When traveling anywhere, I contact everyone I know who might have the inside line on the best places to eat at my destination. So before heading to our nation’s capital, I called the ultimate insiders: our local Bay Area congressional representatives.

The arid plains of Castilla in north-central Spain yield three things in abundance: great monuments in stone, roasted milk-fed lamb (cordero lechal) and roast suckling pig (cochinillo) so tender it can be cut with the edge of a plate. Heading north from Madrid into the tawny countryside surrounding Segovia, Alberto and I went in search of rocks and roasts.

The great thing about traveling in your own back yard is that you have time to go to the places that the out-of-towners miss. While the holiday visitors were mobbing Napa Valley, my hungry husband and I slipped away for a romantic weekend of wining and dining in Alexander Valley, the other wine country just a few miles farther north of Sonoma on 101.

The hottest table in Madrid is rough knotty pine, as thick as a barn door, tucked in a corner next to the kitchen entrance. On any given night, the restaurant’s popularity makes snaring any one of La Broche’s 15 ivory-covered tables quite a coup, but this rustic board is the Holy of Holies of the Spanish capital’s gastronomic scene. It is the chef’s table, where the chef, a flamboyant young Catalan named Sergi Arola, plays host to a few favored guests right in the kitchen itself.