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EATING AND DRINKING |
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 There
are two ways to eat in Spain: you can go to a restaurante or comedor (dining
room) and have a full meal, or you can have a succession of tapas (small
snacks) or raciones (larger ones) at one or more bars.
At the bottom line a comedor - where you'll get a basic, filling, three-course
meal with a drink, the menú del día - is the cheapest option, but
they're often tricky to find, and drab places when you do. Bars tend to
work out pricier but a lot more interesting, allowing you to do the
rounds and sample local or house specialities.
Breakfast, snacks and sandwiches
For breakfast you're best off in a bar or café, though some hostales and
fondas will serve the "Continental" basics. The traditional Spanish
breakfast is chocolate con churros - long tubular doughnuts (not for the
weak of stomach) with thick drinking chocolate. But most places also
serve tostadas (toast) with oil ( con aceite ) or butter ( con
mantequilla ) - and jam ( y mermelada ), or more substantial egg dishes
such as huevos fritos (fried eggs), which are not a typical Spanish
breakfast but do tend to be on offer in tourist areas. Tortilla (potato
omelette) also makes an excellent breakfast.
Coffee and pastries ( pasteles or bollos ) or doughnuts are available at
most cafés, too, though for a wider selection of cakes you should head
for one of the many excellent pastelerías or confiterías . In larger
towns, especially in Catalunya, there will often be a panadería or
croissantería serving quite an array of appetizing baked goods besides
the obvious bread, croissants and pizza.
Some bars specialize in bocadillos - hearty French bread-style
sandwiches with a choice of fillings. If you want them wrapped to take
away with you, ask for them para llevar . Incidentally, be careful not
to use the word "sandwich" to order a bocadillo , as an Iberian sandwich
is usually on sad, processed white bread - often with ham and cheese or
something with a lot of mayonnaise.
Tapas and raciones
One of the advantages of eating in bars is that you are able to
experiment. Many places have food laid out on the counter, so you can
see what's available and order by pointing without necessarily knowing
the names; others have blackboards or " lista de las tapas ". Tapas (often
called pinchos or pintxos in northern Spain) are small portions, three
or four small chunks of fish or meat, or a dollop of salad, which
traditionally used to be served up free with a drink. These days you
often have to pay for anything more than a few olives, but a single
helping rarely costs more than ¬1.20-2.40 unless you're somewhere very
flashy. Raciones (costing around ¬6.50-9) are simply bigger plates of
the same intended for sharing among a couple of people, and can be
enough in themselves for a light meal. The more people you're with, of
course, the better; half a dozen tapas or pinchos and three raciones can
make a varied and quite filling meal for three or four people.
Tascas, bodegas, cervecerías and tabernas are all types of bar where
you'll find tapas and raciones . Most of them have different sets of
prices depending on whether you stand at the bar to eat (the basic
charge) or sit at tables (up to fifty percent more expensive - and even
more if you sit out on a terrace).
Wherever you have tapas, it is important to find out what the local
special is and order it. Spaniards will commonly move from bar to bar,
having just the one dish that they consider each bar does well. A bar's
"non-standard" dishes, these days, can all too often be microwaved -
which is not a good way to cook squid.
Meals and restaurants
Once again, there's a multitude of distinctions. You can sit down and
have a full meal in a comedor , a cafetería , a restaurante or a
marisquería - all in addition to the more food-oriented bars.
Comedores are the places to seek out if your main criteria are price and
quantity. Sometimes you will see them attached to a bar (often in a room
behind), or as the dining room of a hostal or pensión , but as often as
not they're virtually unmarked and discovered only if you pass an open
door. Since they're essentially workers' cafés they tend to serve more
substantial meals at lunchtime than in the evenings (when they may be
closed altogether). When you can find them - the tradition, with its
family-run business and marginal wages, is on the way out - you'll
probably pay around ¬4.50-8 for a menú del día, cubierto or menú de la
casa , all of which mean the same - a complete meal of three courses,
usually with bread, wine and dessert included.
The highway equivalent of comedores are ventas which you'll be extremely
glad of if you're doing much travelling by road. These roadside inns
dotted along the highways between towns and cities have been serving
Spanish wayfarers for hundreds of years - many of them quite literally -
and the best ventas are wonderful places to get tasty country cooking at
bargain prices. Again the menú del día is the one to go for and the best
places usually have quite a gathering of lorries in their car park,
shrewd long-distance truck drivers being among the best customers.
Replacing comedores to some extent are cafeterías , which the local
authorities grade from one to three cups (the ratings, as with
restaurants, seem to be based on facilities offered rather than the
quality of the food). These can be good value, too, especially the self-service
places, but their emphasis is more northern European and the light
snack-meals served tend to be dull. Food here often comes in the form of
a plato combinado - literally a combined plate - which will be something
like egg and chips or calamares and salad (or occasionally a weird
combination like steak and a piece of fish), often with bread and a
drink included. This will generally cost in the region of ¬4.50-6.
Cafeterías often serve some kind of menú del día as well. You may prefer
to get your plato combinado at a bar, which in small towns with no
comedores may be the only way to eat inexpensively.
Moving up the scale there are restaurantes (designated by one to five
forks) and marisquerías , the latter serving exclusively fish and
seafood. Restaurantes at the bottom of the scale are often not much
different in price from comedores , and will also generally have platos
combinados available. A fixed-price menú del día is often better value
though: generally three courses plus wine and bread for around ¬4.50-9.
Chinese restaurants - increasingly popular in Spain - generally have the
cheapest menús del día : ¬4.50-6 is the norm. Move above two forks,
however, or find yourself in one of the more fancy marisquerías (as
opposed to a basic seafront fish-fry place), and prices can escalate
rapidly. However, even here most of the top restaurants offer an
upmarket menú called a menú de degustación (a sampler meal, usually
including wine) which is often excellent value and allows you to try out
some of the country's finest cooking for ¬20-30.
To avoid receiving confused stares from waiters in restaurants, you
should always ask for la carta when you want a menu; menú in Spanish
refers only to fixed-price meal. In addition, in all but the most rock-bottom
establishments it is customary to leave a small tip ( propina ):
Spaniards are judicious tippers, so only do so if the service merits it:
the amount is up to you, though 5 to 10 percent of the bill in a
restaurant is quite sufficient. Service is normally included in a menú
del día . The other thing to take account of in medium- and top-price
restaurants is the addition of IVA , a seven percent tax on your bill.
It should say on the menu if you have to pay this.
You'll find numerous recommendations, in all price ranges, in the guide.
Spaniards generally eat very late, so most of these places serve food
from around 1 until 4pm and from 8pm to midnight. Many restaurants close
on Sunday or Monday evening . Outside these times, generally the only
places open are the fast-food joints; Pans & Co and Bocatta serve
suprisingly good bocadillos and often have special offers.
Alcoholic drinks
Over fifty percent of the European Union's vineyards lie in Spain and
vino (wine), either tinto (red), blanco (white) or rosado/clarete
(rosé), is the invariable accompaniment to every meal. As a rule, wine
is extremely inexpensive and while low prices used to be equated with
low quality, in recent years enormous investment has been flowing into
the Spanish wine trade and standards have risen dramatically. The wines
to look out for are whites from Galicia and reds from Rioja, Navarra and
Ribera del Duero. Cava (Spain's champagne) generally comes from
Catalunya and is a real bargain, whilst Andalucía is noted for its
sherries and brandies. One thing worth knowing about Spanish wine is the
terms related to the ageing process which defines the best wines;
crianza wines must have a minimum of two years ageing before sale; red
reserva wines at least two years (of which one must be in oak barrels);
red gran reserva at least two years in oak and three in the bottle).
White gran reserva guarantees five years' ageing (of which six months
must be in oak).
The most common bottled variety you'll encounter in the more economical
restaurants and comedores is Valdepeñas, a good standard mass produced
wine from the central plains of New Castile; most Valdepeñas is ordinary
if quaffable stuff, but the Los Llanos bodega produces an outstanding
and affordable gran reserva . Rioja, from the area round Logroño on the
edge of the Basque country, is rightly Spain's best known wine and
available everywhere (Cune, Berberana, Marques de Caceres and La Rioja
Alta are brands to try). Another top-drawer and currently fashionable
region is Ribera del Duero in Castilla-León which makes Spain's most
expensive wine, Vega Sicilia, besides other outstanding reds (Pesquera,
Viña Pedrosa and Senorio de Nava are names to look out for). There are
also scores of local wines - some of the best are Navarra (Chivite,
Palacio de la Vega) and Catalunya (Bach, Raimat, Caus Lubis and Alvaro
Palacios), a region which also produces the champagne-like cava (Codorniu,
Marques de Monistrol); Galicia too, in the temperate northwest is
producing some notable white wines (Ribeiro, Fefiñanes and Albariño are
prominent producers). However, in most low-budget eating places you'll
rarely be offered a wide choice of Spain's better wines, which tend to
appear only in the higher-class establishments.
Dining off the beaten track may mean drinking whatever comes out of the
barrel, or the house-bottled special (ask for caserío or de la casa ).
This can be great, it can be lousy, but at least it will be
distinctively local. In a bar, a small glass of wine will generally cost
around ¬0.30-0.60; in a restaurant, if wine is not included in the menu,
prices start at around ¬2 a bottle although you'll be paying at least
double this and more for quality wine. If it is included, you'll usually
get a whole bottle for two people, a media botella (a third to a half of
a litre) for one. Be on your guard for the odd skinflint establishment
which may try to get away with serving you a single glass of wine to
comply with the "including wine" offer, thus obliging you to buy a
bottle on top. A polite but firm word with the waiter is usually enough
to secure your rights.
The classic Andalucian wine is sherry - vino de Jerez which refers to
the wines produced in a triangular-shaped area to the west of the town
of Jerez de la Frontera. Served chilled or at bodega temperature - fino
(the Spanish name for dry sherry) is a perfect drink to wash down tapas
- and, like everything Spanish, it comes in a perplexing variety of
forms. The main distinctions are between fino or jerez seco (dry sherry),
amontillado (medium dry), and oloroso or jerez dulce (sweet), and these
are the terms you should use to order. Manzanilla is another member of
the sherry family produced in the seaside town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda;
the vineyards' proximity to the sea gives it a delicate, briny tang and
among Spaniards it is currently the most popular of all the dry finos .
Similar - though not identical - is montilla , an excellent dry sherry-like
wine from the province of Córdoba. The main distinction between this and
the other finos is that no alcohol is added at the production stage,
prompting the cordobeses to claim that theirs is the more natural
product, but sales and popularity still lag way behind those of its
rival.
Cerveza , lager-type beer, is generally pretty good, though more
expensive than wine. It comes in 300-ml bottles ( botellines ) or, for
about the same price, on tap - a caña of draught beer is a small glass,
a caña doble larger, and asking for un tubo (a tubular glass) gets you
about half a pint. Many bartenders will assume you want a doble or un
tubo , so if you don't, say so. Mahou, Cruz Campo, San Miguel, and
Victoria are all decent beers and good local brands too are worth trying,
such as Estrella de Galicia or Alhambra.
Equally refreshing, though often deceptively strong, is sangría , a wine-and-fruit
punch which you'll come across at fiestas and in tourist bars. Tinto de
verano is a similar red wine and soda or lemonade combination which is a
great refresher in high temperatures; variations on this include tinto
de verano con naranja (red wine with orangeade) or con limón (mixed with
a Fanta lemon juice).
In mid-afternoon - or even at breakfast - many Spaniards take a copa of
liqueur with their coffee. The best are anís (like Pernod) or coñac ,
excellent local brandy with a distinct vanilla flavour; try Magno,
Soberano, or Carlos III ("tercero") to get an idea of the variety, or
Carlos I ("primero"), Lepanto, or Gran Duque de Alba for a measure of
the quality. Most brandies are produced by the great sherry houses in
Jerez, but one equally good one that isn't is Mascaró, produced in
Catalunya and resembling an armagnac.
In bars spirits are ordered by brand name, since there are generally
less expensive Spanish equivalents for standard imports. Larios gin from
Málaga, for instance, is about half the price of Gordon's. Specify
nacional to avoid getting an expensive foreign brand. Spirits can be
very expensive at the trendier bars; however, wherever they are served,
they tend to be staggeringly generous - the bar staff pouring from the
bottle until you suggest they stop.
Mixed drinks are universally known as copa or Cubata , though strictly
speaking the latter is rum and Coke. Juice is zumo ; orange, naranja ;
lemon, limón ; and tonic tónica .
Soft drinks and hot drinks
Soft drinks are much the same as anywhere in the world, but try in
particular granizado (slush) or horchata (a milky drink made from tiger
nuts or almonds) from one of the street stalls that spring up everywhere
in summer. You can also get these drinks from horchaterías and from
heladerías (ice cream - helados - parlours), or in Catalunya from the
wonderful milk bars known as granjas . Although you can drink the water
almost everywhere it usually tastes better out of the bottle -
inexpensive agua mineral comes either sparkling ( con gas ) or still (
sin gas ).
Café (coffee) - served in cafés, heladerías and bars - is invariably
espresso, slightly bitter and, unless you specify otherwise, served
black ( café solo ). If you want it white ask for café cortado (small
cup with a drop of milk) or café con leche (made with lots of hot milk).
For a large cup of weaker coffee ask for an americano . Coffee is also
frequently mixed with brandy, cognac or whisky, all such concoctions
being called carajillo . Iced coffee is café con hielo , another great
high summer refresher: a café solo is served with a glass of ice cubes.
Pour the coffee onto the cubes - it cools instantly.
Té (tea) is also available at most bars, although bear in mind that
Spaniards usually drink it black. If you want milk it's safest to ask
for it afterwards, since ordering té con leche might well get you a
glass of milk with a tea bag floating on top. Perhaps a better bet would
be herbal teas and most bars keep these: manzanilla (camomile, not to be
confused with the sherry of the same name), poleomenta (mint tea) and
hierba luisa (lemon verbena) are all popular herbal infusions.
Chocolate (hot chocolate) is incredibly thick and sweet, and is a
popular early-morning drink after a long night on the town. If you'd
prefer a thinner cocoa-style drink ask for a brand name, like Cola Cao. |
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