Dorada, Mahou, ice cream and sausages, what a lucky stomach I have, my day out to La Laguna and Santa Cruz wasn’t meant to end in such a delightful mix of food and drink but I was overwhelmed with hospitality at the Salon Gastronomico in the Recinto Ferial in Santa Cruz. It was just as well I had already enjoyed a lovely meal at the Rakaposhi Himalayan tapas bar in La Laguna otherwise I would have been considerably more squiffy than I was.

Let’s rewind to an early sober start, thanks to the Titsa bus and the tram I was in La Laguna for mid day, my first target was the Mercado de San Pablo but it was still shut so I put my art head on and visited a couple of local exhibitions. The La Caixa hall had an interesting display of paintings by Horacio Vidaurre called Cuerpo de Papel – Espiritu de Tore. They had three rooms of works highlighting violence to women, powerful stuff in striking images. My next stop was the old Convento Santa Domingo where Oscar Oramas had an exhibition in two halls, this was more abstract takes on landscapes but I wasn’t too taken with his sketches of his own meat and two veg, keep it to yourself mate.

On my wanderings I had spotted the Rakaposhi tapas bar and headed back there for a smashing meal and a lengthy chat with the owner Ali who told me about his village in the Himalayas, look out for the review soon. Catching the tram back to Santa Cruz I visited my usual stop offs like the port and Parque Garcia Sanabria before heading to the Salon Gastronomico food fair. It was 5 euros to get in but as it was a new venture I wanted to have a good nose around, one of the first things I spotted was a stand giving our Dorada Especial, don’t mind if I do, the staff on the stand were very chatty and interested that I had done the Dorada brewery tour. The ladies on the Mahou stand tempted me away with their lovely smiles and large range of bottled beers, the 6.2 Selecta hit the spot. Beautiful women handing out beer – had I died and gone to heaven?

Before you think it was just beer, there were lots of other stands including a cake competition, pastries, ice cream – I tried about five of the flavours, and the Egatesa meat company (they advertise on the back of our CD Tenerife season tickets) were serving up sausages and burgers. La Gomera had a large selection of cheeses and there was even a stand doing coffees with cocktail flavours. But back to the beer, and believe me I went back to it often, I explained to one of the Mahou girls all about snake bites, she seemed impressed but didn’t have any cider to hand so I could make a practical demonstration. I tried a couple of mojitos at another stand but resisted the alcohol free beer at the Heineken stand. It’s a good job I don’t drink wine, there was plenty of that on offer and at the far end of the hall there were around 80 Tenerife wines for tasting but I couldn’t see any pint glasses.

I made an effort to get into the show cooking, a large stage and tiered seating was the place for the against the clock cook off. It was a bit like Ready Steady Cook or when I do it Ready Steady Incinerate. The eventual winner was Jorge Penate but can he make a decent crisp butty. The whole point of the exhibition was for business’s to sell to new clients, many of the visitors were in the food and drink trade, the chap on the cocktail teas stand gave me the full sales pitch but I was only hanging around to get a photo of his delicious lady helpers. I’m sure a few deals were struck and as it becomes an established event it will no doubt grow in importance, the Recinto Ferial has lots of good fairs on and is a nice versatile venue, I always enjoy my trips there.

It got to 8,30 pm and they started to wind down and clear things away, I think I was one of the things they probably were keen to clear away so I wobbled off to catch my bus back to the south. Of course a few more beers followed at the Los Cristianos end but I somehow managed to get myself and my pocket full of leaflets home without wobbling too far off course.