Spain, Part Three

I have never before been so flummoxed by food. The Spanish simply don’t eat like everybody else.

The monkey wrench in the peninsular digestive system is tapas. Tapas is small plates of food that one consumes at bars, presumably while drinking. But it’s much more complicated than that. There seems to be about four different versions of tapas relative to plate size, from a couple of bites to a pile o’ grub, with various stations along the way. You can pay by the toothpick inserted in the food, or by the plate, like a normal restaurant. Tapas range from a little bowl of olives to various fish prepared in a myriad of ways to (very occasionally) vegetables to pretty much anything that can be served with a drink. But the thing is, it is not hard to scope out what tapas are, and which ones you’ll like or not like. They are not particularly complicated. I mean, a meat ball is a meat ball is a meat ball. The problem is, when is one supposed to eat all this stuff?

In examining Spanish food, let’s start with lunch, perhaps the most standard dining experience. Businesses shut down from 2 to 5 in the afternoon, which is when people are supposed to eat a big meal. You go to a restaurant and have whatever, like any restaurant. Often there’s a menu of the day, offering three courses at a reasonable price. So, when in Rome… you have a big meal in the afternoon. Followed by a little siesta, if you can swing it.

Now the next thing is, the Spanish like to eat a big nighttime meal at around 11:00. 11:00 at night. (In debate terms, that’s round 2 of CatNats Saturday.) If you stumble into a restaurant at 9:00, my friend, you stumble in alone. They’ll serve you, but the place is deserted (unless it’s a tourist joint, in which case it will be packed with Brits and Germans, which is even worse than an empty restaurant). So you have big meal #2 at 11:00 pm. Figure that from this you’ll go to sleep, at the earliest, at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m.

Now in the morning, you got up, after a long night’s digestion, in time to have that first eye-opening cup of cafe con leche at around 10:00 a.m. Maybe a sticky bun at most, and maybe another café at around 12:00 to keep you going till lunch. So that’s breakfast.

So where do the tapas come in? I mean, you've pretty much had a normal three meals by this point. Well, tapas are available all day long. And it is misleading to refer to where they are sold as bars, because it seems as if everyone selling practically anything sells liquor and tapas. While you’re having your first cup of coffee on some morning when you had to get up early for a day trip to Toledo, the yabbo standing next to you is on his third beer of the day. There are some breakfasty foods like tostados (great toasts) and tortillas (which are like Italian frittatas) and the like. But after the sun is over the yardarm, the real tapas come out, everything from sandwiches to every version of cod and anchovy the human mind can conceive, right up to those bowls of meatballs. But at 1:00 you don’t really want much in the way of tapas before your big lunch at 2:00, so maybe you have the tiniest plate of something, as an appetizer. But traditionally, I am told, tapas is what is supposed to get you from the big meal in the afternoon to the big meal at night. I mean, the collective roar of Spanish stomachs growling at around 8:30 in the evening does, I understand, block out their ability to hear who’s going for what on their version of Deal or No Deal. (Every country has a version of Deal or No Deal. It’s in the U.N. Charter.) So once or twice between the first big meal in the afternoon and the second big meal late at night, there is a trip or two to the tapas bar for a drink and some snacks. Honestly, looking into the windows of the tapas places in the early evening, it’s lots of drinks and lots of snacks.

And, as I say, it’s hard to get one’s naively American stomach around this paradigm shift in eating. It’s easy enough to slip into a light breakfast, and a big lunch, but for the rest of it, it seems like about three meals too many, too late. We tried everything. Lighter lunch simply meant starvation before the restaurants opened at night. Tapas, or alternatively sweets between meals, were overkill. And as you start bloating out you start to wonder why every single Spaniard does not weigh at least five hundred pounds. At which point you begin to suspect that it’s a trick, some sneaky Iberian plot to confuse the French, and you’ve just gotten caught in the undertow.

Still, best foods: roast suckling pig, cocido (a stew, where you get the broth as a first course), Iberian ham (like nothing you’ve ever tasted), good paella (there’s plenty of bad paella, which is okay, but a really good paella will make you happier than the proverbial clam), every kind of fish. We didn’t succumb to the avant garde foods—infusions and essences, foods faux-cooked in nitrogen, all that stuff at $1000 per person—because, well, who’s got $1000 per person? We also had some good Middle Eastern food (some of the Moors are still around). And gelato (because Spain is Spain but Italy is Italy and if you want ice cream, you’ve got to know how to get it). And chocolate (although we never went the hot chocolate and churro route; churros are these sausagey looking donutty things that get dunked in the chocolate in aid no doubt of an instant heart attack). Fresh foods from the market, including wonderful cheeses. Overall, you can eat pretty well, but you’ve got to parse the meal system out for yourself and work your way around the arcana of their unique hours of operation. If you’re on vacation, you’ll probably figure something out eventually. But you can’t help but wonder how people who live there manage. It’s just too much food and not enough sleep. Or maybe I’m just not the sybarite I used to be.