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.

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.