Tapeando

As many of you are well aware, Spain is famous for it’s tapas.  Tapas are appetizer size portions of traditional Spanish dishes, so a meal is usually a bunch of tapas shared by the table.  Conveniently, the Spanish language even made Tapas into a verb “tapear”, therefore, when people go out to eat tapas, they are “tapeando”. 

So last weekend, my friend Alex and I went “tapeando” since her host family wasn’t home to make dinner.  We decided to eat at “100 montaditos” which translates to 100 sandwiches.  The menu is exactly that: 100 sandwiches. 

Thinking that one sandwich would be enough for dinner, Alex and I placed our order.  After about 20 minutes, our order was called.  Alex went to get our food but came back with a bite-sized sandwich.  I mean the sandwich on my plate could not have been any bigger than my pinky finger.  I looked at it, wondering how I should eat it.  One bite? Or two?  I went with two, but I was completely unsatisfied.  I would need at least three pinky-sized sandwiches to consider it a meal.  But rather than place another order to wait 20 minutes for another two-bite sandwich, Alex and I decided to continue our “tapeando” elsewhere.

We walked through the old city, trying to find a cute little tapas bar, but the more we wandered, the more discouraged we got.  At one point we even abandoned our search to go to a candy store instead, but it was closed.  A sign, for sure.  So tapeando we went. 

We got to a busy street with many restaurants and stopped to look at the menu.  At the second restaurant a waiter practically picked us up and ushered us inside to his restaurant.  Alex and I didn’t know what to do other than follow his orders.  The only way for us to leave at that point was to turn around and literally push him out of the way.  So we went upstairs when he told us to go upstairs. 

The first warning should have been the white tablecloth.  But downstairs didn’t have white tablecloths.  Then we realized that upstairs and downstairs were different restaurants.  Of course we were herded upstairs.  We ordered a bottle of water and looked over the menu in panic.  The cheapest thing on the menu was 15 euros!  This was not a tapas bar.  I looked over at another table, where six older Spanish women sat in heels and (obnoxious) fur coats, while drinking their wine and buttering their bread.  This was not the kind of place that Alex and I were supposed to be at.  I wish the candy store actually had been open!

Alex and I decided it would be better to split something on the menu.  After reading everything but the entrees twice (they ranged from 25-40 euros), we settled on a cheese platter.  The waiter seemed a little surprised when we said we would only like to split the cheapest appetizer, but it was his fault we were there anyway. 

He came back with our cheese platter, but a more accurate description would be a plate of cheese.  There wasn’t an array of cheese, no, no.  This was a plate of one kind of cheese.  Literally about 15 slices of Manchego cheese.  We weren’t even given any bread until we asked for it (and charged for it, of course).  Nevertheless, we ate every single crumb off that plate.  If we were going to pay 12.80 Euros for cheese, we were going to get our full 12.80 Euros’ worth!

The final bill was 16.80 Euros, including the bread and water, and the waiter got not a penny more.  We were just robbed.  The restaurant robbed us of almost 17 euros! We could have had 17 little sandwiches for a plate of cheese.  Lesson learned: get the six-sandwich platter, and stay away from herding waiters and white tablecloths. 

A Routine Grocery Shop

Ok, so I admit that this wasn’t necessarily the most routine grocery shop, but it was an eventful one.

But first things first, Caitlin gets a little bragging moment.  The other night I made a beautiful meal of rosemary and sweet basil chicken over a bed of pesto pasta.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with my skills in the kitchen, let me enlighten you: I have none.  Let's put it this way: I'd rather have a political debate in Arabic than touch a raw chicken breast. So the seemingly simple task is quite a feat for me. 

So the next night, I had a dose of kitchen karma.  I had just come home from a long day and wanted something quick and easy for dinner.  A frozen pizza.  Perfect!  I got out the personal size frozen pizza, stuck it in the oven, and went to my room to check my email.  A couple minutes later my room was literally full of smoke.  I ran into the kitchen to find my personal pizza charred to a crisp.  Literally, it could have taken somebody out. What a tragedy. 

So I went back over to the freezer to pull out another frozen pizza, only to be disappointed that my last pizza was a burnt Frisbee in the trashcan.  Luckily the Más is right across the street, so I put on my flip-flops, grab my wallet, and am out the door.  I should probably mention that it is about 50 degrees outside and to Spaniards that means earmuffs, wool coats, gloves, and scarves, so my cardigan and flip-flops weren’t escaping the stares. But I was on a mission to get my pizza so I didn’t really care.

I made a beeline to the frozen food section to pick out my Bertolli’s jamón y queso pizza, but they were out of stock! How could they be out of stock in my pizza emergency?!  After much contemplation as to whether or not I should get the usual jamón y queso or try the new cuatro frommagio, I decided to go with the usual.  After one failed pizza attempt, there was no need to mix things up.

Pizza in hand, I walked up to the checkout to find only one register open as usual.  The Spaniards like to take their sweet little time doing pretty much everything, and checking out at any store is no exception.  I was in line behind two elderly women and a little boy. But the gem of a customer was the one being helped.  A 50 (ish) pregnant woman, who was buying 12 liters of milk (boxed…ew), and then she asked the woman at the register to label all of her plastic bags for her.  So before she could bag her items, she had to have them sorted appropriately. 

But the checkout process was not sped up with her absence, the two elderly women in front of me couldn’t manage to even lift a bag of chips up to the belt, so they had their 5 year old helper try.  He couldn’t even see over the counter.  How illogical was their thought process?!  Anyway, I would have offered to help because I was getting so impatient and could already taste my perfectly cooked jamón y queso pizza, but some other women comes to the rescue.  And then she thought she could cut the line.  Umm, I don’t think so, honey.  I literally had one 2 euro pizza to buy and she had an entire basketful. 

Just in general, I was hoping the two elderly women would recognize the fact that I only had one item while they had an entire cart of items and let me go ahead of them.  That’s how we do it in the US.  A guy has a gallon of milk and a bag of Tostidos: “go ahead, you only have 2 things.”  Apparently it’s first come first serve in Spain. 

So literally 20 minutes later, it was finally my turn.  But as I was checking out there were four American girls that walked up to the back of the line.  They saw my flip-flops and, fulfilling the stereotypical “obnoxious American”, they started talking about my flip-flops.  Little did they know that I understood everything they were saying. I thought about saying something, but I was so intent on eating my pizza that it wasn’t worth it. So finally, I paid my 2 euros, and walked off with my hard won dinner. 

I literally sat in front of the oven with the light on watching my pizza cook, so we would avoid a repeat of earlier events.

What an event a burnt pizza can cause!