EATING OUT

Food is important. Spaniards enjoy café life. Like the French they live to eat.

Breakfast is a coffee with bread or a croissant. Cafe solo is a small cup of strong coffee not for the thirsty. Cafe con leche is coffee with milk. Cafe americano is a large cup without milk. Churos – a doughnut-style fried pastry with hot chocolate, forms a traditional breakfast of mega calories.

Lunch takes place between 14.00 and 16.00 and if taken outside the home will consist of tapas or, alternatively, a light three course meal with wine and bread.

Dinner is late – 20.00 to 22.00. The Spanish are famous for eating at, what to some, is a ludicrously late hour. Who in most countries would think of sitting down to a full meal at nine o’clock in the evening? This late night eating is all to do with the Spanish siesta-adjusted body clock, with most people not finishing work until half past seven or eight o’clock. It is usually a reversal of lunch, with a bit more wine and a bit less food. No one wants to go to bed on an over-full stomach.

Restaurant meals usually consist of three courses. Many restaurants in Spain offer a luncheon known as the Menu del Dia. The choices for Menu del Dia are chalked up on a blackboard outside the restaurant. It must consist of three courses plus bread, water or wine. The third course is always dessert. The price is always less than if you were to order the same items a la carte. It is one of the best deals in Spain. There may be only two or three choices per course or as many as a dozen.

With a bottle of table wine and fine food at prices that compare very favourably with that paid for a meal in northern Europe, eating out can cost next to nothing. It is a constant source of amazement that restaurants can produce a three-course meal with wine, for as little as 10§. A service charge is included in some restaurant and hotel bills, but waiters will appreciate an additional five to ten per cent tip.

But beware! Among the basic intake of food and drink should be included tobacco. Men smoke, women smoke and teenagers smoke. Whenever you go into a Spanish establishment you will soon be enveloped in a thick blue haze of cigarette smoke and the Spanish do not have the faintest idea this could be uncomfortable to anyone.

TAPAS

In addition to restaurants there are many attractive tapas bars offering freshly-made snacks and appetisers. The tapas bar is unique to Spain. Alicante is known as one of the best tapas areas where the ritual of tapa eating has reached sublime levels.

Tapas come in all sorts of delicious forms and are readily available in most bars. Rows of dishes are arranged in a chilled cabinet in front of the customer. They comprise tortilla, spicy meat balls, big plump olives, sausages, fried aubergines, egg salad, courgettes, spicy potatoes, liver, cheese, serrano ham, sardines and prawns in garlic, anchovies, mussels, fried squid, calamares, sepia, and small fish in olive oil.

Nibbling at small amounts of food is popular, but of equal importance is that the tapas bar is an essential part of life, a place where people meet to eat and drink, to gossip, to carry out business and generally pass the time of day.

BAR OR CAFÉ?

A bar is mainly a male-dominated environment serving beer, wine and tapas. They may specialise, creating an individual image through music, cocktails, cabaret or beer. Picture a popular bar situated in a tiny street of a small village anywhere in Spain about 10.00. Dark, with basic tables and chairs, walls painted some time ago in a murky yellow colour or any colour provided it is murky. A stuffed boar’s head adorns the wall, the shelves contain a variety of silver cups for football behind which are pictures of the teams. There is also a large picture of grandfather looking starched and bemused, of grandmother starched and not amused, a proud man holding a horse, of pretty granddaughters and daughters in their national costumes taken during one of the many fiestas. Also dotted around are gaming machines, dart boards, posters displaying ice creams, boxes of crisps, wines, beer and spirits. That’s just the wall.

Along the base of the bar, especially first thing in the morning, are cigarette ends. They do get brushed up but are soon replaced as older Spaniards don’t bother with an ashtray. The top of the bar will be littered with plates, cups and saucers, glasses, bottles and the remains of food.

The noise of people will be deafening as they all talk at the same time. Later on in the morning, when everything has been brushed up and the bar surface cleared, the older retired men will take up positions at the tables and either play cards or dominoes. Bars in villages and towns are social clubs where people meet and keep abreast of what is happening, aided by watching the inevitable television set high up in a corner that can be showing anything from football to bullfighting to pornographic films. As very few watch, it leaves one wondering why the TV is on in the first place! No one needs to be alone at home because bars exist and are open sometimes seven days a week from early morning till late at night.

A café, on the other hand is where you partake of a coffee and a pastry or, when it’s hot, a large ice cream. It is where you have a work break, read a newspaper, take shelter from the sun or rain, watch the world go by, or even nip inside to use the toilet. In the city it is a haunt for all ages and sexes, but in the country, segregation takes place, with the ladies visiting the cafe and the men the bar.