Whether it is a traditional one (three dishes, house wine and four months open) or a modern one (with a more extensive menu), it is a gastronomic sin to visit the island of Tenerife and not eat in a guachinche.
An old clothes of octopus and a plate of festive meat.
Or
a grilled cheese with mojo and a rabbit in salmorejo
.
All washed down with water and a bitch of local wine per head.
Or better a pair.
In the case of being three people, the bill would be
only 25 euros
.
These are the virtues of the guachinches, the Canarian food houses that for more than half a century have been one of the great gastronomic attractions of the island of Tenerife.
Before they were typical of the connoisseurs of the area, and they were only accessed on the recommendation of the staff, since to locate them you had to follow a very specific route, as they were businesses that were in the garage or patio of a home particular.
Now they have become a claim for peninsular and foreign tourists and, after the 2013 decree, it
is necessary to differentiate the traditional and modern guachinche
.
"Nowadays, this type of establishment has become so famous that
everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon,
" explains Canarian cook and teacher
Mayron Hernández
.
"Many guachinches became food houses, then bars and finally restaurants. That is the natural evolution they have followed, although luckily their characteristics have already been legally defined," he points out.
Entrance of the guachinche 'Los Gómez', in La Orotava.
Homegrown wine, three dishes of Canarian food on the menu and open only as long as the wine lasts, between three and four months
.
Such are the so-called traditional guachinches (or "true") according to the 2013 regulation, in which the winemaker was protected by a legal regulation determined by the Cabildo de Tenerife and the Official Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Navigation of Tenerife.
But it is impossible to ignore reality, and the presence of the modern guachinche has been accepted in the popular heritage, with a more extensive menu, but always oriented to typical Canarian food.
"If we go to the technicality of the kitchen,
the guachinche would be a restaurant with market cuisine, kilometer zero
", adds Hernández, who before teaching classes at Esacan (Concertadas de Canarias) was a cook at the Hotel Jardín Tecina de La Gomera and in the Nivaria de San Cristóbal de La Laguna.
Tenerife's fondness for them is such that the
Book of the guachinches.
The secret wine routes in Tenerife
(Editorial Malvasía), written by
Manuel Mora Morales
, has comfortably surpassed 20 editions since it was published in 1996. "I have learned to love this book through the readers themselves who surprised me by welcoming it with so much enthusiasm.
I know that we all like to eat and drink well, and to be told where it can be done in a more authentic way, but I never imagined that the fans would be so much
", assured the author during the presentation of the twentieth edition.
The tradition began in the north of Tenerife, where the island's winemaking activity was concentrated:
Tacoronte, La Matanza de Acentejo, Icod de los Vinos, El Sauzal, Los Realejos, La Orotava, Santa Úrsula ...
"Before the references that I had one to go to one was: you arrive at exit 25 of the highway, you take a right, at the roundabout the first exit, you get down and when you see the yellow house, that's it. It was our
Google Maps
of the moment ", recalls Hernández, who was also the chef de cuisine of the Santacrucero
Mojos y Mojitos restaurant
.
Poster of the guachinche 'Los Gómez' in the Villa de La Orotava.
In its beginnings, the guachinche was
the place where the house wine was to be tasted
, which was accompanied with something to eat, generally some dried fruit such as peanuts.
But the tapa was derived from the dried fruit to the cheese (cured or goat) and from there to the homemade food.
It was then that the good hand of the cook, generally the wife of the owner of the farm, was making the attention of the visitors focus more on food than on drink, with a disposition that was reminiscent of Cuban palates.
Now, there are several dishes that cannot be missed.
Some foreigners, such as croquettes.
Other purely Canarian ones, such
as grilled cheese with mojo, escaldón de gofio, stewed octopus or chickpeas
.
The origin of the term guachinche generates controversy.
On the one hand, the Canarian Academy of Language and the
Historical-Etymological Dictionary of the Canarian Speech
(Cabildo Insular de Fuerteventura) by
Marcial Morera
consider it a derivative of bochinche, which would become a "poor tavern".
On the
other hand, popular culture tinerfeña states that
comes from the English expression
I'm watching you
(I'm watching)
.
That was what the English buyers said to the island's farmers and winners when they called them from their stalls in the markets to sell local products, the same ones that they later sent to the local consumer.
Interior of the guachinche 'La Huerta de Ana y Eva', in La Matanza de Acentejo.
Currently, the coronavirus crisis has led to the closure of many of them, after suffering
a decrease in income of more than 50%
, either due to the absence of customers (mainly tourists), or because of the impossibility of adapting the capacity to socio-sanitary measures.
"We are going to close for a while. The truth is that I would not like to talk about it because it makes me very sad," they explain from
El Cubano
, a guachinche famous for his meat and potatoes.
Others are still open, buoyed by the fame they have achieved in recent years.
This is the case of
La Huerta de Eva y Ana
, in La Matanza de Acentejo, or
Los Gómez
, in La Orotava.
"We stay. Our most loyal clientele continue to visit us, but the truth is that we miss the peninsular clientele a lot", says
Eva Fumero
, at the head of an establishment in which her cozy dining room stands out, full of vegetation, and in whose tables it is rare not to see a plate of his acclaimed
old clothes of octopus, his breaded tomato or his cheeses
, all of them delicacies that have placed him at the top of lists such as that of Trip Advisor.
The Gómez family
, meanwhile, reopened last July, allowing their visitors to once again enjoy their famous
booming eggs, their gigantic pork steak, their baked suckling pig
and their wonderful views of the family farm in the Valley. de la Orotava where they make their own homegrown wine.
"We are pulling, focused on the day to day," says
Cristo
, in charge of a place with more than 17 years of history, delighted that her customers are once again taking the traditional photo under the wooden sign that gives the establishment its name.
"During the 2008 crisis, the guachinches became a benchmark", highlights Hernández.
"You
ate very cheaply, between eight and 11 euros with a more or less quality wine
. Now it is much more noticeable how they attend to gastronomic trends and how many adapt to what customers ask for. And that has been one of the reasons Of the degeneration of many of them: wanting to bring a more varied audience. Then there are the imitations, with which it continues to be very permissive. But the most famous, such as
El Primero
in Santa Úrsula or
Romance
in La Orotava, remain. And hopefully for a long time, "he concludes.
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