At table

One of the people I talk Spanish to, online, asked me about how the bar bill is settled in the UK. I'm sure that, if you live in Spain, you've witnessed the scene where people, men, fight to pay the bill. Let's presume two traditional couples. Someone asks for the bill. When it arrives the two males lock horns, like a couple of fighting rams, each is determined to pay. Both wave a largish note (or a credit card) at the waiter/waitress who smiles on benevolently until someone triumphs. I had no idea what the answer was to the question. If someone else wants to pay my bar bill I cede gracefully. By way of answer I told my conversational partner that, because we tend to order drinks in rounds and pay as we order, the same situation doesn't usually arise.

Well, what about when you go to a restaurant who pays then?, asked my interlocutor. Again, if anyone ever offers to pay for my food I say thank you, so I had to invent the answer. I said that, generally, we knew when someone had invited us to a restaurant and that meant they were going to pay. It would be different if we simply happened to eat with someone because we were out together at mealtime. Then the bill would be divvied up with a bit thrown in for a communal tip. Only people you never want to eat with again do that thing where they start dribbling on about how you had three glasses of wine while they only had water at bill reckoning time. I was cogitating now. I explained that there may be an ulterior motive for picking up the tab; a business deal or the possibility of underwear removal for instance. In fact, given such circumstances, if someone started to renegotiate the unspoken deal - no let's go halves -  that would be a sure sign that the hoped for deal was off.

I also said that the idea of inviting someone out to eat, in the UK, was almost exclusively an evening affair and that the invitation to dine at someone's house was much more common in the UK than here in Spain. Of course, as it's ages since I've socialised in the UK and as I hardly ever socialise with Spaniards I could be plain wrong or out of date on all my answers.

It did set me thinking though about some other eating and drinking things that were usually different here in Spain. We'll ignore breakfast for the moment. British and Spanish breakfasts are so different, and so individually different, that I'll leave them aside this time.

I suppose the biggest difference is that, if you go out to eat with friends in Spain it is much more likely that you will eat at lunchtime than in the evening. It's not a crime to eat out in the evening or anything but it's not the norm.

The chances of eating, in Spain, without bread on the table are minimal. A Spanish pal who went on holiday to Shropshire confounded a number of waiters and waitresses by asking for bread. He told me he got to quite like the plates of Mother's Pride which were the best that most places, unused to serving bread with the meal, could manage. He also wondered why they brought butter. And what do we say about the sort of Spanish establishment that charges for the bread. Well, obviously, we won't be going back there.

In lots of restaurants, particularly in the warmer bits of Spain, there is a sort of generosity that sometimes surprises visitors. A basic sort of salad will be placed on the table unasked for, free and sometimes unadvertised. Nice as that is most visitors are even more shocked that, having asked for a glass of wine, the bottle is left behind on the table on a help yourself basis. Visitors suppose it will be charged by the glass. It isn't of course. Beware of anyone who asks for the cork and takes home the half empty bottle. They will never understand Spain. 

I've been told that Spaniards were always admonished in their youth to keep at least one hand on the table when they're not eating. My mum used to do the same with me about not eating off my knife and not spooning up peas with my fork. I've also heard that it's considered bad form to put you elbows on the table. You will see both "rules" broken all the time though. Whilst we're on manners, going back to bread, it's not high end good manners, but it's not unacceptable, to use bread to push food onto your fork

Only foreigners will think to order a starter for themselves in the belief that the person next to them will do the same. Usually the people around the table decide on a few starters which will go in the middle of the table so everyone can take what they want, bounded only by good manners. There is a phrase in Spanish used to describe the shame of taking the last potato or prawn or croqueta or whatever. It's not uncommon to see one item left behind on each plate. Sometimes the main course will also be placed centrally on the table and you may eat directly from there. Paella rice, for instance, is often eaten directly from the big paella pan in the centre of the table. Obviously this doesn't apply the the menú del día where you get something for you and I get something for me.

If you're in a restaurant there will be napkins or serviettes but it would be very unusual for a Spaniard to eat anything without a napkin or something similar to hand at home or in a bar. 

Cutlery, in posh restaurants, is taken away with the various courses but in ordinary sort of eateries you will be expected to hang on to your cutlery for the next course. The plates go but the knife and fork stay. United Statesians are always surprised that there's none of that thing they do of moving the fork to the other hand after cutting the meat but then we Brits think that's a bit odd anyway.

You drink cold drinks with food. Water (often for everyone), Fanta, Coca Cola (it's not Coke in Spain) beer, wine etc. are all fine. If you ask for a coffee to drink alongside your food the waiter will presume that you are ordering for after the meal. One Spaniard once told me that she thought it was dangerous to drink hot drinks with hot food. I think she meant it. It reminded me of the way in which lots of Spanish parents still warn their children not to go swimming too soon after eating because of the potentially dire consequences of stomach cramps and a watery end. Coffee and tea are for after you've eaten. It's bad luck, serious bad luck, to toast with water.

¡Que aproveche!

Starry eyed

Eating is a bit of a thing in Spain. Not a bit of a thing like it is in South Sudan, not in the sense of needing to eat to avoid dying, but eating for pleasure. It's also a never exhausted topic of conversation. Lunch is the main meal of the day in Spain and cheap set meals, a few euros on each side of 10€, are available all over the place. I know that most Britons living here don't agree with me but I can't remember the last time I had a memorable set menu in that price range. They're fine, some are better than others, most are perfectly pleasant but few, none actually, come to mind as showing much flair. For a bit of cooked sea bass or steak the set menus are incredible value. The ones I enjoy most though are the restaurants that have set meals costing something like 25 to 35€. Its enough money for the restaurants to be creative but, when the bill comes, I don't wonder about the sanity of just having spent a new mobile phone's worth of cash on something that will be flowing down the drains a few hours later. This said one of the things that we've done a few times now, on Maggie's birthday, is to go in search of a restaurant with Michelin stars. 

It started years ago when a chef called Kiko Moya came to Pinoso as the "Godfather" of the annual celebration of traditional food in and of Pinoso called Mostra de la Cuina del Pinós. The chef was from a nearby town called Concentaina. His little speech at the opening ceremony for that food festival made me think that a posh meal in his Michelin starred restaurant and an overnight stay in a hotel would be a nice gift for Maggie's birthday.

Two stories stick out from that meal. The first is that the only thing either of us remember as being particularly nice was a savoury version of a normally sweet local Christmas treat called turrón. The second is that they served us a dish at one point which featured the mould that grows on corn cobs. For those of you old enough to remember it was amusing, in a Pseuds Corner sort of way. We wondered why mould had never caught on, unlike egg and chips for instance. Overall though it was a pleasant enough experience and the basic plot seemed sound - an overpriced meal each year as a bit o a birthday treat.

The second year we went to a place in Almansa. No overnight stay this time just the restaurant which meant evening. Usually, and for no obvious reason, evening meals are less enjoyable than lunchtime meals in Spain - a bit more formal, less lively, less Spanish. It was a bad experience. I usually compare it to the time that you're invited to an acquaintances house for dinner. They serve things that you don't like at all but which you can, just about, eat without vomiting. With grim British style determination you wade through each course. In this particular restaurant the tasting menu had at least eight courses. The one that took most effort was a tuna heart stuffed with something that made it look like an eyeball though I suspect eyeballs taste nicer than whatever it was we were given to eat. I was only just about able to control my gag response.

The restaurant we went to in Cuenca the next year was totally forgettable. It wasn't a bad experience; nice enough as I remember with good service and decent food but I cannot remember anything of the detail. What I do remember as being really disappointing were the digs. Cuenca is too far from home to pop over for an evening meal and get back home. So, I booked us in to the Parador hotel there. The Parador hotel chain has some impressive buildings and impressive locations. They often convert places like castles, monasteries and convents into hotels. The hotel in Cuenca is a converted convent set atop a river gorge. That's it in the photo with this post. It looks great outside and the communal spaces inside - the restaurant, the lounges, the bar - are all impressive as well. The room though was quite small, it crossed my mind that it may have been the size of the original nun's cell, and the décor and fittings were very ordinary. The hotel was also full of a wedding and loud wedding guests dominated the character of the hotel for we non wedding guests. And it was not cheap.

We went to a great restaurant with a Michelin star in La Nucia, el Xato. This time it wasn't Maggie's birthday but it was the birthday of one of our long-time friends so we went as two couples. It was splendid. Great service from really pleasant servers, good price, verging on cheap for a restaurant with Michelin stars, excellent food and with a little gastronomic journey from the Valencian shoreline to the interior of the region explained in food and drink. 

Last year I hunted around for another starred restaurant but the places that were on my possible list were prohibitively expensive. Going to eat Mexican in Madrid for instance with the train, hotel and meal was way beyond my wallet. The set meal, with accompanying matched wines, was a bit short of 200€ per cover. I reckon that with the train fare and the overnight stay In Madrid it would have been around 800€ and I just couldn't justify, or afford, that. We stayed locally instead and had a remarkably ordinary paella at a restaurant which should have done much, much better.

This year though there were lots of new restaurants with Michelin stars in the area and with reasonably (given the criteria) priced set meals. One in Calpe, a couple in Murcia and one in San Juan. All a bit fish based though and Maggie isn't big on fish. Eventually I settled on one in Ondara, near Denia, a short couple of hours from home. Maggie knew nothing about it till the last moment and she didn't know that I'd invited a couple of pals along too. The idea was that she would have company as she worked her way through the wine accompanying each course whilst I, nominated driver that I am, remained steadfastly boring and sober. Nice place, excellent service and the prices were fine except for the unnecessary graspingness of overcharging for things like water, beer and coffee. It was a strange failing because something I've noticed in most of the other posh restaurants we've been to is that they don't overcharge for the ordinary things. If a coffee costs 1.50€ in the local bar the posh restaurants usually limit themselves to doubling the price. Not so in Ondara. 

To be honest I've already forgotten what we ate; for me it's the experience that's the pleasure rather than the food. If I wanted to eat something I really liked I'd cook up a bacon sandwich and make a nice cup of tea but then I wouldn't have stories about eating mould, the feeling of dread as I forced myself to eat some supposed delicacy or the unpleasantness of handing over the credit card and contemplating the tip.

The menoo

It's nice to think that people remember me from time to time. This week two old friends sent me the same article they'd both seen in the Guardian about the slow death of the Spanish "menú del día". The piece said that ordinary working Spaniards no longer had time to eat a big meal at lunchtimes, that diners were looking for different sorts of food and that restaurants were no longer able to work on such low profit returns. Actually I wrote about some of this in ปลาออกจากน้ำ  (Thai for fish out of water) when we were in Madrid. So, I partly agree and I'm sure that the Guardian correspondent is right in suggesting that there is a trend away from the traditional three course meal. Nonetheless, away from the big cities, the menú is very definitely alive and well.

Just before we go on something about the pronunciation. Menu, pronounced the English way, is carta in Spanish. Here we're talking about menú, with the accent over the U. This word is pronounced something like menoo, the full phrase is menoo del dear, menú del día and it's a fixed price, set meal.

The menú is, generally, served in restaurants at lunchtime (2pm to 4pm) on working days from Monday to Friday. The price is fixed and it usually includes two savoury courses and then a pudding. It generally comes with a drink - water, wine, beer or pop - and bread. Spanish servers will be surprised if you order a tea or coffee to drink alongside your meal; hot drinks are for afterwards not during. Often, especially on the Mediterranean coast, you'll get a basic salad thrown in too. It's usually an either or between coffee and dessert though sometimes you get both as part of the package. Despite being so ubiquitous it's an unusual style of Spanish meal because each individual orders separately and eats separately. So often, when eating in Spain, the food is ordered to be shared.

There used to be legislation about menus but the Guardian article told me that was changed in 2010 so here are a few of the little tricks and ruses to look out for.

The most common trick, especially for tourists, is that they are drawn in by the fixed price menú advertised on a chalk board or similar outside the restaurant. Once seated the tourists are handed a carta, the a la carte menu. They're a bit unsure if they read the board correctly, it's difficult to ask and so they order from the menu and end up paying more. Usually it's a bit of a con. If you ask for the menú they'll tell you what it is though it may well not be written down anywhere except on that board outside. Sometimes the fact that they don't offer you a menú is not the restaurant being tricky. As I said most fixed meals are available at lunchtime on workdays. Britons often think of the principal meal as being the evening meal. If you turn out in the evening there is unlikely to be a fixed meal available but the advert for the lunchtime meal may still be there. The same at the weekends or on Bank Holidays.

Another of the standard tourist area dodges is to charge for things that are usually included - like the drinks, the bread or the salad. The server puts them on the table, you eat them and they turn up on the bill. If you read the the menú information it will be there; if the menú listing doesn't mention drinks (bebidas) or bread (pan) then expect to pay extra for them. Even when you know the extras are coming it can sometimes be a nasty surprise. We went in a place opposite the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. We knew the drinks would be extra, we knew that it didn't include the coffee or pudding but it was still a good price for such a tourist mecca and the place looked nice enough. They charged me 6€ for a bottle of beer.

Most menus are not haute cuisine. A pal used to describe the menú choice as chop and chips. Plain and filling would be a kinder description though, every now and again, a menú can be surprisingly good. Even today, around here, there are, very occasionally, dead cheap but perfectly good menus available at around 7€. The majority are in the 9€ to 12€ range. There is often a second group of slightly better looking menus in some eateries  - maybe 15€ to 18€. If the restaurant does offer a fixed menú on Saturday or Sunday expect the prices to be higher; the 12€ menú becoming 15€ and the 15€ menú becoming 20€. Obviously there are price differences with geography. If you're in Benalmadena or Benidorm then the food is likely to be cheaper than in Barcelona or Bilbao.

Still a good way to kill the couple of hours when the streets are deserted.

Troughing down

It turns out that I've blogged about the restaurant in Culebrón, Restaurante Eduardo, probably nearly as many times as I've eaten there. So I'll try to keep this short.

Last Sunday Maggie put up less resistance to eating at Eduardo's than usual. There were several possible reasons for the feeble struggle that she put up but I think the main one was that, being Mother's Day, she knew that most restaurants would be awash with diners and Eduardo's is never awash. We had house guests too and I think that Maggie recognises that Eduardo's offers a rich and varied Spanish experience. And so it was. There was the usual reluctance, on the part of the restaurant, to be clear about what there was to eat but, in the end, we got a good meal at a good price. At least I think so. You'd have to ask John and Claire what they thought to get a reasonably unbiased view. Maggie and I have entrenched positions about Eduardo's that are unshakeable before logic or reason.

The thing that did surprise me was that the meal was very Pinoso yet it seemed to be new to our friends. Amongst other things we got entremeses, well generally a selection of local embutidos, sausages, in the way that salami and pastrami and black pudding are sausages, rather than bangers, served as part of the range of food before the main dish. For a main we had been offered gazpacho but Maggie's not a big fan of the local gazpacho. It's not the liquid salad gazpacho of Andalucia but a rabbit stew served with a sort of pancake in the base of the bowl and a dough, based on wheat flour, floating in the stew. The gazpacho rejected we went for rice, for paella.

Now John and Claire are no strangers to Spain so they know what a paella is but the local rice is a bit different to the "generic" paella of the coast. Rice dishes are different all over Spain and the one with seafood or chicken and those flat green beans isn't the one in these here parts. Our rice, still cooked in a paella pan, has rabbit and snails with a dry rice only a few grains thick. It's success depends on the quality of the broth that gives the taste to the rice. Something a bit different for J&C.

Rice over it all looked a bit humdrum - Vienetta, variations on creme caramel, industrial cheesecake etc but there was a final flourish when we got perusas. We call them dust cakes because when you bite into them they melt in your mouth. They disappear. Like dust.

An experience, as always, and, I realised, quite Pinoso.

When in Rome

I'm not a big Google+ user. The other day I came across something called Communities, which seem to be collections of items around a theme. So I posted some blog entries there. At least one person read some of the blog because he commented on it. So I read his blog back and then I pinched his idea for this post.

Antonio's piece was about how to recognise tourists by their non Spanish behaviour in restaurants. For instance by eating lunch before 2pm, drinking large beers, ordering sangria or having paella as an evening meal. It made me think about the things that I do, that my British pals who live here do or our British visitors do that aren't quite Spanish. In general I stuck to foodie variations rather than commenting on hats, shorts, sandals and walking in the sun type differences.

Obviously eating too early is something that sets us apart. You know that lunch in Spain is anytime between about 2pm and 4pm and dinner anytime after around 9.30pm but maybe we breakfast too early as well. The Spaniards are a bit out of kilter with most other nations by taking their breakfast mid morning. Most Spaniards don't really have the cereals and toast type start to the day breakfasts that we Britons do. The majority just bolt from their house soon after rising, maybe grabbing a quick coffee. Although it's nowhere near as odd to ask for toast in a bar at 9am as it is to try and get dinner at 7.30pm it isn't quite right either. The busy time for Spaniards getting their toast, often topped with oil and grated tomato, will be an hour or two later.

There's no problem with ordering a coffee or a tea to go with your breakfast but generally Spaniards only drink water, beer, coke or wine with lunch or dinner, with savoury food in general. Years ago I was in a bar with someone having a mid morning coffee. The bar had several hams hanging from the roof and we succumbed. As the barman served the ham he whisked our coffees away and asked what we wanted to drink. Beer and ham is fine but coffee and ham is a bit Pet Shop Boys - It's a Sin. Oh, and getting milk in your tea is an enormous effort and prone to failiure. And, oh again, and this is pretty new to me, gin and tonic seems to be a post-prandial rather than a pre-prandial drink in Spain.

Butter on bread is another odd thing. The last time I was in the UK, in a decentish restaurant, I was a bit surprised to be served a bread roll, on my side plate, along with a little pat of butter. I'm pretty sure it was always dry bread, to go with the soup, in restaurants in my youth. Eating bread and butter with the meal was something you did at home but not when you ate out. Bread is an essential element of any Spanish meal but "nobody" uses butter. Britons often complain about the lack of butter or ask for some. Spaniards don't put oil on bread either, at least in public. There's normally salt on a restaurant table because salt goes with the oil and vinegar to dress a salad but it's not as omnipresent as it is in the UK. There is very seldom any pepper. Asking for pepper is very British.

The bread is usually served in a basket in the centre of the table. This idea of things for everyone is something Britons don't seem to take to either. If you go for a set meal, el menú del día, then whatever you order is yours but, if you go for something that you order a la carte, the usual thing is that the group of diners order a bunch of things go in the middle of the table and you take your choice. Only the main course is yours and yours alone though, even then, it's not unusual for a couple to put their mains in the centre and share them. If Spaniards go eating tapas those are nearly always for sharing. Someone at the Spanish Tourist Board must have mounted a brilliant campaign to promote tapas in the UK because everybody who comes to see us seems to know the word and be dead keen to try what are, after all, just a bunch of bar snacks. Some are great, some are boring.

Back to bread for a moment, well to sandwiches or rolls. We have lots of very traditional British sandwiches that are something and something. Ham and mustard, cheese and tomato, chicken and lettuce, egg and cress, beef and horseradish. Spaniards sometimes put two elements in a sandwich and there are lots of trendy sandwich places with plenty of variety but, in most bars, the traditional choices are still quite fixed. Ham, cheese, ham and cheese, ham and grated tomato, tuna maybe, lomo, chorizo, salchichon, maybe anchovies. In Malaga, years ago, I was refused a cheese and onion sandwich - the man just couldn't bring himself to sell me one despite having both ingredients. Nowadays Spaniards still think it's an odd mix but if that's what I want then that's what I get. Bacon sandwiches are available too but every time I ask for just bacon there is an "are you sure?" type question and, of course, there's no butter.

The fixed price set meals are served at lunchtime. This is not invariable but it is normal. Evening meals are a much simpler affair and whilst you may go out to eat in the evening to celebrate Valentine's or somesuch, it's really at lunchtime that you eat the main meal of the day. Lots of restaurants don't even open in the evening except at weekends and nowadays we're often a bit surprised when visiting Britons automatically think of going out for a meal equates with going out in the evening.

It's not at all unusual, if you order a glass of wine to go with your meal, that the server will put a bottle of wine on the table. It probably won't be particularly good wine but it will be a full or nearly full bottle. Britons don't like to leave alcohol, particularly when they think they've paid for it. When someone asks me how to say cork in Spanish I find that I suddenly need to just pop out to get something from the car. The shame of my compatriots wanting to carry off the dregs of the bottle is too much for my wannabe Spanishness. Doggy bags aren't a Spanish concept either.

And when the meal is over it's tipping time. I tend to tip, I tip on coffee even but most Spaniards don't. They may do but there is no moral imperative to tip. If the service is good, if the price makes it easy then tipping it is. So if the meal cost 47€ then the fifty note will do nicely but if it's 50€ and the service was as service should be then lots of people won't add anything. It can be a bit embarassing as Maggie and I put in a euro each towards the tip and one of our visitors throws a ten note down worked out on the British Imperial Standard.

There are more but I think that's enough ammunition for my "you British" critics for now.

Parallells where none exist

Sunday and nothing much to do so we went for a bit of a drive around. We went over Zarza way and into the Sierra de la Pila. Maggie suggested a tapas place in Algorrobo for lunch but as we were on single track mountain roads we could either go back via Zarza or round via Fortuna. It was about quarter past three as we rolled into Fortuna so I suggested eating there. Maggie wasn't keen. Fortuna is not her favourite place. A few minutes later we were out of the danger zone and into Baños. Maggie spotted a sign for La Fuente which is a camp site built around a thermal spring.

Now when I think camp sites I think lugging water in big jerry cans, wellis, shower blocks with concrete floors and water that never boils as the flame under the pan dances in the stiff breeze at the door to your, ever so slightly, cramped tent. It's a long time since I've been camping. I presume the experience is very different nowadays but perception and reality are very separate things.

When I worked in Fortuna, I occasionally mentioned camping and camp sites to my English language students. There is a linguistic misunderstanding about the words camping and camp site for Spanish speakers. The problem with my explanation was that for the youngsters of Fortuna their experience of a camp site is not a muddy field with caravan and tent pitches. It is a place with a restaurant where you go for birthday parties and communion meals and where, with suitable weather, you go to use the swimming pool.

La Fuente is a camping, a camp site, but there were no tents. There were hut sized chalets and places to park caravans and motorhomes. There were a lot of motorhomes and lots and lots of them had Dutch and Belgian plates as they so often do. I think there is a sub class of Netherlanders who spend their time sitting outside their motorhomes in Spain. There was bright paintwork, classical Greek style statues and lots of people in bathrobes.

There was also a 12€ menú. Not bad for a Sunday. The look of the  dining room suggested that we were not in for an epicurean feast but there were scores of noisy, constantly moving people so we reckoned it must be OK. We got a table, the waitress scooped up the remains of the previous diners meal in the paper table cloth, Dick Whittington style, and before long we had our drinks, the salad was on the table and the food ordered. The meal was nothing spectacular but we cleared our plates happily enough.

Just like in the UK going for Sunday lunch is a bit of a Spanish ritual. The roast beef and Yorkshire pudding equivalent around here is usually rice with rabbit and snails but at the cheaper end there are lots of chop and chips or fish and chip type set meals - salad, starter, main, pudding, drink, bread and coffee - for between 12 and 15€. Fixed price, set meals aren't so easy to come by on Sundays as they are the rest of the week and they tend to be three or four euros more at the weekend than they are on work days. If you abandon the fixed menu and go for the rice option, or whatever the regional favourite is, then expect it to work out around 25 to 30€ per head.

I was quite taken with the kitschness of la Fuente but, somehow, the photos didn't capture it.

A nation of writers

I once worked with someone who was keen on illicit drugs. He came from Huddersfield but we were working near Newcastle and he was having trouble finding a local supplier. He picked up what we used to call a sexually transmitted disease and ended up at the local GUM clinic. He told me later that finding a supplier in the clinic was the work of minutes and he wondered why he'd never thought of it before.

If you want to find Britons in Spain the Post Office would be fertile territory. In the Pinoso office at least we usually outnumber Spaniards. I've been told, by a Spaniard, that this is because, until recently at least, there had not been a big tradition of reading and writing in Spain so the Post Office never became important to ordinary people. I have to say that I thought the analysis lacked academic rigour.

Today I was reading the local news over a lunchtime coffee. There was a piece to say that Pinoso had twenty one restaurants featured on a website called gastroranking.es which is a website that compiles the results from a range of other websites of the TripAdvisor type.

I had a look and I was quite surprised to find that the top rated places in Pinoso included places I would not have instantly thought of. The outright winner is very popular with both Spaniards and Britons but the rest of the top performers included places that I certainly don't care for. Risking the possibility of being ostracised by my own all I can think is that maybe the Post Office literacy comment is more accurate than I suspected. Maybe there really is very little tradition of writing by the home population and that extends to restaurant reviews.