Light plumes of steam gently billow from the oval silver tray the waiter presents to our table, accompanied by a salty aroma. Compared with the enthusiasm that greeted our previous dishes – cockles drenched in buttery olive oil mopped up with bread, and mussels in orangey pernod sauce – its contents are now being met with slightly quizzical looks.
We wait with bated breath for someone else to dig in first. And it’s not because we’re being polite. It’s because the plate of percebes – goose barnacles – has us well and truly stumped. To the uninitiated (as I was mere minutes before), they’re filter-feeding crustaceans harvested from rocks. From a quick glance, they appear totally prehistoric, with triangular silvery-grey shells at one end and cylindrical leathery stalks at the other, hiding the fleshy stem.
