They go by the name ‘Costiña’, but it is not a surname, but rather a hard-earned nickname. The García family, today embodied in the third generation of hoteliers, has been providing food from Santa Comba for more than seven decades and just over two with a Michelin star, achieved by Jesus Garciaalready retired—but not retired—and who reacts more to the name of Chucho or Costiña than to that of Jesús García.
He receives us at Retiro da Costiña, a gastronomic temple in Santa Combaa municipality of barely 10,000 inhabitants in the center of the province of Coruña, famous for its nightlife and which the Costiña family also put on a gastronomic map where what is eaten sometimes takes a backseat.
Not because it is not of extraordinary quality, but because the Costiña, Apart from being sensational hoteliers, they are even better hosts. and they have gone further, converting one of the rooms of their restaurant, recently remodeled, into the greatest after-dinner cult that anyone could imagine in Spain.
Account Manuel Costinawho is in charge of the day-to-day running of the restaurant and the kitchen, and at Retiro da Costiña you can “eat in an hour and a half and have a six-hour sit-down.”
Eight decades of hospitality and evolution
There is no shortage of claims in a perfectly furnished room with a comfort that surprises when this kind of heaven that transcends the culinary world opens up. More than 1,000 different spirits, including very special labels from the largest whiskey distilleries, are the attraction that They turn this room into a kind of Sistine Chapel of the distillate. Among the great altars, unique bottles of Macallan whiskey of which there are only five or six units in the world. Not to mention in Spain.
We also talk about a restaurant that has become a wine mecca. Not in vain, they sell more than 500,000 bottles of wine a year. The business has no tricks or tricks, because what happens is that the word of mouth that the Costiña family have been generating has allowed their winery to have exclusive references and, in addition, Manuel acts as personal shopper for many of his most loyal clients, who ask him for advice on giving or buying.
With a very direct relationship with the producers, both for distillates and wine, Retiro da Costiña is one of the cathedrals of wine in Spain and, also, explains Manuel, a small headache. In memory, necessarily, it is time to talk about the famous robbery at the Atrio winery.
“If they rob us, then they rob us, but that’s what insurance is for. The problem is that every time you buy something new or very expensive, you should talk to insurance to increase coverage or policyand that has really changed a lot,” he comments.
Get (and defend) a Michelin star in a town
The truth is that, in Costiña, what you want, you have it. It is not a flower of a day, of course, but of the family’s concern to continue doing grow a business that Chucho joined in the eightiesparking a comfortable Post Office clerk’s spot and diving headlong into this family business that his parents started and which emerged as a restaurant.
It will be in 2024 when Retiro da Costiña turns 85 years old, For which they plan to make a thematic menu where dishes would come together—reversed, of course—from the three stages and where we can appreciate that evolution from a typically Galician food house where there were tripe, roast meat and octopus to the Michelin star restaurant that it is today. .
“I cooked with my mother,” says Chucho, who asked for a leave of absence at the Post Office to enter the restaurant, where his wife already worked. It was Chucho himself who would change the Costiña paragon, even with uncertainties. “I was about to throw in the towel, but in the end people came and said ‘let’s go there, they do strange things’, and they came,” she confesses.
“We explained the dishes, we did very informative cooking and I thought of the dishes and my wife executed them“, says Chucho about this tandem that understood each other wonderfully in the kitchen and to which Manuel, who has been in charge of the restaurant for a decade, is the heir.
In between, a lot of value. First, removing the classic dishes from the menu. Also that of starting a gastronomic journey that could go wrong or investing in a winery that might not work out. The truth is that the Costiña path is understood step by step and with without hurry, but without pause and, above all, listening.
“Clients came and They asked for a wine or a whiskey and if you didn’t have it, you started looking for it and that’s how you grew.“explains Manuel about this perpetual updating required by a restaurant that has a favorite audience among Latin American customers.
“People come from Mexico, from Venezuela, from Brazil, from Miami…” Manuel comments on a starting point that Costiña is for many international tourists with high purchasing power who enter Europe through Porto and from there jump to Costiña. Currently, 70% of the restaurant public is international and, although in Costiña the sky is the limit if we talk about wanting to spend, the truth is that you can be much more earthly.
“There is everything here. You can come and eat for 140 euros with your wine or you can come and order a whiskey for 60,000 euros in the after-dinner lounge“Adds Manuel about a restaurant for all audiences.
Retiro da Costiña
- Where: Av. de Santiago, 12, 15840 Santa Comba, A Coruña.
- Average price: 140 euros.
- Reservations: on their website.
- Schedule: services from Tuesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner. Sundays only noon. Closed Monday.
Images | Kutxi Pacheco / Retiro da Costiña
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