Slippery when wet

Spaniards seem to like napkins more than Britons. Now I'm not trying to say that we Britons don't like napkins or that there is something intrinsically right or wrong about using napkins. Go into a British restaurant and there will be napkins. They give you piles of them in McDonald's because, as the bun disintegrates, you will end up with a palmful of slimy hamburger patty, lettuce and ketchup and you will need them to clean up. If my family home was anything to go by the English use them only when we are being a bit posh; Christmas or when friends came to dinner. Normally though, especially at home, no serviettes, no napkins. Spaniards on the other hand put napkins out as naturally as they put out the cutlery and bread when they are setting the table and there is no Spanish restaurant, bar, barbecue, picnic or home without them.

Order a beer in a Spanish bar and you probably won't get a beer mat - sometimes yes and more and more frequently but not usually. The beer on the other hand will be cold so water will condense out on the glass and, after a while there will be a little puddle of water on the bar or table. But fear not, there will be a handy dispenser full of serviettes and you will be able to mop up the liquid. Only you won't or at least you couldn't but more and more you can.

I've just realised, pushed by an article that I read in el País, that it's ages since I've seen the sort of napkins that were everywhere in Spain at one time. They were a bit like the old Izal hard toilet paper and about the same sheet size too. They usually had a pattern around the outside in blue or red - sometimes chains, sometimes rhomboids, sometimes aeroplanes and the name of the bar in the middle. They came in spring loaded dispensers that were called miniservis and the serviettes were called servilletas zigzag (or sulphite glazed paper napkins to anyone in the trade). When you tried to pull out one you would be rewarded tenfold. No matter though because they actually seemed to repel liquid rather than to soak it up so you needed the whole ten to redistribute your puddle. It was similar if you were eating tapas with your fingers. By the time you'd finished you would have a whole pile of these sodden, grease, oil or sauce covered bits of paper piled alongside your plate.

Nowadays the normal serviettes are more like Andrex than Izal. This struck me as I was pulling an effectively absorbent black napkin from the little box in front of me in a bar the other day. They were held in place by a daintily painted pebble. Very pretty. Not as trendy though as the unbleached yellowish napkins that you get in the gastrobars on the coast or in big cities. There was, though, one advantage to the old slippery sided napkins. When they were put under food on a plate, like a sandwich or a croquette, they acted like grease-proof paper forming an effective non stick barrier between plate and food whereas the new sort tend to sort of attach themselves to your food in a most unpleasant way.

-------------------------------------------------------

I have used the terms serviette and napkin interchangeably. I thought, for sixty four years, that napkins were cloth and serviettes paper but, in checking for this blog post I found that although there used to be some distinction in the way distant past that hasn't been the case for a few hundred years.