In our earlier years at Jalón there was no supermarket. Instead, there were some local butchers, greengrocers and a breadshop. For a supermarket, we had to go to Benissa with its Mercadona and Consum.
Then a Masymas supermarket opened up changing the face of food shopping in Jalón . Whilst it may have been more convenient, it was not necessarily all good news. Whether it was as a direct result or not, I don’t know, but the old, very traditional pork butcher disappeared. There are still butchers and grocers, though.
Now Jalón has a bright new second supermarket called MyMercat which, of course, gets referred to affectionately as My Meercat. Some friends here said it was like a Spanish equivalent to Waitrose – high praise indeed. When Francine told me about it and before seeing the text, I imagined “MiMercat”, the “Mi” seemingly more Spanish than an anglicized “My”. The “My” made me wonder about the provenance but it does, indeed, seem to be solidly Spanish, there being not one but two branches in Calpe down on the coast and declaring itself to be associated with the Sol y Mar Group. We have been in and it’s a very pleasant shop.
Along what our friends used to call the golden mile, that is the drag alongside the river, there is a new, very fancy looking restaurant called Can Caus. This is a complete new building on what was, until relatively recently, waste ground. It is a very neat, new, purpose built construction with very neatly arranged tables and chairs, all laid out with wine glasses. On Saturday, which is rastro [flea market] day and a day to be avoided in Jalon, in our view, because it’s heaving, the tables were well utilized and the place was clearly doing good business. On every other lunchtime that we’ve seen it, it looked pretty much empty. By local standards, it is an expensive menu which gets even more expensive when you note that all the accompaniments are charged as extras. Frankly, I can’t see its business model doing well for very long in the valley. There is a sister business 2kms away in Alcalalí called Ses Feixes. The word is that the owners are used to Ibiza and are trying to apply Ibiza prices in Jalón.
Happily, some things remain refreshingly familiar, though. The Aleluya bar is still there and doing a good trade. It still sells an excellent array of tapas including the most delicious pulpo a la brasa [grilled octopus] and calamares, which are freshly prepared in-house and most definitely not any frozen supermarket offering. You cannot buy better anywhere. This is our regular lunch spot.
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