuries.

Galicia is starting to become more intimate.

Padrón, the stone, the river and the fire

Padrón is literature, orchards, river, and memory. Here you'll find Rosalía, Cela, Iria Flavia, and, of course, the Pedrón, the Roman altar that tradition identifies with the stone to which the boat carrying the Apostle's remains was moored. From Pedrón, Padrón.

Our table is at Asador O'Pazo, the home of brothers Óscar and Manuel Vidal: Óscar rules the grill; Manuel, the dining room.

At O'Pazo, the cuisine is neither trendy nor theatrical. It's an elemental and ancient language. Atlantic fish and shellfish, produce from the Padrón region, and Galician blonde beef are cooked over the embers. Here, fire doesn't disguise; it concentrates.

After so many kilometers, one understands something basic: before restaurants, techniques, stars and gastronomic discourses there was fire and hunger.

To accompany that fire, we'll choose, paradoxically, bubbles: Górgola, from Cabana das Bolboretas. An Albariño sparkling wine that cools the embers and heralds the approach of Santiago. Vertical, cheerful, vibrant, with that ability of bubbles to bring light into a glass.

And being in Padrón, we must call upon Rosalía: "My land, my land, land where I was raised...". There are only a few kilometers left. The star is close.

Santiago, the stone rose

The last day is a different kind of walk. Your feet still ache, but your mind has finally arrived. At some point, the intuition of the towers appears. Ultreia!

Valle-Inclán called Compostela "Mystical Rose of Stone." Llamazares recalled that the people of Santiago say that "in Compostela, rain is art." And Lorca wrote it with unsurpassed simplicity: "It rains in Santiago, my sweet love." Stone, rain, and arrival.

Before we finish, we have our last table: A Tafona, by Lucía Freitas.

Lucía cooks Galician cuisine from a deeply personal perspective. She sources ingredients at the market, tends her garden, and transforms the flavors of her family and the women who came before her into contemporary dishes. There is technique, of course, but above all, there is biography, a connection to the land, and a special sensitivity to plants.

In 2026, A Tafona achieved three Repsol Suns. Lucía then remembered especially Merce, her first employee, who started washing dishes and today is part of the kitchen and the A Tafona family.

A gesture explains a restaurant better than any guidebook. Great journeys are never traveled by a single person.

Finally, I propose changing the color of the wine: Seica, by Xosé Lois Sebio.

After so many Atlantic whites comes a Galician red. Fruit, freshness, vibrancy, earthiness, and that only apparent lightness of reds that don't need muscle to leave a lasting impression.

One last glass of wine in front of a plate of Lucía's while Compostela continues to get wet behind the glass. We've arrived.

The Last Star

The Way began next to the Miño River and ends in front of the imposing baroque facade of the cathedral.

Between these two places lie Isaac's worldly cuisine in Tui; Paco and Sofía's oysters and turbot in Arcade; Marna's produce and wine; the Vidal family's grilled meats in Padrón; and Lucía Freitas's vegetable garden and memories in Santiago. And five wines that have also become part of the landscape: La Fillaboa 1898, Noelia Bebelia, Zárate, Górgola, and Seica. Wine is also a liquid form of geography.

After A Tafona we can still walk for a few minutes. Lose ourselves in the streets where the night polishes the granite and emerge at the Obradoiro when many pilgrims have already left.

Llamazares began his journey here. We finished it.

Up there, when the clouds allow, the stars are still there. Perhaps even the one that, according to legend, awakened a hermit's sleep one night and set millions of people in motion.

Although, as is almost always the case in Galicia, there might still be a tavern or two open. And perhaps one last bottle so we can sit down, rest after the Camino, and start telling the tale.