Monovarietal Magic or Menu McDonaldization
The comparison with whisky is obvious. Blended whiskies can be very good, but the experienced tippler is likely to prefer a single malt. Equally, with olive oil, some of the blended, or coupage, oils are very tasty, but if you pay your money, you will end up with single oils made from, for instance, Arbequina, Picual, Hojiblanca, Manzanilla, Cornicabra, Empeltre, Verdial, Lechín, Riquela, or Blanqueta olives. These specialist oils are now easy to find in traditional food shops and specialist high-markup stores. A few years ago, many of these products were limited to very localised distribution or they didn't exist because there was no market. Nowadays, lots of products like local wines, oils, nuts, sweets, cakes, chocolate, and the like have versions which are marketed as artisanal foods. Often there are things which are quite specific to a local area, a bit like getting Bakewell tarts in Bakewell. Products like miguelitos, yemas, libricos, paparajotes, and conserved nísperos spring to mind, but the variation is legion. You'll often spot them in shops sharing a wall with souvenir spots hawking straw donkeys and Ibiza baseball caps.
Yet, while some foods are becoming more specialised and diverse, the food actually offered in many restaurants seems to be moving in the opposite direction, towards standardisation. I first really noticed this when we went over to Mallorca a while ago. I was struck by how similar the food on offer was from place to place. “Terrible” would be unfair, but for goodness’ sake, everywhere seemed to offer burgers, pizzas, and pasta—and, of course, steak and chips.
We're not just talking about hamburgers in the old sense—a beef patty in a bun with some ketchup. The burgers, too, are premium (read: expensive). They are no longer "sandwiches" because they come loaded with caramelised onions, blue cheese, avocado, thick-cut bacon, jalapeños, and so on. Try to hold one in your hands and there will be slimy stuff oozing out all over you. The pizzas have followed a similar development. Once the classic idea might have been San Marzano tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, and olive oil. Now there are anchovies, capers, artichoke hearts, porcini mushrooms, spicy Calabrian sausage, and all the rest. Or you can simply go to Domino’s and order the barbecue or the Hawaiian version, or maybe the British with eggs and bacon. Pasta, too, comes in endless variations, as well as the "heat and eat" versions in the supermarket which cost very little, help you on the road to an early stent or pacemaker, and taste either disgusting or lovely depending on your fat and sugar tolerance.
The point is not that there is no variety. Quite the opposite: there may be more variation than ever. But the same general range of foods appears everywhere. Another thing I particularly noticed in Mallorca was the short list of tapas. Tapas are just something small to eat, but there is an endless variety, often with local flavours, delicacies and idiosyncrasies. What was on offer in Mallorca tended to the familiar, easy options: tortilla de patatas, patatas bravas, and croquetas.
This rather ties in with what is happening to local food. In Pinoso, we have an event called Villazgo, which celebrates the establishment of the town as a separate municipality. There has always been a strong link between that celebration and traditional food. When we first arrived here, many of the town’s restaurants would set up stalls offering something to eat or drink on the Villazgo day. You bought vouchers which could then be exchanged at any stall for whatever they had on offer: wine, pastries, cakes, or more substantial dishes. Back then, the range of food seemed wide, and some of it was quite challenging to eat. I remember one dish which I always thought was called pebret, though the internet tells me that pebret is actually a fish stew, and the one I'm thinking of was essentially an offal fry-up. I tried it once. It is not something I would eat often, or maybe ever again. There was another one that was still reasonably available a couple of years ago which involved smoked local peppers served with dried fish. It may have been called pipirrana, and it may have had quite different ingredients because my memory is old and overworked. There were lots of others; some were better than others, but all of them had local history.
This year, however, the menu at Villazgo seemed much more controlled than it was twenty years ago. The dishes on offer were mostly well-known local standards: rice with rabbit and snails, big meatballs in broth, a rabbit stew with flatbread, a couple of dishes based on garlic and oil which may end up either crumbly or as a rather stodgy pancake, some local dried sausages, and a few varieties of cakes. My fingers tell me that there are still five active bodegas in Pinoso but only two were at Villazgo. There is another strictly food-related event in Pinoso called Cuina del Pinós. In this case, the participating restaurants all serve the same main course on the same day. This year, the dishes on offer were almost exactly the same as those at Villazgo, with the addition of rabbit fried with garlic shoots. What struck me was that the range seemed narrower than it had been at the first events we attended.
Something similar has happened with tapas in general. I remember bar counters with those little display units full of anchovies, whitebait, crab snacks, pork in tomato sauce, meatballs, blood, kidneys, Russian salad, quail eggs, and lots more besides. It was a joy to order a few by prowling the countertop pointing to this and that. Nowadays, the tapas lists often look more elaborate, but the dishes are less immediate—they need to be prepared rather than simply served. I am not saying this is true everywhere or all the time, but it seems a noticeable trend. The same applies to the set meal or menú del día. There was a time when the main course might reliably be something with chips, but the first course often included things like ham and peas, fish or seafood soup, stews based on pulses, rice dishes, or other traditional preparations. To be honest, I can no longer remember them all, but I am sure that many dishes that were once common have largely disappeared.
In all these cases, it is not that the range of food has shrunk. In fact, the opposite may be true. Curry, falafel, and other international foods are now commonplace. But the overall offer across many restaurants and bars has become more standardised, and that standardisation tends to favour safer, internationally recognisable dishes. People do not eat tripe any more; their offal comes disguised as a frankfurter. And the fish soup, once made from leftover fish, has become a prawn whirl produced in a factory and stored in the freezer. It is not necessarily even a bad thing, but it does follow the same pattern as town centre retail, where local shops with history and tradition were replaced by chains and franchises so that every town centre looked alike. We are, it seems, trading the glorious, messy unpredictability of a local kitchen for a world that is clean, convenient, and increasingly magnolia coloured. It’s all very 'premium,' of course—but it’s a bit like buying a monovarietal oil and finding it’s been thinned out with Castrol.
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