Head chef Tono Perez likes the food he serves to be loud and colourful but somehow traditional. Suckling pig he hides beneath a layer of neon-green wasabi pea cream sauce.
There follows a tomato soup with cockles and an ice cream made of spring onions.
It was thanks to this kind of special regional cuisine that Tono was elected Spain's most creative cook in 2014. His restaurant, Atrio, in the city of Caceres, 250 kilometres southwest of the capital Madrid, has been awarded two Michelin stars.
"Given the quality of our regional products, I can hardly go wrong," Tono modestly says about such honours.
Even many Spaniards don't know that the city is a bastion of top cuisine, he notes.
"Over and over, visitors are amazed at how well one can eat in Caceres and the surrounding region."
It comes as no wonder, then, the Spanish Association of Hoteliers and Restaurant Critics has chosen Caceres as its capital of gastronomy for 2015.
Throughout the year, restaurants are enticing visitors with regional specialties and menus. A dish for shepherds, migas del pastor, with spicy paprika sausage, is a regular on the menus. Partridge, rabbit, wild boar and venison are also regional standards.
On gastronomy tours through the Extremadura region, visitors can sample local wines, various types of cheese and a variety of sausages. Tapas competitions are bringing crowds into the province along with folk festivals.
In October, the city of Casar de Caceres celebrates the most famous cheese of the region, the torta del casar, made from goat's milk.
Traditional slaughtering feasts in the springtime in Alcantara celebrate acorn-fed black Iberian pigs and the aromatic ham called jamon iberico made from them. Each ham is hung for three years to be dry-cured, says Carlos Bautista from the mountain village of Montachez.
The process is labour intensive and the breeding of the pigs is expensive. But it's a lucrative business in the end - 100 grams of jamon iberico can cost up to 30 euros ($A42), earning it the nickname "black gold".
The influences of many cuisines - Arab, Portuguese, Castilian and Jewish - are to be found in Caceres, says Miguel Angel Gil, head of the Capital of Gastronomy program.
Moorish culture left behind not only thick fortified walls and cisterns up to the 12th century but also many spices and recipes for candy confections.
The influence of Christian monasteries was also very strong.
In the monastery garden of Guadalupe, monks cultivated many unknown fruits and vegetables - tomatoes, potatoes and paprika - that the Spanish conquistadores had brought back from the New World.
In both culinary and tourism terms, Caceres is good for some surprises and is out to prove this in 2015. Even many Spaniards do not know Caceres, along with the Estonian capital Talinn, has one of the best-preserved medieval city centres in all of Europe.
Since 1986, Caceres has been listed as a World Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Source: AAP
