Stamp them all!

Last night’s effort towards completion of the Ruta de Tapas was revealing.  I am now some 66% of my way through the list and soon I will be down to single figures!

We got through three more establishments and they showed the best and worst of what the Spanish eat.

The first of the tapas was a pizza: good pizza base, fresh and light but a rather stingy allocation of topping.  It was unimaginative and dull.

What wasn’t dull was discovering on the next table to ours a whole group of young and enthusiastic diners who were flamboyantly waving their ruta maps in the air exulting in the fact that they had marked off another tapa on the list!  This is opposition and, as I feared, there are many people out that who are as compulsive as I!  The odds-on winning of a gastronomic meal are receding!

The second was a complete contrast.  We failed to get into one of the bars on the ruta because, like so many in Castelldefels, its opening times are a mystery known only to god.  I do not understand the logic of a bar that does not open on a Saturday night; perhaps their guiding theory of economics is one which governs the working of the financial institutions of the world and we therefore should not be at all surprised when the whole edifice crashes into the walls of reality!

The bar which was open gave us a spectacular tapa of scallop on a bed of Spanish ham served on a piece of melt-in-the mouth bread enlivened with olive oil.  Delicious!  And the waiter seemed genuinely concerned about our reaction to it!

By this point we were determined to make the tapas into a trio of culinary experiences and so we traipsed off to a Mexican restaurant for their offering.

To my horror, as we were walking towards the restaurant, the merry band of eaters that I had seen in the first café we went into were walking confidently away from the place!  This determined approach on the part of other competitors has given me fresh impetus to complete my list.  I am sure that there will be one or two establishments which are outside the easy walk of the centre which will be a real test for the casual eaters!

In spite of our being after the stated hours, we were served a pastry wrapped chile con carne served on a bed of lettuce and garnished with tomato.

It was tasteless.  


The pastry, I have to say was light and delicate but the meat was tasteless.  When the waiter asked me how I had enjoyed it I replied that it was “interesting” – always a danger sign in my responses - and then I ventured that as a British person I would have liked it to have been a little more spicy.  The waiter’s response was a tired revelation!  There was no chile in the chile con carne because that was not to the taste of the indigenous population!

One is tempted to ask why then the restaurant bothered to put chile at all in the description of the tapa – but let it pass, let it pass.  


The glass of wine which accompanied this tapa was also startlingly awful, but I have drunk much, much worse in my life and I regarded its consumption as something of a challenge!

The lightness of our evening meal was in sharp contrast with the “light” lunch we had in a Japanese restaurant at lunchtime.

The restaurant that we eventually patronized, after a search for a parking place (which was like a scene from a Kafka novel) was a place with an excellent buffet.  


But this buffet is not one that the customer can raid to serve himself, it is a buffet where you reel off the items you wish to consume to the patient waiter and then it is all brought to your table in a startlingly unexpected order.

It is quite a cunning ploy as I am sure that they rely on the fact that most people will not have the barefaced effrontery to sit at their tables and drone on through an embarrassingly large number of dishes.  


I am sure that it works with most but not with Emma and myself.

By the time we had consumed the umpteenth maki and sushi we were praying that the olives and soup that we had ordered would never be brought to the table.  


I managed to forestall further food by suddenly ordering a coffee that signalled to all the end of the meal!

Today we are going to ration ourselves and, as long as the rain holds off, we are going to christen (with fire) the new barbecue.

Clouds threaten!