A Spanish Mushroom Festival: My Day in Trives

When I was making my travel list for my year in Spain, a local mushroom festival wasn't in my top five, my top ten, or even on my list. However, when one of my friends mentioned that the pueblo she worked in was having their annual mushroom festival and that the weather was supposed to be nice, I couldn't turn her down. Also the fact that the bus tickets there were cheaper than any train tickets I could find was just an added bonus.

Don't be worried about your Spanish, Galician is the language commonly used here.

Buses to the pueblos around Ourense run on a limited schedule, so we got the bus out at around noon. (Or maybe it was eleven, to be honest I'm writing this a month later). While this gave us less time to look around, it did feel nice sleeping in. The journey in the mini-bus (more economical I'm guessing?) took us about an hour. The scenery on the way out of the valley and into the mountains was beautiful, but the ending made even me slightly carsick, and normally I find car rides very soothing.

One of the cuter pueblos I've seen.

Because of the limited buses, we had to be at the bus stop by 4:00pm (maybe it was 5:00pm) which left us with around 4 hours to explore the city. Early in the morning there was a mushroom gathering group and throughout the day different restaurants, bars, and cafes created their own mushroom themed dishes. I'm 99% sure that there was a competition for the best dish in town but the information sheets were all in Galician, so that's something we'll never know. Because we had arrived too late for the gathering, we had the sole focus of trying as many different dishes as possible.

None of the work but all of the photo opportunities.

The first place that we stopped at (not counting a morning coffee) may not have been my favorite for taste, but the presentation was phenomenal. The mushroom cappuccino sound terrible but tasted great. I'm unsure if there was actually any espresso inside, (Galician again) but the texture was thicker and reminded me of a mushroom flavored squash soup. The little mushroom shaped biscuits were super adorable and didn't taste too bad either.

4 out of 5 stars

The second place that we stopped at had an actual soup (some variety of squash I assume) with mushrooms and ham bits topped with a couple of croutons. It wasn't dreadful but it wasn't mind-blowing; I would eat it again if it was free, but I would not pay for this.

2.5 out of 5 stars

For our third "course" we had what really reminded me of an egg bake, albeit lacking bacon. sausage, an excess of cheese, and of course with mushrooms. Once again I liked the tapa, but it was nothing exceptional. I wish that I would have remembered to take a picture of the restaurant itself, because I thought that it was very cute.

3 out of 5 stars

After this we decided to take a slight break to give our stomachs time to digest. We managed to find the mushroom haul of the club and checked that out for awhile. I didn't even attempt to try and count all of the different types as there were just too many. They did have a few red capped ones with white spots that reminded me of Super Mario. After checking out all of the shrooms and having a little photo shoot, we hopped back on the food trail.

So many mushrooms!

The penultimate place we went to had attempted some type of taco. With mushrooms, pepper, meat in a thicker, almost pancake and tortilla cross, this was actually my favorite item of the day. I would have gotten seconds if I wasn't already stuffed and saving non-existent room in my stomach for new food. You may also ask what kind of meat it was and I can honestly say that I have no idea; I'm not really a meat aficionado.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Saving the best for last was not what we did on this trip. I absolutely loved the interior of this bar and cafe, and am really kicking myself for not remembering to take pictures of the inside. When you opened the door you had to step down a couple of feet and the walls were all stone. It felt cozy then and I'm sure that it is even cuter during Christmas time. However the dish itself was severely lacking in both presentation and taste. Garbanzo beans and mushrooms in some type of watery, tasteless sauce means put this dish squarely at the bottom of my list.

1 out of 5 stars

Once we finished eating here, we hurried back to meet the bus. Although Trives was charming none of us had changed our minds on spending the night there. If you want to see this post in video form, check out my YouTube channel. Thanks for reading!