We found a place that does tapas like we thought we would see. They have a lot of them out like a buffet and you pick what you want. At the end they count up your plates and toothpicks and charge you 1.60 euro for each. Here are some:
Category: Food and Coffee in Spain
Paella
Post by Wynette: Well, we haven’t had any paella yet. We are holding out for a place that comes with a good recommendation. Do you think we should have tried any of these places in Toledo?
I think the person who decided on the following brand name didn’t quite understand nuances around the word “ok”.
We met a couple waiting outside a restaurant, he was from New Jersey but had lived in Spain for 20 years. She was Spanish. He said his theory was that a company manufactured these and froze them and the bars all around sold them. Because we saw LOTS of signs like the 3 above.
Or, how about something we saw in the market, what Charlie calls “shake and bake Paella”:
Open-air restaurant
We ate here the first day in Todedo.
This is actually two bars/restaurants sharing the same patio. On the left with the reddish chairs is our restaurant and the next two rows with the darker chairs is another bar/cafe.
Frozen food at the market
It was mostly fresh food but one large booth had a large selection of bowls of frozen vegetables, pasta, all sorts of things. You could get as much as you want of them, take them home and have a fast meal by unfreezing them. they all looked really good.
Santa Caterina Market 2
They had whole booths for eggs:
The goose eggs (at the far left) were pretty big but then we ran across this one:
These are ostrich eggs, only 28 euro each.
The market is mostly fresh food but they had deli stuff also. We plan to make a picnic tomorrow from there. Today we ate at a little cafe in the market. It was very good. They say Barcelona is a foodie town, that seems to be true.
We sat right by the cooks, this guy was friendly and was making jokes with us and took the above picture. He was the grill cook; to the left was the station for the guy who did things in frying pans and pots.
Notice the writing above on the back of his shirt, menjar i beure. Those of you who know some Spanish know that that is not Spanish. It is a good example of Catalan. Google Translate tells us it means “food and drink”.
Barcelona Markets
We love to go to markets when we travel. Today we went to the Santa Caterina Market, the has a festive colored and wavy roof which we didn’t get a picture of. This is not the more famous La Boqueria market just off the middle of the Ramblas, our hotel recommended this one. It was an amazing place with beautiful fruits and vegetables:
We got some strawberries for breakfast tomorrow and some tiny little bananas that we heard are really good, from Columbia I think he said.
The market is all food. Here is ome of the meat and fish:
Purple play-doh on a pretty plate
Here it is:
It seems obvious now and probably to you.
We ate at Alfileritos 24, at Calle de los Afilteritos 24 (cute huh?), the guidebooks said “Modern international”. Our hotel manager, Enrique, recommeded it and called it just “24”. I guess that is what the young, hip crowd calls it and Wynette and I, with our combined 125 years, always try to go where the cool kids go. Overall it was very good.
This is the appetizer we got “carpaccio de pulpo” Somehow, despite our hipness, they gave us the English menu which called it “Roast octopus”. When we got it, it seemed like the wrong order. Where’s the octopus I thought. And it seemed kind of small for 10 euro. Wynette agreed although she was looking at it from the other side of the table so I guess it is mostly my error. We were this close to asking the waiter about it when I suddenly realized that the plate was all black and the pattern on it was, in fact, our octopus. It would have been highly embarrassing and a big hit to our hipness if we had asked. Anyway, once we found the cleverly cleverly-hidden-as-a-pattern-on-the-plate octopus, it was very good and we were off to a great start with the meal.
The play-doh does look like a kid shaped it. It was potato and turnips (and purple coloring) and was good too.
I’ll refrain from posting pictures of all the other courses, which we did take.
In-Cider
Both Wynette and I like hard cider. We each learned about good cider in England where every pub has cider. Spain has cider too. In the north they make what we hear is really good cider. We are looking forward to it when we get to Barcelona.
We had cider with our tapas. Actually not cider but perry, pear cider. There were two choices available: Strongbow and I forgot the one we had Bulmers (you can see it in the tapas picture), both English ciders. Why not Spanish cider?
Well, maybe I can get Spanish cider at the Irish pub down the street.
Luck of the Irish
What’s the deal with Irish pubs? It seems like everywhere I go there are Irish pubs: England (understandable), Albuquerque, Italy, and now Toledo, just a couple of blocks from our hotel, John Daley and Company. I’m Irish myself but not a big drinker so maybe that’s why I don’t understand.
Our first tapas
I talked about tapas before. Here is “todos tapas”:
