The New York Tapas Scam

I submitted these comments on this article in the New York Times that prompted the food critic (who doesn't even have to shell out for his meals) to wonder about the sanity of the small food craze in this rapacious town. It is a subject that has long been simmering in my bile. Here is my beef:

This small plates craze is the biggest New York ripoff since the financial crisis. Certain clarification is in order.
I spent 10 days in Barcelona recently. The tapas there are the size of Wyoming. 
The first time we ordered tapas we were thinking skimpy NY portions so we let it rip: pimientos de padrón, serrano ham, croquettes, tortilla, gambas al ajillo, what have you. It was a meal that could have easily been shared by six people, or more.The tapas in NY are as overpriced as they are undernourishing.
Rajj and Montero are particularly notorious at this scam. I have been to their restaurant Pintxtos, where a montadito is a puny slice of bread with a Spanish schmear. The bill for 3 small plates and two beers came to over $60.00. Any tapa you have at a bar in Spain is generously served and you can see it without magnifying glasses. As the writer points out, the entire concept and philosophy of the tapa has been perverted into culinary armed robbery here in New York. It's time to revolt against it. 
It is the generosity of spirit of those local culinary traditions that doesn't translate in New York. That generosity is an essential part of the cuisine, and if it is not there, no matter how good the food, as far as I'm concerned, the meal is bogus. 

I rest my case

To make matters worse, recently I read something somewhere by some American genius who discovered the virtues of small glasses of beer (as opposed to the disgusting buckets they give you here for draft beers) as if they themselves had found the Higgs Boson under the carpet. Dude, anybody who has ever been to Spain knows that there is no fresher, cooler or better glass of beer than what the Spanish call a "caña". A small little glass, perhaps 8 ounces, of crisp, ice-cold beer that never warms up or loses its fizz.  I have never understood the benefits of drinking flat, stale, tepid beer from a huge glass, like they do here.  

He dicho. 

Gaudí Is In The Details

 

 

Casa Batlló: the one that looks like a creature from the sea.

Photos: Yehudit Mam.

Viva Gaudí!

I used to think Frank Lloyd Wright was my favorite architect ever, but I was wrong. It's Antoni Gaudi, whose insanely beautiful Palau Guell, the private house of Gaudí's biggest patron, is now totally restored.
Gaudí's work only looks insane, but it isn't. There is gorgeous harmony, expansive space, and absolute beauty. The Guell Palace is certainly a strange house, but it is a thing of genius. It reminded me of the prints of M.C. Escher.

The incredible wrought iron doors designed by Gaudí allow you to see the street from inside but prevent you from seeing the house from outside.

The horse stables

The Guells only lived there for about 15 months, because Mrs. Guell didn't like the house.

Foody Food Food

Because Cynthia asked for it:

Jersey tomatoes can kiss our Spanish ass. 

Fideua de la casa at Cervecería Catalana

I ordered half a ración of this noodle paella above and I soon regretted it. I could have eaten the whole thing.

Salteado de setas y calamares

Sauteed wild mushrooms and calamari (and fresh asparagus and jamón de jabugo). You bet.

Dinner: churros con chocolate

The hot chocolate at the Café de La Opera was so thick and intense, but not overly sweet, that it felt like I had five cups of coffee after.

La Chispa de la Vida

Today I did another Modernist pilgrimage of the neighborhood known as El Raval, which is still affectingly seedy in places. A spot on the walking tour is a bar called La Confitería, which used to be a pastry shop at the turn of the 20th Century and has been restored into a gorgeous bar. It's in the middle of a slightly down at the heels neighborhood and the two older gentlemen tending the empty bar were fun, crusty bohemians. Here's what transpired:

Me: A Coke please.
Bartender: Ice?
Me: Yes
Bartender: Lemon?
Me: Yes, please.
Bartender: Bubbles?
Me: That would be perfect.

Then the bartender, who I suspect was French and gay, helped himself to a piece of horrible cake, the kind they sell at supermarkets. He complained about the horror of the cake in detail until the other guy took a bottle of brandy from the display and poured a swirl of brandy on the slice. The bartender pronounced it much better.

That was fun.

La Confitería and if you look closely, the offending cake.

Serious Travel

Barcelona is such a haven of sophistication, that it's been hard to find hilarious stuff to make fun of, which after all is one of the great pleasures of traveling. So far everybody has been nothing but warm and welcoming, except a woman with a verbissener punim who served me a pork and cheese sandwich the day I did the Modernism pilgrimage. And even then she wasn't rude, just bitter.
I went to explore the beaches and happened into a choir recital in a tent as part of some Catalan cultural event. I should have suspected something was afoot when I noticed the director of the choir had hair like Paganini and a neck brace. There was a big audience of mostly elderly people, at a par with the mostly elderly singers on stage. The conductor gave a longwinded introduction in which he explained the order of the songs and what they were going to sing and why. He apologized that the songs were in Spanish, but quickly pointed out they were from Latin America, not Spain, as he is proud to have them in his repertoire. He could not remember exactly the name of the poet who wrote the first song, so someone from the exasperated choir shouted it out. A very beautiful song by Mario Benedetti, arranged, he explained, for four voices. I waited with delight, as I know the song well. After concluding his lengthy explanation of each song by saying that they were going to sing all the songs back to back to make things move quickly, he started calmly tuning the voices in each section of the choir. This reminded me of those bands that take longer to tune their instruments than they take to play their set at rock festivals. People who do this sort of audience torture should not be allowed on stage.
Finally, the song began. I could not recognize one note. Everybody was out of tune and the arrangement was some sort of baroque fugue that nobody could follow, a striking example of pretentious provincial atonality. I ran away, shaking my head, feeling sorry for everyone, and a little miffed at whoever was the cause of the neck brace. Clearly, they did not apply enough pressure.

Yesterday, as we walked in search of an open bar (it was a holiday, but never fear, in this city of bizarre opening and closing hours, you will never want for food or drink), we witnessed a theft. A guy on a bike swooshed by and nabbed something valuable off a tourist's arm. Brazenly, as the street was by no means empty. The couple gave chase on foot, screaming, but the guy pedaled away. Apparently, this is so common, that to make tourist lives' easier, you can now report thefts at the front desk of your hotel and avoid the snaking lines at the police station. Awfully nice of them, isn't it?

Barcelona is swarming with tourists. Doesn't anybody work? Not even June yet and everybody in Europe seems to be on vacation (or is it unemployed?). This includes young English lads and molls that either drink since morning or can't hold their liquor already early in the evening, Russians who stand in narrow alleyways as expansively as if they were in Red Square, oblivious to other human traffic; Italians, who in my experience, are people who tend to scream at each other; the French, who are rather discreet and well behaved, as if to atone for the punishment they unleash on the hordes that visit them; and drunken Visigoths of various northern stripes. I bet they come to Spain for the generosity with which the Spaniards pour a drink. In the puritan Anglo-Saxon world, a regular gin and tonic such as they serve here would be considered a triple, a bucket, God bless 'em. I also bet that if the waves of tourists continue swelling, by the time September rolls around, the natives may not be as warm and welcoming as they are now.

By the way, if I were Undisputed Ruler of Earth (I am currently volunteering for the post, you guys) the following would be banned:

• Buskers that don't move and then move
• Buskers in general
• Long haired Incas with pan flutes (these in particular gall me to no end)
• Homeless youth with dogs to elicit pity. You can be a homeless youth, but spare us the dog. 
• People standing in front of tourist traps trying to lure you in
• Tourist traps
• I am tempted to say tourists.

La Boquería

At the fantastic market of La Boquería, the majority of the fishmongers are women. And the majority of the fish are awesome.

Exotic fruits which are then turned into exotic jellies:

Or exotic juices: