November 11, 2012 Deb’s comments on tapas

Spain, of course, is famous for tapas, the “munchies” served with a bar drink. We’d had fun years ago on a tapas crawl with Rosemary and Gordon when we were in Madrid with them for a couple of days. So we’ve been looking forward to sampling tapas extensively while we’re here. We’ve tried them several places so far, but I thought I’d give you an idea of one evening. Herein a small summary:

At A Conciña, the neighborhood bar Julia and Jose recommended, when you order a caña, a small (maybe 6 oz) beer on tap, they bring you a free (salad-plate sized) plate of patatas bravas - roasted potatoes in a spicy red sauce. You stand or sit at the bar and eat them with toothpicks. This is their standard first tapa. (Other places might serve olives, or a crunchy mix of corn nuts or a little open faced sandwich.)

 

We were there tonight and while Warren had a caña, I had a glass of white wine. First they brought the bravas and then they gave us a plate of 8 crab fritters – crab meat breaded, fried and presented with the crab claw sticking out. They went down really easily, so Warren got another little beer. They then gave us a heaping plate of tortilla, kind of a potato quiche. Sounds bland but is really flavorful.

I ordered (through Warren, since in the crush of people watching the soccer game, the bartenders can’t even see me) a big mug of sidra, a dry hard apple cider that they serve iced with slices of Granny Smith apples and sugar on the bottom in a big glass mug with a wooden spoon to stir up the sugar to your taste. That resulted in four little open faced sandwiches of some sort of smoked pork sausage, tomato and manchego cheese on French bread. Ooops, I forgot the plates of breaded pork loin that had shown up in the odd moments.

All this is happening while we stand at the bar in a crowd of people talking and laughing and watching the soccer game on TV. There are little old codgers and posh young professionals and middle aged women friends and tired workmen and young families with their little kids who are entertaining themselves trying to figure out how to work the video game gambling machines. The assortment is just amazing. Like a 1950’s English pub, but much more talkative. The crowd ebbs and wanes, sometimes a crush, sometimes thinned out. Always talking, always noisy, always clapping for the sporadic Real Madrid goals. We’re sweating in our shirtsleeves and everyone else is wearing mufflers and coats.

So Warren orders a third little beer and now we get deep fried chicken strips. Warren asks if I’m keeping an eye on our coats which he threw on the top of the video game machines. I ask if he’s joking since I can’t even see the top of the machines for the crowd. One more little beer gets us a big plate of what, for lack of better name, I’ll call potato salad. But it’s not. It’s boiled potatoes in a dressing of olive oil, garlic, parsley and some other herbs. Delicious. I give a thumbs up to the bandana’d cook who has looked out from the tiny kitchen. She smiles and laughes.

We’ve watched them slicing thin, thin slices of ham off the big hanging hams behind the bar, and they’re getting ready to circulate platters of ham, sausage, cheese and bread. We’re both stuffed like the Christmas goose at this point and decide to surrender before those platters make the rounds.

We had read that the way to do a tapas crawl was to move from place to place, sampling only one or two tapas in each bar. We just can’t seem to work that way. We have one tapa, and then they bring us another, even better one, and we’ve got our foot nailed to the floor. So much for research and advanced planning on our part.

With all this fried stuff, I can’t imagine how all Spaniards aren’t fat as their pigs and dead by 25, but instead their average weight is less than Americans and their average lifespan longer. Go figure.

So, for about two average American beers, a glass of wine and a glass of cider (by the way, you’re on the honor system for telling them how many drinks you had), we spent a couple of hours and ate some really fun food. Total cost was about ten euros, or about $13. We had heard that tapas were rarely free any more, but no one seems to have told the guys at A Conciña. And we’re certainly not going to mention it to them. Sunny had told us he was sure we’d find a great little local bar, and thanks to Jose and Julia, we found it on the first day.