CRAWLING THROUGH SPAIN… TAPAS STYLE!
When you land in Spain you intuitively want to immerse
yourself in the country’s most traditional social ritual, the
tapas bar crawl. It’s a way of life for Spaniards. A visitor can
get off the plane, go straight to a tapas bar in any Spanish
city and sip sangria, inhale some air-dried ham (jamon),
and feel like an insider in no time.
After flying into Madrid with friends and family we
grabbed a fast train to Seville and made our way to the
beautiful Andalucía region where the tapa was born in the
19th century as a free nibble to accompany sherry or wine.
The word translates as “a small plate of jamón, olives or
almonds that covers one’s glass, protecting it from flies
and dust. Though, strictly speaking, tapa still denotes
a small morsel to accompany drinks, but the Andalucian
mini snack has come a long way. Today’s tapas consist of
an enormous variety of delicacies, all of which we intended
to consume as we made our way through Southern Spain.
When we arrived in Seville, it was bustling with energy
from both tourists and young Spaniards on summer
break. We dropped our bags at the hotel and took to the
cobblestone streets in search of our first tapas bar. We
settled on Casa Robles, a well-known family run taverna
with heavy beams and ocher walls lined with original oil
paintings of seductive flamenco dancers and famous bull
fighters. We drank ice cold cerveza as seasoned waiters
covered our table with an array of fascinating nibbles such
as Boquerón (fresh white anchovies in vinegar), feather
light tempura of baby vegetables, fried sardines, assorted
cheeses and freshly made gazpacho. Our next stop was
Vineria San Telmo, a tapas bar I had read about in Seville’s
Barrio Santa Cruzneighborhood. We dined al fresco
while nibbling on foie gras with vanilla sauce, grilled goat
cheese with orange marmalade, and slow cooked bulls tail
wrapped in a thin crisp pastry. About that time, I realized
a tapas bar crawl can also mean you crawl back to your
hotel with a combination of jetlag and too much sangria.
Thankfully our Seville accommodations were in a perfect
location.
Hotel Casa 1800 is a three-story mansion beautifully
restored and flooded with light from its central courtyard.
We enjoyed a nightcap on the rooftop terrace while
looking out over the imposing Cathedral and its famous
bell tower, La Giralda, where we would tour the following
day. From Seville we hopped back on a train and arrived
in Cordoba just a half hour later. The countryside consists
of rolling plains, mountain ranges, quaint villages with
baroque churches and Moorish citadels. Even our
hotel was a restored 16 th century palace called Hospes
Palacio del Bailío. One of our traveling companions
used to live in Cordoba and showed us the town from a
local’s viewpoint. She took us to several of her old hang
outs, like Taberna La Cazuela De La Espartería, where
we inhaled platters of Iberian jamon, croquettes, blood
sausage, and fried calamari. The next morning, we met up
with a tour guide and marveled as she took us through the
famous La Mezquita. Although a Christian site for almost
nine centuries, its original construction as a mosque is
inescapable and mesmerizing. We ended our day dining at
El Churrasco, a beautiful restaurant in the Jewish quarter
of Cordoba where I lingered over a wonderful pine nut
white gazpacho and sea bass carpaccio.
We hired a driver and guide to take us from Cordoba
to Granada, stopping along the way to tour a Montilla
bodega, famous for their fino and other Sherries. Our
second stop was in the quaint town of Baena at the Nunez
de Prado Olive Oil mill. We were honored to have owner
Don Francisco Nunez give us a personal tour of how the
olives are pressed and made into Spain’s award-winning
staple. Olive oil is used for everything. Even at breakfast
they drizzle olive oil on their toast as they drink their first
cup of café con leche. In Granada we repeated a visit to
the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to again tour
the best preserved medieval Arab palace in the world,
the Alhambra. We also made a second visit to Azafran, a
restaurant we loved last year that takes its roots of Moorish
ancestry and combines them with contemporary Spanish
cuisine.
The grand finale of our trip ended in Spain’s capital,
Madrid, a city described by Lonely Planet as ‘an ex-convent
schoolgirl who pushed the boundaries of hedonism and
then grew up and got sophisticated without ever forgetting
how to have fun. That’s why it’s a city as at home in their
nightclubs and bars as it is in the hallowed halls of high
culture ’. We love staying at Only You, a boutique hotel in a
19th-century mansion located in the Salesas neighborhood,
one of the most avant-garde areas of Madrid and a short
distance to the Puerta del Sol, the Museo del Prado and
the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. Shopping in Madrid’s
Salamanca neighborhood is a combination of Highland
Park Village, Rodeo Drive and the Upper East Side. My
eyes were swimming with fashion, chic pedestrians and
food markets. On our last two nights we made it a point
to dine at La Barraca, where for 75 years they have been
preparing the best paella in the world over a pungent
wood fire. The other dish so well known in Madrid is roast
suckling pig. We were fortunate to get reservations at the
famous Restaurante Botin, founded in 1725 on a street that
reminded me of a Harry Potter movie set.
I love the way Spaniards, and most Europeans for that
matter, relish a meal. Pressed together at crowded counters
and small tables, locals break bread with foreigners every
day. Taking time to eat, converse, drink and eat some
more is a way of life for them. It seems to me it’s a way they
maintain a deep-rooted sense of community and make you
feel their whole country is one big village – a village I could
spend the rest of my life crawling through.
